Hanging Panoramic Polyhedra

by tagermer

I am working hard to get ready for a show I have in the Fall of 2018 at the Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick, MD. My plan is to hang some of my polyhedra in the center of the room. But, in order to do that, I need material and a little engineering. I designed a hanging system that requires a 1/4″ hole drilled at the top of each solid and a 1″ hole drilled at the bottom. A 1/16″ braided steel cable hangs from the ceiling, passes through the 1/4″ hole and attaches to a piece on the bottom that holds the solid from the bottom. In this way, there is no stress applied to the top of the solid, which might pull it apart, and it is discrete. I designed pieces 3D printed from nylon to act as a collet for the 1/4″ hole and a hanger at the bottom.

The first piece was taken in the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park. It is mapped onto a cuboctahedron. [“Old Faithful Inn (Cuboctahedron)”]

The second is was taken at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, in front of the grave for the family of Henri Poincare, a famous mathematician. The panorama is mapped onto a rhombic dodecahedron. [“Poincare (Rhombic Dodecahedron)”]

The third is not a photograph, per se, but a visual representation of the Julia set, a fractal structure related to the Mandelbrot set. It is mapped onto a tridiminished icosahedron. [“Fractal (Tridiminished Icosahedron)”]

This video shows all three rotating on their cable:
Video Link

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