Interweaving disparate insights?

Time for Provocative Mnemonic Aids to Systemic Connectivity? (Part #3)

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The conceptual challenge is who is positioned where? The holes in the device suggest that in a puzzle-solving mode, as with Rubik's Cube, the holes could be variously connected by passing one or more coloured threads between them. The prongs at the 20 vertices could be used to change the direction of threads to enable them to wind around the form in aesthetically appreciable patterns. The feasibility of their use for knitting has been variously demonstrated (Knitting with the Roman dodecahedron, YouTube, 1 July 2014; Martin Hallett, Has The Roman Dodecahedron Mystery Been Solved? YouTube, 3 June 2014). The possibility is somewhat reminiscent of the use of qhipu as the mode of communication in the Andean civilization, a pattern of knots now in process of decoding by the Harvard Khipu Database Project.

The approach can be understood as one of conceptual weaving, as can be otherwise argued (Warp and Weft of Future Governance: ninefold interweaving of incommensurable threads of discourse, 2010). As a means of evoking different stories, this then suggests a guide to tales regarding the systemic relationships between the deities and the value functions they represent. Plato is alleged to have indicated that the dodecahedron was the shape used for embroidering the constellations on the whole heaven. Necessarily involving both "heart" and "head", the 12-fold challenge would appear to be one of thematic interweaving (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways, 2010).

Curiously (as with the deities of Rome), there is little reference to the mapping of the 12 signs of the Zodiac onto the faces of a dodecahedron -- as might otherwise be expected. Arguably their functional relationship is not to be understood as a simple 3D mapping. There is however a rare image of a 12-sided dice indicating incompletely such a mapping -- possibly arbitrary. Roman culture may well have recognized any such mapping, including that of deities, to be dynamic in some way -- rather than static.

Further pointers to such a dynamic are provided by Paul Schatz (Rhythm Research and Technology: the evertible cube / polysomatic form-finding, 2013) as indicated by the following images.

Exploring a possible wave pattern relating zodiac functions on a dodecahedron
Images of Paul Schatz (Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1975, p.38) from Dieter A.W. Junker (The Zodiac Dodecahedron, flyping-games, 2004) Original image on left modified with the addition of colours corresponding to those determined below

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