Let there be light

Beauty is not foreign to mathematics. The natural order is far more interdisciplinary than academia’s hyper-compartmentalized disciplines might suggest. Take the Strauch Hypercube, hanging in the Grimes Engineering Center: elegant in its symmetry, this floating lightwork embodies what one might call “mathematical beauty.”

Rooted in mathematics

“It’s a voxel structure, it’s suspended LED strands,” said Susan Narduli, the architect and artist behind the Strauch Hypercube. “I love this idea of this very, very pure, simple form within that volume. And to me, it also has a relationship to mathematics: a Cartesian grid, engineering principles, that kind of logical form.”

Filling an architectural void

The Hypercube’s small, reflective cubes disperse from the center, like exploding pixels. The piece was built using TouchDesigner as the primary platform, a real-time, node-based programming environment that merges visual coding, data integration and procedural generation. “It allows the artwork to behave like a living system, where logic, data and light interact dynamically to form evolving visual structures,” Narduli said.

Igniting innovation

Donor Roger Strauch — who, with his brother, Hans, funded the installation in honor of their father, Karl — imagined a dynamic artwork filling the volume of the space. An engineer, Roger Strauch was looking for something resembling “a lava-like flow of light that would subtly move the building occupants to be at once inquisitive and thoughtful.”