I look to ancient forms for inspiration, the Great Pyramids at Giza being one that I have marveled at since I was a boy. These massive solids, smoothed out with a cladding of limestone, covered massive blocks. I would take a cue from these blocks and begin experimenting with using blocks to create new 3d structures.
I’m going deep into the weeds here (the nerd in me can’t help it) but please indulge me as it helps give insight into what you are looking at.
Three dimensional space has 3 axes, x, y and z, known as the Cartesian coordinate system. Something is 2 dimensional when it only has x and y which define space in the horizontal plane. The z axis defines the vertical component of any point in three dimensional space. I mention this short primer for the uninitiated to prepare for the next paragraph.
Like a raster image with a grid of pixels, starting with a grid of squares in a flat plane with only x and y coordinates, the grid is turned into a 3d grid with a z coordinate. Think of a chessboard and then think of 3d chess with multiple levels of the chessboard stacked on top of each other. But in my version the grid is given an additional dimension, with each pixel extruded in the z axis to be cuboids. I like to think of this approach as pixels in 3D. That is how STELLA OCTANGULA is built, with grids of cubes stacked on top of each other.
I’ve always found the form of the Stellated Octahedron beautiful. Platonic solids can be expanded upon by what is described as stellations. A stellation of a Platonic solid is essentially creating a new, more complex 3D shape by extending the faces or edges of one of the five basic Platonic solids until they meet again, forming a star-like pattern, while maintaining the overall symmetry of the original shape; it's like taking a basic shape and spiking it out to create a new, more intricate figure. The Stellated Octahedron was first described in writing in the book ‘De Divina Proprotione’, first published in1508 by the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli with illustrations by Leonardo Da Vinci. In 1609 Johannes Kepler would give it the name it’s known as today, “Stella Octangula”, Latin for eight pointed star.
In my version, I’ve structured the form with skeletal boxes, outlining only the outer stellations, leaving an absence at its center where the Octahedron would be.
The delicateness of the structure is to invoke the ethereal and the ephemeral, a feeling that the structure occupies space and time but is dissolving.
Music in Animation: ‘Hexadecimals’ - Harry Gregson-Williams
(The Martian Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
