Fractal Cube Originally Made in SL Now on Sale in RL

Looking for a mixed reality art object as a holiday gift this Cyber Monday? (I know, who isn't?) How about a Hilbert Curve cube, originally created in Second Life by mathematician Henry "Seifert Surface" Segerman, which Henry is now selling on Shapeways, the 3D printing company.

A Hilbert curve is a continuous fractal space-filling curve (hope you know that means, because I actually don't), which Seifert made in SL from 16 sculpty prims, creating the textures with various Python programs, then sent it floating in metaverse space. Now you can buy the physical version for under $25. Added feature: It's made of twisty material, so you can also use it as a hair tie. (I'm sure David Hilbert, who looks quite the 19th century hipster, would approve.)

In his SL heyday, by the way, Henry Segerman created the legendary crooked tesseract house in SL, which I first wrote about in 2006 here, and thanks to a generous donor, still exists in-world: Click here to visit.

Comments

[Nahasa Singh]

I wish Seifert could make a RL bath Menger sponge.. I'd buy one.

[Seifert Surface]

I should mention that the cube isn't strong enough to hold hair in place by itself, it's more of a decorative item.

[Nyoko Salome]

ooo oooo ooooooooo.... ;0 tickles my eyes and brain at the same time. love it!! :))

[Hitomi Tiponi]

Love fractals - that will make a nice Christmas present.

[Hiro Pendragon]

Would it be so difficult to call it "physical world" instead of "real life" or "RL"?

By contrasting "SL" with "RL" we create a false impression that virtual worlds are not part of the "real world".

[Kimberly Rufer-Bach]

Henry, so glad to see your mathy goodness is still available to make geometry more accessible to non-math-brained people like me. :)

Hiro, "physical world" is a lot longer to type or say than "RL". Concern about this terminology seems to be unnecessary when mainstream folks already know all about paying to plant virtual crops on their phones. Heck, I even gave up wailing, "It's not a game," when the Serious Games crowd legitimized the terminology. I can't remember the last time I had difficulty explaining SL to someone. Times have changed and there are new and more important battles to fight, in my opinion.