Fourfield: Computers, Art and the Fourth Dimension

An artist blurs the boundaries between art and science and probes into the realms of relativity, non-Euclidean geometry, hypercubes, and quasicrystals in an effort to depict a fourth dimension.

Robbin, a painter and sculptor, uses computers in his quest to represent the fourth dimension. Although Einstein's theory of relativity seemed to define the fourth dimension as time, Robbin disagrees, arguing that the fourth dimension is spatial. In this he finds support in the work of Einstein's former teacher Hermann Minkowski, a Russian mathematician who created a four-dimensional goemetry that is used to conceptualize Einstein's special theory of relativity. Robbin's technically demanding text is accompanied by 109 illustrations (36 in color) of his arcane graphic attempts to make the fourth dimension visible. There are paintings in which rods extend from the canvas, simulating 4-D space; pointillist dot-pictures that attempt to render light visible; and crystal-like sculptures whose appearance changes radically as the viewer moves. This remarkable book includes an insert picture of hypercubes (a hypercube is a 4-D cube with 24 square faces) plus 3-D glass for viewing it.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Shades of the Fifties: Red/blue cardboard glasses, cubist forms, and science fiction cyberspace are the first things one encounters in this diverting work. On closer inspection, they offer an interesting entree into an extradimensional world and the exhilarating and intriguing new ways it can be depicted in art and science with the help of the computer. The mathematical themes may at first be daunting, but the enthusiasm of the artist/author carries the reader, hesitantly perhaps, into expanded space and eventually into a fluid, dynamic view of the universe and the self. The application of new computer techniques in art and architecture are examined, but Robbin's work is essentially a personal account of a philosophical and intellectual journey into the fourth dimension. The bibliography ranges from "Flatland" to "The Principle of Relativity," the glossary from "Big Bang" to "Wormhole": evidence of a complex investigation by a creative mind. Although clearly not to everyone's taste, this book is well worth the effort for those to whom the computer age is not a threat but a promise.
- Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.