Preserved Topic: Golden circle? (Page 1 of 1)

My old teacher called it the Golden Circle. I think someone else once called it the Magic Circle. I'm exactly sure what it's called, so hitting Google is pretty much fruitless.

It has to do with placement of elements. You take the canvas, draw some lines, then a circle from those lines. The resulting circle is good place for a major element of a piece of art. I think there are also two vertical lines that also mark a good place for elements, but this could be an entirely different technique. I just can't remember.

I'm looking for a refresher on this. Anybody have an idea?

I think this is commonly called the Golden Section or Golden Ratio.
Or even Fibonacci (sp?) proportion.
It is the proportion when the total of the two relates to the bigger in the same
way as the bigger relates to the smaller. I think if you calculate it you will find the proportion to be 0.618 or somethign like that.

Searching on these terms you probably can find something pretty easily on-line

I just made a quick search, and I fond this: http://mathsforeurope.digibel.org/Gulden.htm
which has some sort of description of a circle method.

Yeap. He called it the Golden Ratio, but I'm having much better luck with Golden Mean. Good reading.

Thanks Zox.
(and thanks to you-know-who)

Pandora's Box!
It's everywhere!


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-07-2001).]

Warjournal - you have no idea. This has become a growing fascination/compulsion/obsession of mine. It *is* everywhere - from population growth to seed and leaf placement on plants to Greek architecture. Much science, much math - and, surprise - much beauty.

This iceberg is *very* deep.

But - I've never run across your circle. The primary geometric figures associated with phi are rectangles,triangles and pentagrams (with 5 pointed stars derived).

This is something that I used a lot when I studied music. You can find it everywhere in music. The basic thing with misic was that you took the number of measures in the piece and divided it by Phi. The number that came out would give you a measure number where something major happened in the piece. It was quite facinating. I did a term paper for a Master's class on this in college.

That was some good reading.

Thanks to levitated.net....

The Golden Rectangle

This is just too bizarre. Finding it in quite a few places that I have studied, yet I'm just finding out about this. Why didn't somebody tell me sooner?

Just for fun, I did some measuring on DG architecture sig. All I could really measure were horizontals on the left and middle buildings. Couldn't measure the horizontals on the right building because there is no back. Couldn't meausure any vertical because there is no bottom. Anyways, the ratio on the first building is roughly 1.75 and the ratio on the second building is roughly 1.64. Pretty close.

Just checked Doc's sig real quick. Ratio of 1.70 by my measurements.

This is getting just plain creepy.



[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-08-2001).]

Beware the number 18391718961947456! ITS EVERYWHERE!

Haha, just joking, anyway, didn't you folks ever see that movie with donald duck in it where he goes back to greece and they show him the golden rectangle and then he does some mushrooms and everything is all fucked up? I remember watching that a couple times when I was little.

From www.textism.com -- a little animation of the rectangular version.

There was a show on The Learning Channel last month called "The Face with John Cleese". It was really quite interesting. Part of the show featured a plastic surgeon who had been studying the face for a number of years and had come up with a map for the face realting the parts to the Golden Ratio. He had an intersting page on the Web describing how he derived the map. Unfortunately i didn't book mark the page and TLC has changed their site so it no longer connects.

If I happen to run across the stie I will let you know.

Found it, Hyperbole...

Here 'tis



There are a lot of strange people in the world. I should know; I'm three of them...

[This message has been edited by Wangenstein (edited 11-08-2001).]

Wangenstein: Thanks for the link. That is one of the ones I was looking for. It leads to the other one, Marquadt Beauty Analysis.

Look under the item Our Research. The topics "PHI in 1D", PHI in 2D", "Making the Mask", and "Making the Face" are particularly interesting in terms of understanding the Golden Ratio.

Note: The Greek letter Phi is used to represent the Golden Ratio. The Ratio actually is satisfied by two values 0.618 nd 1.618. Lower case phi is sometimes used for 0.618 nd Upper Case Phi for 1.618.

Hope these links are useful to you warjournal.

Yeah. Thanks. Had to duct tape my head to keep it from exploding. I look like Jackel from HokutoNoKen.

I'm finding it really hard to not look for it around me.

That face mask thing is pretty cool. I found out that a lot a my favorite pr0n queens aren't really that pretty. :sigh: I find that for the jawline to fit, the subject generally has to be very thin. I also noticed a few things about how the nose should lie. Too bad I couldn't find a masculine version of the mask. Must be a statement on our male dominated society or something. (They did a marathon of the face show. I only got to watch an episode so I missed the bit on the mask.)

Thanks, folks.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 11-11-2001).]

Actually he presents a Male version of the mask here , or you can go to the main MBA page and look under Mask Applications at the article "Face Variations" for a discussion of how the mask would vary for people of different ages, sex, and ethnic background.

By the way warjournal, I would be interest to know what you are doing with the Golden Ratio. You are right, it seems to pop up every where.

I have been interested in for a long time and it is amazing the number of places you find it. Then once you think you have exhausted yourself on finding Phi everywhere, start looking at 2.71828. I am not sure, but I think e and Phi are more ubiquitous than [i]pi[/].

oh god yes....study higher math and e pops up about every other day--much more often than pi to be sure. there are countless defintions for e, as i imagine there are for phi. quite interesting that numbers can be used to define the natural world, imo.



[This message has been edited by mbridge (edited 11-12-2001).]

Thanks for the link, Hyperbole. I found my way to the front door earlier, but I didn't see anything about male faces or other variations.

I really didn't have anything in mind. I was reading about composition and element placement. It sparked a memory but I couldn't remember anything concrete. So I asked and received.

Now I'm starting to have flash backs concerning e^x. Thanks, Mbridge.

Optic, I saw Donald in Mathmagic Land in Calculus 2 back in highschool. I believe that's what you're referring to...

That -has- to be what he's referring to. Now that was a cool little bit of educational animation...