London Tsai

London Tsai

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Pearl Hopf
2020
Cultured pearls, welded aluminum tubing, digital motor, aluminum base, inverted audio feedback control, strobe light
52 x 36 x 36 in

The circles that generate the nested tori of the Hopf fibration are so beautiful that I thought to use pearl necklaces to represent them. These Villarceau circles are all linked, which is quite astounding as they also fill up three-dimensional space. Technically, these are not circles as I'm using necklaces. My guess is that the pearls form catenaries: certainly in the vertical direction as they are subject to the earth's gravitation; and the acceleration in the radial direction ought to be constant (because of constant angular velocity), which should induce catenaries radially.