New Flophouse Address:

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https://francoamericanflophouse.wordpress.com/

Monday, February 11, 2013

The Crab Canon on a Mobius Strip

Oh this is so cool that I just had to share.

Bach's Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip by Jos Leys.  Here is Open Culture's explanation of what you're seeing:
You can follow the score, note for note, and then watch as the piece reverses itself, running back across the staff in the other direction. So far, so easy, but another layer appears: Bach wrote the piece to then be played simultaneously backwards as well as forwards. But prepare yourself for the mind-blowing coup de grâce when Leys shows us at a stroke just what the impossible shape of the Möbius strip has to do with the form of this “crab canon,” meaning a canon made of two complementary, reversed musical lines. Hofstadter had a great deal of fun with that term in Gödel, Escher, Bach, but then, he has one of those brains — you’ll notice many Bach enthusiasts do — that explodes with connections, transpositions, and permutations, even in its unaltered state. Alternatively, if you consider yourself a consciousness-bending psychonaut, feel free get into your preferred frame of mind, watch Bach’s crab canon visualized, and call me in the morning.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Opfer means victim in German

Anonymous said...

Nice way to start the day. Thanks.