Cyclical Diagrams

argam transdecimal cyclical diagrams

The Rykami Arysane had long dwindled to a quaint graphic log of my tumultuous twenties, sitting in a bookcase along with the rest of my sketchbooks when these sketches entered into the nearly-full red book. The loneliness and competition, the insecurities and concerns of a decade ago were distant memories. The current era was one fraught with intense business producing digital visualization for construction companies. I was on planes between St. Louis and Ithaca, NY, working on a long-running project at Cornell University. In order to pass the time I revisited the argam and began to muse about numbers, solving elementary number theory problems on the flights and between the fast-paced spurts of business. This activity was very much removed from the demands of the office. The diagrams situate the argam digits of a number base around a clock-like dial, running clockwise from zero at the top. Regular polygons are formed joining multiples of the divisors of the base. The left page studies bases 2 through 21, interrupted at 22. The right diagram examines some sexagesimal geometry. The totatives of sixty are illustrated at the very bottom. The page was probably a few iterations into the concept, jotted on random scrap paper and perhaps recalled here for concision, as a record of the thoughts. This page was redrawn in the Rykami Argam at s7836a51. Page drawn 31 May 2007, tayya 7977, seven dozen ninth phase (Salcyra-Karlmelal Xrga, “life phase of Karl Michael, Son”), between Detroit and Ithaca.

This study developed into the 2009 Cyclic Resonance paper (800k PDF), and was incorporated into the March 2010 Balance Study (1¾ Mb PDF).

This page last modified Monday 9 April 2012.