Eightfold Way: The Sculpture

Summary

This article covers some of my thinking whiledeveloping The Eightfold Wayand some of the physical processes I usedin creating it.

Wheeled wheels of processes and thoughts form a sort ofmultidimensional torus embedded in our time andspace. In this paper we survey a few of thesesatellites and their orbits about the sculpturecalled The Eightfold Way.This amounts to making explicit part of themathematical environment when I finished thissculpture. I intend no mysticism here, only someshared furnishings of our minds and hearts - sharedcultivation of our neuron and capillarylandscapes.

A typical Helaman sculpture has layers of titles,ranging from a colloquial expression such as“eightfold way” at the top to precise mathematicalsymbols and syntax such as x³y + y³z + z³x = 0 deeper down. Thelast equation describes the algebraic surface ofKlein that inspired this sculpture. For some reason,maybe because there was going to be a sculpture atMSRI, maybe not, at about the end of May 1992, a lotof email correspondence on the Klein surface beganamong Thurston, Asimov, Osserman, Brock, Gross,Sibley, Kuperberg, Bumby, Clemens, Hirbawi, Mess,Grayson, Adler, Elkies, Riera, to list a few. Therich mathematical folklore that exploded via theinternet led eventually to the publication of thisbook.

Dr. John Slorp, President of the Minneapolis College ofArt and Design, once observed: “The Eightfold Way is the perfectbiomorphic form: it is sensuous and intelligent atthe same time.” But for most people educated intraditional schools, mathematics comes across asanything but sensuous. My sculptures attempt tobridge this gap.