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The Golden Mean and the Fibonacci Blues
In Chapter 2 of How To Read a Film there is a discussion of the relationship between aspect ratios and the Golden Mean of classical architecture. The Golden Mean also expresses itself in the famous Fibonacci mathematical series.

In the Fibonacci series each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, . . .

The higher you go in the series the closer the relationship between any two successive numbers approaches the irrational Golden Mean.

The Fibonacci series appears everywhere in nature. