I also put up a small page on Sierpinski's Tetrahedron. I'll be leading a workshop where we make a large one at the BRIDGES conference in two weeks. But first, I'm off to Paris to speak at the ESMA conference!

To get a sense of the kind of wonderful things he's inspired, check out reports from this year's Gathering for Gardner, such as this article by Bob Crease in The Wall Street Journal, or more recently, this one by Alex Bellos in The New Scientist. The building of the balloon snub dodecahedron mentioned in that article is shown at right, and the print version of contains a rather large picture of myself holding a balloon octahedron in front of my face.

You can read the full article, in Greek. Here is my interview, in English:

SK: Judging from the content of your site,you seem to love both noise and melody equally? Why do you think these extremes inspire you?

VH: The difference between music and noise is all in how you listen. So much music has become noise, background in restaurants and stores. It makes me worry we've forgotten how to really listen. But when we do listen, even noise is fascinating. There is so much sound around you at this very moment—notice it!

SK: What was the initial idea to set the paper instruments on fire?

VH: It seemed obvious. Flaming instruments have been done before, but to me it is heartbreaking to burn something as beautiful and difficult to make as a piano. The idea fascinated me, but I couldn't do it. But the paper instruments, while I'd spent many hours crafting some of them, are easier to destroy. Maybe because I created them in the first place.

SK: I 've seen some experimental musicians to set fire to their pianos but the nature of a burning paperwind(?) is much more impressive since breath and air consequently are so crucial for both fire and sound to exist.What do you think?

VH: Yes, that was one of the most beautiful things about it! Our breath was translated into not only sound, but also light. I think we all felt like dragons. So many people have made visual representation of music, but this was more than a representation—the fire was dancing with us.

SK: How was the experience during the playing? (emotions,the alteration of the sound during burning,injuries maybe)?

VH: We were improvising, and improvising is a wonderful thing. When you improvise, you are discovering together. One person discovers a rhythm, the next discovers a melody that fits the rhythm, and so on. But with fire, we were also discovering new ways to use our instruments, ways to manipulate the flame, and ways to play with light. This was a part of improvisation I had never experienced before. We had to adapt to the changes we each made in the music, and to what the flame did to the instruments. Fire is a great metaphor. We shared the flame, passed it to each other, supported each other's inner fire.

SK: In the relevant text of the video you are writing about the music's dependency on the ephemeral.Could you develop your thoughts on this statement?

VH: There are such beautiful moments in music, that climax which you wait for through the entire piece. But you can't take a snapshot of that moment and hang it on a wall to admire at your leisure. As soon as you try to isolate it, it becomes meaningless. You need the music leading up to it, and you can only stay there for so long before you have to move on. Even in dance, another art form strongly embedded in time, we can enjoy a still image. Music cannot be caught—it is there one moment, and then it is gone.

SK: "You are the last person who will ever play that burning instrument." This is definitely one of the strongest lyrics I've ever heard even though it's not supposed to be one. What do you think about the human condition are we just one-use burning instruments in a way?

VH: I'm not sure which is more ephemeral: music or humans. If we are just one-use burning instruments, who is playing us? I am quite certain that, more than I play music, music plays me. I'm sure many other composers feel the same.

Click to play (3 min 36 sec)

Also available on YouTube.

1.

Doodle in A Minor

Click to play (5 min 15 sec)

And I finally am posting recordings of a couple piano doodles in C Major from 2005–2006.

2.	Doodle in C #1	Click to play (5 min 5 sec)
3.	Doodle in C #2	Click to play (10 min 57 sec)

I also updated the recording of Nothing Has Changed quite a while ago, but in case you missed it, here it is:

4.

Nothing Has Changed

Click to play (5 min 19 sec)

The trouble with being a composer is that I always hope some day I will be able to play these pieces perfectly, so that you can hear exactly what I was trying to get at, but that day never comes and I eventually get bored of the piece and stop playing it altogether, which only makes things worse. But I would rather get out an imperfect recording than none at all, and I will trust you to forgive my mistakes.

Click to play (1 min 42 sec)

Also on YouTube.

Click to play (2 min 53 sec)

Also available on YouTube.

I've also added a webpage for Music Boxes. There's nothing new there yet, but there will be soon!

In other news, Storia is now in the iTunes music store. It's been updating every week, with three episodes so far. The RSS is separate from my blog, so make sure you're subscribed! You have lots of options: RSS, iTunes, or Google Reader.

I'm incredibly excited about this project because it is so much fun to be writing stories and music for each other. I've been writing stories and music separately for years, and putting them together has turned out to be really effective! I've already recorded a few episodes and can't wait to get them out.

So head on over to the Storia webpage to hear the tale of a mysterious ghost ship...

Yes, one of the many fun people I hung out with was Mike Naylor, the mastermind behind Naked Geometry. A group of us got together and tried doing some human geometry. Here is a cube we made with ourselves, and a lovely tessellation that Mike created out of me.

Click to play (1 min 51 sec)

Also available on YouTube.

For comparison, you can listen to the theme in piano from the Harry Potter Septet. This section is inspired by Dumbledore's speech at the end of Book 4, and spans from the theme entrance to the end of the movement.

