Andreas’ Device: The Labyrinth and Hidden Symmetries

Abstract

This article is in two parts: a series of drawings depicting walls, and a series of lyrical or imaginative commentaries on walls. The drawings show walls in multifarious forms, more or less abstract, more or less figurative, constrained by geometrical regularity. The format of presentation elicits the perception of rhythm in the lateral survey of the drawings, which in turn suggests the operation of forms comparable to those encountered in the perusal of poetic language organized over many pages in serial verse. In particular, comprising a visual series, the drawings may be discussed in terms of poetic devices such as echo, verse-line, and meter, and their repeating elements. Besides verbal art, the drawings also function as a schematic representation of walled edifices that embody the ratios and measures of symmetry in physical architecture (a cathedral interior, a city block, a Daedalian labyrinth, for example). Mindful of both analogies – with poetic language and physical architecture – the commentaries attempt reflection on the experience of symmetry in the drawings.