EricSchles/thebalance
Balance, the interplay between individual parts and their contributed unity have been one of the most distinguishing characteristics of works of art. Plato, the first philosopher of art, identified beauty with simplicity, harmony, and proportion, and Aristotle held the same view. Balance resides in different art forms. A lyric poem reflects the balance of mood that binds together the thoughts and images of the poet; in drama and novel, the balance of plan and purpose in the acts of men and the fateful sequence of causes and effects in their lives. The statue reflects the organic unity of the body; the painting, the spatial unity of visible things. In beautiful artifacts, the basal unity is the purpose or end embodied in the material structure. Visual balance, on the other hand, directly reflects the organic unity of the image or spatial relation of physical sculpture. It transcended from an abstract concept into an intricate model that demonstrates the relationships between many cooperating factors. To investigate the visual forms of Balance, we started by building to abstract models, one representing a single particle’s path of travel, and the other representing communication of a group of factors among 8 small communities. We designed a sliding bar that allows audiences to control some of the parameters and construct their own definition of visual balance.