Oppenheimer, Sculpture, and Code

J. Robert Oppenheimer (Wikipedia)

You probably saw the movie. What is a connection between Oppenheimer, Sculpture, and Code? One answer is casting. Cillian Murphy was cast to play Oppenheimer, bronze sculptures are cast from an alloy of copper and tin, and there are casting functions in most computer programming languages.

I was given a photograph by Koshi Dhingra of TalkSTEM to opine upon the computer science in this picture:

From a TalkSTEM photograph of a sculpture, Boy and Girl Reading on a Tree Branch, in Austin. Art information.

A good first step is to provide some thoughts on this picture from different disciplines, including computer science:

• Art: the creative practice of the artist using metallurgy as a tool. The practice of sculpting extends two-dimensional sketching and painting to form and shape. Making vs. drawing.
• Anthropology: the history of human-made activity in metallurgy, most notably from the bronze age.
• Art History: a world-wide history of bronze sculpting and sculptors. The lost wax method for bronze sculpture is very old and popular (Alicia Ponzio and SculptureWorks).
• Chemistry: the history and processes of creating alloys from elements from the periodic table (e.g., copper, tin, zinc).
• Metallurgy: the science and practice of metal-working.
• Mathematics: in geometry, the mesh that defines the exterior surface of the sculpture, or the observation that the tree, boy, and girl are all mathematical trees at a more abstract level.
• Computer Science: the objects in the picture and how they are interconnected in a logical information-based structure.

There are plenty of other connections but the above is a starting point. Returning to casting, the meaning of “cast” is seen in different areas. Casting of metal into a mold, which is contrasted against wrought iron shaping, is the same as an actor who is molded into a character, as Murphy was molded into Oppenheimer. This type of molding involves the actor dong an in-depth study of the original person and historical period.

Casting in a programming language like Python is the same phenomenon, but applied to digital objects in the form of variables as in the following:

This is a picture, alas. To “Try it Yourself,“ click on the link above the image.

In the first line of code, the number 1 is converted (casted) into 1.0, which is of type “float,” short for floating point (in mathematics, a real number). Casting is similar in acting, art, and computer science. In programming, the concept of casting also takes place in classes for object-oriented programming and in C++ templates.

In cooking, a cookie cutter serves the same role. The cutter is a pattern, much like the mold when iron or bronze is poured.

The deliciousness of molds and casting for flour.

The idea behind this essay is to encourage multiple ways of seeing and thinking about things we see. Could this help in solving the New York Times Connections puzzles? Maybe.

If you are concerned that you are like a tree, try this on for size if you have a portable computing device or computer with a camera.

Pose estimation using posenet.