Santa Maria Del Fiore
Fourier Transform & The Microphone
In 8th grade, shortly after having learned about linear perspective and a method by which you sort chunks of a greater image replica, I got to work on the Santa Del Fiore painting. At the time, I was very interested in architecture. Although I was not formally introduced to the Renaissance, I was taken aback by the trickles of information I had begun to piece together after looking through some of the art books available in the room. I wanted to paint something that would serve as a landmark for my time in middle school. It was made over the course of a semester. We had a rotating schedule for every quarter at Grassland Middle School, but my art teacher flipped my schedule to allow for a second quarter in which to finish this painting. I would come in extremely sleepy, put in my headphones, and paint in my corner of the art room for an hour for a few months.
At the beginning of high school, I came across a mathematician named Cédric Villani in a random YouTube video about his work in physics and mathematics. I had no clue as to the names and concepts that would later reveal themselves, yet. He was talking about his breakthrough in the usage of the Fourier transform in the Boltzmann Equation. This was the beginning of my personal rabbit hole into physics and higher mathematics. It was a glimmer of another world. He had worked on his PHD on the bolztamnn equation for 10 years before achieving his breakthrough, which he claimed to be an elegant and much simpler manifestation. Now I do not write this to give an autobiography of him; you can find such information in "The Birth of a Theorem" By him. I say this to focus on the Fourier transform. The idea has reinvigorated a deep fascination for me, as it ties together so much in its extremely intuitive concept. What's even more interesting is the fact that it was created by Joseph Fourier (Hence the name), who was taught by Laplace, and was the consul to Egypt for the Napoleonic army. A further tie is Thomas Youing who found the Rosetta Stone and the idea of light moving in waves.
Relative to me however is its appearence in almost all applications, I was talking to a vanderbuilt biologist who mentioned it appears everywhere in nature. Maxwell even used it to prove the outer rings of jupiter's mass, explain how he did it. So it's safe to say that this very theorem has been a point of fascination for me; it was the inspiration for the laglands program. I used it in its perhaps most apparent form, attempting to write a program that could visually display the different frequencies at which a song is generally played. I did this with an ESP32, a breadboard, and a small microphone. It took a 3/4ths of my Fall break. Still, it was a delightful project, and seeing the Fourier library generate a visual reminiscent of the Saint Basilica Cathedral was cool.
Mexican Revolution
A Note on Notetaking
My I.B. History of the Americas class was studying the Mexican Revolution, as presented by Adolfo Gilly. We would sometimes start our lessons with a discussion of various artistic styles and works that came out during the time period. I was inspired by the symbolism and wanted to create a homage to the revolution. I wanted to reflect the dream-like folklore of the people and the hopeful spirit in the weather. The painting shifts from a deep red branched section of foliage through a steam below the horse rider, reflecting the people's will in their fluid-like state of a nation trying to re-incarnate itself. The red is the blood, and it is washed through the stream below the people to show the prospects of clean and prosperous fields that are not owned by international entities, latifundia, and haciendas. The people are free and stand at the center valiantly in their efforts.
Never did finish the painting, so I've included a sunflower to compensate.
If we are to look into the roots of engineering, we find physics, at the origins of physics is mathematics, and at the roots of mathematics is pure mathematics, logic, and philosophy. The same goes for general chemistry, to molecular and material sciences, and then to atomic and nuclear developments. Everything starts from somewhere; its resolution can only be defined relative to the subject matter. So then our learning can be defined as our notes. Our understand can be comprehensively catalogues through our ability to note take. This has been a fact drilled into me through early attempts to move through more difficult classes without the advancement of any note-taking system. It proved a futile task. Learning notes are essential, and they are an art form in themselves. When tesla first got a jolt of inspiration from a Faust quote he began to sketch the ac motor into dirt, when kepler looked into the wonders of our solar systems divine geomtery he found his conception incorrect. What he found was the truth in a catalogue of handwritten notes on the celestial coordinates. Mathematics can rarely be done without an immediate existence of the step previous, it would just be too clunky.
