This richly illustrated book explores the fascinating and ubiquitous occurrence of spirals and vortices in human culture and in nature. Spiral forms have been used as elements in the arts for thousands of years, whereas their role in nature and science – from DNA and sea shells to galaxies – is still a topic of investigation in numerous fields. Following an introduction to the cultural history of spiral forms, the book presents contributions from leading experts, who describe the origins, mechanisms and dynamics of spirals and vortices in their special fields. As a whole the book provides a valuable source of information, while also taking the reader on an aesthetic and scientific journey through the world of spiral forms.

Create spectacular spirals by popping a pen into a gear and moving it around a template. The three gears and two templates that come with this fun and innovative kit allow you to generate hundreds of colorful, eye-catching designs. A 56-page book explains the fascinating but easy-to-grasp mathematics governing the appearance of spirals in art and nature. The Art and Science of Spirals contains: 2 pens 2 spiral templates 3 gears to make hundreds of different designs A book that reveals the mathematical principles behind spiral art

In this elegantly written and beautifully illustrated book, Nico Israel reveals how spirals are at the heart of the most significant literature and visual art of the twentieth century. Juxtaposing the work of writers and artists—including W. B. Yeats and Vladimir Tatlin, James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp, and Samuel Beckett and Robert Smithson—he argues that spirals provide a crucial frame for understanding the mutual involvement of modernity, history, and geopolitics, complicating the spatio-temporal logic of literary and artistic genres and of scholarly disciplines. The book takes the spiral not only as its topic but as its method. Drawing on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Alain Badiou, Israel theorizes a way of reading spirals, responding to their dual-directionality as well as their affective power. The sensations associated with spirals––flying, falling, drowning, being smothered—reflect the anxieties of limits tested or breached, and Israel charts these limits as they widen from the local to the global and recoil back. Chapters mix literary and art history to explore 'pataphysics, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, "Concentrisme," minimalism, and entropic earth art; a coda considers the work of novelist W. G. Sebald and contemporary artist William Kentridge. In Spirals, Israel offers a refreshingly original approach to the history of modernism and its aftermaths, one that gives modernist studies, comparative literature, and art criticism an important new spin.

This book uses the spiral shape as a key to a multitude of strange and seemingly disparate stories about art, nature, science, mathematics, and the human endeavour. In a way, the book is itself organized as a spiral, with almost disconnected chapters circling around and closing in on the common theme. A particular strength of the book is its extremely cross-disciplinary nature - everything is fun, and everything is connected! At the same time, the author puts great emphasis on mathematical and scientific correctness, in contrast, perhaps, with some earlier books on spirals. Subjects include the mathematical properties of spirals, sea shells, sun flowers, Greek architecture, air ships, the history of mathematics, spiral galaxies, the anatomy of the human hand, the art of prehistoric Europe, Alfred Hitchcock, and spider webs, to name a few.

A fascinating and mysterious discipline, “Selfica” creates objects made of metal, inks and colors that can interact with the environment in a positive way. Selfic structures enhance personal well-being, sensitivity, and mental and physical balance. Be it jewelry, metal structures or paintings, Selfic devices also help their users to learn more about themselves and get in touch with energetic dimensions and information fields different from those in which we are normally immersed. Selfica, developed through the research and teaching of Oberto “Falco” Airaudi, founder of Damanhur, Federation of Communities, is actually an ancient art-science, already known and used by many peoples of the past. This book recounts the experiments of many researchers and enthusiasts as well as those of the author, who has personally participated in many exciting experiences. It is a journey into a new dimension where time, space, emotions and memory respond to laws which are very different from those we are used to...