3D magic cube viewer
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| order 3 | order 4 | order 5 | order 6 | order 7 | order 8(a) | order 8(b) | order 9 |
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| order 3 | order 4 | order 5 | order 6 | order 7 | order 8(a) | order 8(b) | order 9 |
These are 3D models of magic cubes, displayed using a Java applet designed in collaboration with and written by Ben Daglish, a friend of mine (an excellent programmer and also a musician). The faster your machine, the smoother they'll run. Click on the miniatures above to view the cube.
Press the 'n' key to switch numbers on and off (orders 3 and 5 have them on by default). Click once in in the applet window and wait a few seconds).
To rotate the patterns click and drag in the applet window.
The red animation on the order 3 and 4 cubes traces the magic line created by joining all points in sequence from first to last. Orders 3 and 4 have an elementary perspecive effect to enhance depth, but orders 5 to 9 are shown in 1-pixel line view because they're too complex at small scales to allow the effect to work well (it clogs the fine lines of the pattern). If you press 's' a starfield is turned on or off (I'm not conviced, but Ben insisted, and it does create a Borg Cube effect...
A refined version of this applet will soon be available, created by friend (and also excellent interface designer and - again - musician) Greg Turner, where you can swap from an order 3 right up to an order 12 in one window, change the foreground and background colours, and move the cube about in 3D space.
If you're interested in 2D magic squares and use an Apple Mac (running Systems 6.8 up to 9 or Classic on OS X) you can download the magic square application zip file I wrote (or this .sit file for older Macs) - you'll need HyperCard Player (amazingly, still available from Apple), if it's not already on your old/classic Mac. In a similar manner to the cube applet, it draws the patterns formed by magic squares and is a handy method of storing and examining the magic lines drawn by the three main classes of square (while not busy making a living I'm working on a more usable web-based version). If you want more information on the subject or have a particular inquiry, the links on Harvey Heinz's excellent pages on number patterns is a good place to start.
3D images of magic cubes are the departure point for my digital artwork CubeLife, where the images mutate through interaction with a heartbeat monitor. You can view stills from an early adaptation of this applet or go straight to a QuickTime movie of the same images in sequence (no order 5 cube at that stage). The Java for the artwork was written by Greg Turner, from my rough pseudocode. An image from another version shows several cubes in various colours, one of them (in blue) malformed because part of the integer sequence was missing. I'm archiving all the material connected with this process, and preparing background research material on the cultural interpretation of number, most of which will appear at the dedicated site for the project cubelife.org.