Click to play (3 min 21 sec)

Mostly I am posting to provide a high-resolution version of the comic, as Blizzard requires submissions to be small jpgs.

You can see my comic on the official site. If you are not in the US, change the region setting in the upper-right corner, and select June.

I also spent the day making magic balloon octahedra for people. Here are some pictures from the event:

A girl sets the dials on the organ function grinder, while her friend inserts a number ticket.	Making a balloon octahedron wand (orange), watched by a girl who just received one (light blue). In the background, people ride square-wheeled tricycles.

Learn more about the other exhibits at the Math Midway on their website.

Click to play (1 min 43 sec)

Also available on YouTube.

I will be twisting balloon octahedra for children of all ages at the Math Midway premier next Sunday (June 14th)! There is a small green one in the photo, but I can make you any color you like.

The 12,000 pieces are for an "organ fuction grinder." You choose a number to input, and set some dials to various mathematical transformations. Not only does the number get put through the transformations, but a musical theme also! For example, if you add three to your number, the melody gets transposed up three steps. It's very cool to play with the Mathematica version, programmed by George Hart, and I plan to get an online version up in the future.

The rest of the Math Midway exhibit promises to be really fun too. There will be a tricycle with square wheels which, as you can try for yourself, gives a perfectly smooth ride! There will also be giant puzzles and other cool stuff.

Click to play (4 min)

Also available on YouTube.

A bunch more paper-instrument stuff is coming soon, so stay tuned!

1.	Storm	Click to play (1 min 55 sec)	Also available on YouTube.
2.	Didgeriduel	Click to play (1 min 37 sec)	Also available on YouTube.

Before we burned all the instruments, I made some studio recordings. Here are three short pieces for paperwinds and paper tube xylophone:

1.	Dance	Click to play (56 sec)
2.	A3 A4	Click to play (1 min 32 sec)
3.	Floo-ee-oo-ee-ute	Click to play (1 min 38 sec)

Related to this paper is a seven-movement piece in which each movement is inspired by and contains the symmetry of each of the seven frieze patterns. The piece will ultimately be a piano trio, but three movements of the piano sketch are now available:

1.	Dizzy Hop	Click to play (1 min 28 sec)
2.	Hop	Click to play (1 min 26 sec)
3.	Sidle	Click to play (2 min 18 sec)

1.

Altitude Beta Theme

Click to play (2 min 9 sec)

A commission like this is a collaboration between the game designer and composer, and we have to work together to get the feel of the music to be just what the game designer envisions. The first draft of the music contained three different ideas I was playing around with. We ended up going with something more serious, but you might enjoy listening to the original:

2.

Altitude Theme Draft

Click to play (3 min 9 sec)

1.	Storm	Click to play (1 min 43 sec)
		A piece for paper xylophone and assorted paper winds.
2.	Didgeriduel	Click to play (1 min 16 sec)
		A piece for two dueling paper didgeridoos, paper tube harp, paper drum, and--unintentionally--dog.

Here's a picture of the band rehearsing. From left to right: Frank Maes on paper drum, a blurry Hendrik Goris playing the paper xylophone faster than the eye can see, myself adjusting a paper slide-flute (note that the skirt is made of paper as well), and Stefan Langerman on the paper hand-flute. In the corner you can see the two black tubes of the tube bass, and most of the giant didgeritube.

So you can get an idea of the theatrics behind the didgeriduel, here is Stefan with the giant didgeridoo which extended into the audience (it is not at full length in this picture), and myself with a comparatively small didge.

Here is Hendrik playing the tube harp. Like the paper xylophone, the pitches can be adjusted easily by changing the lengths of the tubes.

1.	Dizzy Hop	Click to play (1 min 28 sec)
2.	Hop	Click to play (1 min 26 sec)

1.

Nothing Has Changed

Click to play (5 min 19 sec)

Vi Hart, a Stony Brook University senior music major, has been wild about Harry since she was about the same age as the adolescent wizard in J.K. Rowling's first novel, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.” Hart will conduct the premiere of the “Harry Potter Septet” she composed for string quartet, violin, piano and two female voices. It's based on all seven Rowling books in the series.

The book that launched a thousand marketing schemes has now spawned a classical chamber piece, composed by a Stony Brook music major with a flair for mathematical wizardry. The Harry Potter Septet [is] an ambitious but accessible composition for string quartet, piano, and two female voices... It's the work of multi-talented senior Vi Hart, whose obsession with J.K. Rowling's adolescent sorcerer dates back to the sixth grade.

“I'm a composer and I've been composing for as long as I can remember. I got inspired last year by none other than the Harry Potter series. The project started off as a cute idea and then I just ran with it. It took about 14 months. But I completed a septet—originally 2 hours of music, which I've cut down to one and one-half hours.”

“I think there's definitely a connection [between music and mathematics]. Maybe I'm biased because those are the two things I know how to do, so they're the only things I know how to see connections between. They're similar in that sense of discovery, having things fit together. When I'm composing a piece, I often feel that I know what has to come next and what makes sense. Certain notes work and other notes don't work. If you can figure it all out and put it together, you end up with a beautiful piece. Mathematics is often the same way where you're on this trip of discovery. Certain things work, certain things don't. And when you're done, you have something beautiful, elegant.”