The Mandala and the Multi-Center Perspective

During one of our trips I told Gene that his talk about Alexander
and his theories that our visual field must have multiple centers
made me think about the mandala and Carl Jung. The mandala is
an Indian and Buddhist symbol that represents their view of the
universe. The words "multiple centers" resonated with my
recollection of the mandala because although the structure is a
regular composition of concentric circles and squares, it is
surrounded by local centers that look regular at a distance, but are
distinct at close range. The symbol is a mix of regularity and order,
as well as infinite diversity at the same time.

In the mandala above you can notice that each small concentric circle
is a different scene from Budha's life. I think that the purpose of this
kind of symbol is to fuse the minute personal perspective of our personal
experience with the larger cosmic scheme. During Gene's talk about
whether Alexander's ideas are universal or just his subjective opinion
the word wholeness popped up. This is what made me think of Carl
Jung, who studied the relationship between religious symbols and
psychology. One of Jung's main ideas is that regardless of the culture
we come from, we all possess the same archetypes. Jung studied
symbols across cultures similar to the mandala,;and thought that the
mandala represents the archetype of psychological wholeness or an
expression of the totality of the self. Wholeness is paramount for
Jung because he believed that the main task of psychoanalysis was
to counter the segmentation and compartmentalization of the self .
There is an uncanny similarity between the mandala and a diagram
of the Jungian self.

How do I link this back to photography? Well, from Gene's 

presentation I also remember the perfectly regular Nurenberg 

building, and from a different presentation of a previous class the 

tall glass buildings of le Corbusier. My personal reaction to both 

is a visceral horror at the rigidity and perfect symmetry of their 

lines. I like regularity but I react with disgust as it approaches 

perfection, as if the symmetry takes something from my humanity 

instead of enabling it with a modicum of order. A perfectly 

symmetrical mandala would not reflect the universe according to 

Buddhist, and a self rigidly ordered for Jung would be a sign of 

psychological sickness rather than health. Jung cannot prove that 

his diagram of the self is universal, but his ideas on the mandala 

are cannily close to Alexander's observations of images. 

Danny W Chang

Photographs of flight stroke

In my presentation of the wild duck, I brought a picture taken by Eadweard Muybridge of a bird in flight. From the picture, I jumped to a schematic of the upward and downward stroke. I found a better diagram that illustrates the flight, from a front view to a top view. 

Muybridge came to mind because before this class I never truly considered how hard it is to study the movement of animals. Without the ability to expand and contract the time scale of their movements, they can be all but invisible. The problem of bird flight fascinated minds as brilliant and Leonardo Da Vinci. But without photography, it proved simply too challenging to link the shape of the wings, which was known, to the movement that created flight. The motion of the bird wing is one crucial piece of the problem of bird flight. What also surprises scientists is the efficiency of bird flight. There are some migratory species that fly for weeks spending very little energy in their path. The problem boils down to figuring out how a bird wing and body reduce drag during flight. 

The picture above belongs to a starling flying in a wind tunnel. The starling is faced with an air flow that also contains traces of smoke. This is the same method airplane companies use to study the efficiency of their wings. The traces above are the currents of air traveling above and below the bird.  

A large part of the drag depends on the point where the vortices begin. Notice how the air flow is regular up until the middle of the body, only to expand in the second half. From this still image, we can derive measurements of the pressure along the body of the starling, as well as the wind velocity.

What the picture shows to use, which would be invisible otherwise, is how the starling pushes the 

air around and how the air in turn, creates the lift and drag on the wings. It surprises me again how a 

simple photograph combined with a few traces of smoke can help us break down a problem that is 

extremely difficult, into simpler parts, just as it was the case with the 

wing beat. 

Danny W Chang