Tom Grimsey

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Lissajous Wave Star & Lissajous Wave Ring

           

arts research University of Brighton

TOM-GRIMSEY-LISSAJOUS-WAVE-STAR-AND-WAVE-RING

In April 2008 Tom Grimsey installed the Nesta funded, ‘Lissajous Wave Star’ & ‘Lissajous Wave Ring’ Sculptures in the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, Cornwall.

The form was created by American mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), in order to solve navigational problems, and evolved through his studies of astrology, the theoretical orbits of comets and figures created by a variety of pendulums. Jules Antoine Lissajous (1822-1880) later analysed these in greater depth and these waveforms now take his name.

The sculptures are inspired by the activity of oscilloscopes that form part of the museum’s unique and extensive archive of telegraphic equipment. In Lissajous waveforms the usually linear waves are fed back into themselves to make self-contained objects.

Placing a magnet on the screen of the oscilloscope will deform and distort the shapes as the electrons shooting through the tube to the screen surface are repelled or attracted. This pulls the flat two-dimensional images out into space to give the illusion of three-dimensional objects.

There are two steel sculptures which relate to each other; the large three-metre high ‘Star’ [illustrated] is an explosive version of the smaller tight muscular ‘Ring’, like a clenched fist springing out to form an extended palm. 
The ‘Wave Star’, created for the public to climb on, is unusual in that as a giant spring it has a marked rhythmic oscillation. This is wholly appropriate, it being derived from oscilloscope waveforms, but a pioneering first for RoSPA in their health & safety certification.

These two sculptures are the first sculptures commissioned for the new Porthcurno Sculpture Garden.