Welcome to H3 Maths

“It’s three o’clock. You’re at work, struggling to focus during the afternoon lull. You gaze out of your office window, hoping for some relief, but instead you feel a headache coming on. Flat gray concrete lines the streets, while windows form repetitive glassy intervals in stark brick walls. With monotonous straight lines as far as the eye can see, there’s nowhere pleasant to rest your gaze.” Try to focus on this picture of the building while scrolling your screen up and down! Here is another example:

Mathematician Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (left) showed that we can think of scenes as being made up of striped patterns, of different sizes, orientations and positions, all added together. These patterns are called Fourier Components. In mathematics, a Fourier series is a periodic function composed of harmonically related sinusoids, combined by a weighted summation. You can create these on your calculator or computer:

Urban scenes break the rule of nature: they tend to feature regular, repetitive patterns, due to the common use of design features such as windows, staircases and railings.

Regular patterns of this kind are rarely found in nature. Because the repetitive patterns of urban architecture break the rule of nature, it is more difficult for the human brain to process them efficiently. And because urban landscapes are not as easy to process, they are less comfortable to look at. Some patterns, such as the stripes on door mats, carpets and escalator stair treads can trigger headaches and even epileptic seizures.

A way to measure the efficiency of the brain’s visual processes is to measure the amount of oxygen used by the visual part of the brain, located at the back of the head. When the brain uses oxygen, it changes color. We can track these changes by shining infrared light onto the scalp, and measuring the scattered light which bounces back off the brain and through the skull. Typically, oxygen usage is greater when people look at uncomfortable images, such as urban scenes.” [Read the entire article here] Finally, how would you like living in this room?

This room was created by Peter Kogler, an internationally renowned Austrian artist who creates hypnotic installations. They’ll make you dizzy just by looking at them on the internet, but imagine actually being in one. (Major #vertigo risk here, guys.) Kohler lives and works in Vienna and recently had a psychedelic installation at the ING Art Center in Brussels. Using paint and projections, he turns ordinary galleries, lobbies and transit centers into distorted, curving, twisted experiences. Perhaps, after all, that is what Mathematics is all about—one distorted, twisted experience? LOL!

Looking at buildings can produce headaches. Math explains why.

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