Hey Bill
Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel :0)
Hey Bill
Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel :0)
Bill's point, I think, is rather like the issue of perspective - they are both theoretical constructs. Both are the bane of photography - the golden mean, because a photograph is always "framed" by the film edges and it's easy and lazy to try and apply the golden mean; perspective - again, partly because of the inherent framing of a photograph and also because of the convenience of it's use in rendering three dimension onto two on a sheet of paper or film Yet it's certainly not the only way of rendering such a view. Both (but especially perspective) are ways of controlling what is photographed, but ways which are linked to a cosmology which regarded creation as ordained by fixed geometric rules. The painter or artist could understand and apply those rules and thus emulate the creative act.
But we live in a different world (with a different cosmology... or rather many different cosmologies). By learning and apply these rules what we generally tend to do is imitate Renaissance techniques rather than explore new directions (something painters were already doing before the Renaissance was over...).
Bill is right. But he mispelled "entrails." I suspect that Bill's position is that doesn't matter, either.
Peter Collins
On the intent of the First Amendment: The press was to serve the governed, not the governors --Opinion, Hugo Black, Judge, Supreme Court, 1971 re the "Pentagon Papers."
Another interesting property of phi:
1+phi=1/phi
In other words, 1+.618=1/.618=1.618
Sir Issac Newton: "I do not believe in a Universe of accidents, and, after all, I have studied the subject, and you have not.”
This website contains more information on the subject than you probably care to know:
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/phi.html
Also, notice that most standard sheet film and print paper sizes when cut in half equal the golden section ratio of 1:1.6
Yes, it does go back a bit. Proportion and the Golden Section first recorded by the Greeks. Whether they were the very first is debatable, as there is evidence to support the theory that much earlier cultures used the principles, but the Greeks were the first to record their detailed findings to which we refer to today. Golden Proportion is designated by the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet, phi, which is shown as a circle with a forward slash through the centre.
It is such a broad question, that I can only back out of a more comprehensive answer by recommending the reading of a study book for the R.A. by Robert Lawlor, Philosopy and Practice - Sacred Geometry: ISBN 0500-81030-3. Stan.
"Sir Issac Newton: "I do not believe in a Universe of accidents, and, after all, I have studied the subject, and you have not.”"
And Newtonian physics has, in many areas been found to be - lets say - not exactly correct or accurate.... and is mostly rather outdated now.
Newton certainly had different religious world view (as well as a different scientific one) than today
Here's another fun fact about phi (or it's inverse, I always forget if phi = 0.618 or 1.618)
Not only is 1+.618=1/.618=1.618, but 1 + 1.618 = 2.618 = 1.618*1.618
Good fun.
It's a proportion, a mean, that happens to achieve the same proportion twice in a single division of a line. The proportion of the long segment to the short segment is the same as the proportion of the whole line to the long segment.
I--------------a-------------I--------b------I
b/a = a/a+b
Like the graceful form of a smooth curve it's a pleasant repetition of proportions that just happens to show up a lot in nature. Good composition isn't Voodoo. It's serious business to the artist who uses it to develop their images. The Golden Mean is a wonderful way to get a repetition of proportions in a simple image or a spiraling series of divisions that add dynamics to a complex one.
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