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About

Mysterium Cosmographicum is an exploration of beautiful but incorrect scientific ideas. Specifically the Mysterium Cosmographicum of Johannes Kepler which explained the orbits of the planets in the solar system in terms of the five platonic solids. One can imagine spheres that inscribe and circumscribe the five regular polyhedra. If the polyhedra are then nested inside one another such that the sphere circumscribing one inscribes the other and so forth (in a particular order), then the ratios relating the diameters of the spheres approximate those relating the diameters of the orbits of the first six planets of the solar system. It’s an intoxicating idea but it ultimately lacked explanatory power. Here, I represent Kepler’s dream of universal unity as a union of light and sound. One signal drives both the diaphragm of the loudspeaker and the electron gun of the oscilloscope.

Exhibits