[microsound] Piano Paradox

[macdara at email.com]

"Who needs to think when your feet just go!"

Genius of Love 
Tom Tom Club

Perhaps this a parallel paradox.






-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Davis <technohead3d at googlemail.com>
To: microsound at microsound.org
Sent: Tue, Feb 16, 2010 11:24 am
Subject: [microsound] Piano Paradox


Written with the help of my brother Philip Davis, an astrophysicist, I wanted to share this with you all here at .microsound. Constructive feedback would be highly appreciated:
 
Imagine a piano. The length of one string of this piano, in whatever unit or order of magnitude, is equal to the sum total of all the numbers that comprise the aleph-0 set. Similarly, the next string is, in whatever measurement, equal in length to the sum total of the figures that make the aleph-1 set. The string after that, aleph-2, and so on. When the piano is played, will the strings sound different pitches, if at all? How could the tension of the strings be kept if the ends could not be reached? Will there even be other ends for the keys, hammers and other mechanisms to situate? If the piano has an infinite amount of keys with an infinite amount of respective strings, are a highest starting note, aleph-0, even possible? Could the rhythms of the recursions and infinite pro/regressions highlighted by these questions be interpreted and played to on this piano!? 

~ 

Bonus paradox: 

If you limit yourself by being obsessed with a subject, a field, an interest no matter how interdisciplinary, does this still apply if that interest is infinity? 

Infinite obsessions; an obsession with infinity. The infinities within the coins, the mushrooms, the windmills...the pylons. 
 
---------------
 
Best wishes,
Adam
 
 

 
 

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