I was inspired to take note-taking seriously by Da Vinci. I had come across his notes before through an interest in anatomy and anatomical history, relating him to that of Andreas Vasilius and Joseph Lister. In Boston, I came across a book that had his various notes and pages. After that summer, I was set on crafting my own catalogue of notes. I used only blank or dotted pages; I did not want the diagrams or words to be interrupted, and in this fashion, I've managed in the past year to fill up about 10 notebooks worth of various neuroscience, physics, and mathematics information, amongst sparse notes on other subjects. It has been a personal thing for me to delve into a more disciplined structure of realization, but it has been highly worthwhile.
Van Gough's Chair
Game Developement
I had been looking through a book on Van Gogh's life and works when his simple painting of a chair caught my eye. It was such plain subject matter, yet he radiated the room's ambience with the chair being the eye of a system of colors, rather than the chair itself. The geometry was simple, but the placement of colors was perfect—the yellow highlight at the top, and the blue reflection of the night light at the legs. I was inspired and created my own design, and for this project, I tried to include all colors that I could to represent light, rather than a realistic tone and color arrangement. Through this project, I was better able to understand how color values and specific color arrangements can create light and shade.
Game development is a form of modern art. The technical ability always seems to trump creativity at first, but once a mastery of technique is achieved, creativity is all that is left. To really make something novel and execute on it feels exhilarating. You may convey a story or a lobby by which interactions take place, and for a bit of time, you get to grab the attention of the player and broaden their consciousness through their interactions with your binary world. It really is amazing to me that this tool exists and that solo development is always an option in the world today. A decade ago, this would have been relatively niche and far more challenging to achieve. Still, with the advancement of multi-billion-dollar tech juggernauts, the implementation of high graphics and intuitive world-building has opened a door into a new world.
The picture of the rocket is a game that a partner and I developed, where the user selects items to take as cargo on a ship in a lobby. Upon their selection, they are taken to a screen where they are then taken to an interactive gameplay section, where they control the ship's driving. It's kind of a homage to Space Invaders, as the gameplay is 2D when controlling the ship.
The blood red sky and dark landscape were an attempt to create a horror game inspired by Norwegian folklore- you are essentially a researcher of folklore who has found themselves trapped at night and is trying to get back to the research base in an isolated section of Norway. For this game, we played around with the lighting and landscape a lot, and even created a gun equipping and shooting system, along with an AI that follows predestined walking routes intended to overlap with the user. If found, the AI was to chase the user around the map until a shelter was found, with a screeching noise playing in the background. I have all of these games saved on a USB drive of mine.
3D Prints & Their Stories
The Unfinished Projects & Extra paintings
I have had numerous projects that I have archived, but the one that has always stood out to me the most was the implementation of new muscle-fiber-like technology for robotics. I really do believe that to achieve the next step of robotics, truly, sort of the final form, is to mimic muscle fiber, for then we would more freely mimic human interactions with objects. Rather than aiming to make robotics execute a task I think- primarily - with the implementation of ai we should aim to make robots as modular with the environment as possible, not the singular task. Humans may be anything so long as they're trained- what are they training? Their intellect, for their bodies can already do most jobs, for humans have a symmetry and specific characteristics that make all jobs follow the road map of execution relative to the way humans function.
When I was 9 I got into 3D printing for the idea that I could make my own toys.
In middle school, I began creating little puzzles or cups (made from food-safe plastic) along with miniature toys. I sold them each for about $5. I would sand, prime, and paint everything myself. One of the more notable toys was an Among Us figure that you could customize. I don't have pictures of it, unfortunately. Still, I'm happy to say I beat the company responsible for Among Us to selling them, because last year I saw an almost identical toy to what I had been distributing during middle school. The vase was a request from my grandmother to create a strawberry vase. I also made a few for my other grandmother. There was also an elephant-themed phone holder that I made for my mother's entire office. I had much fun experimenting with different filament types, and this was a completely isolated and magical way of learning about engineering in general. And at the end of learning, I was more than exalted to share my prints with everyone. I don't have pictures of my other prints, but when I was actively creating them, I made around 500 prints throughout middle school. One of the last prints I made was of Hercules.
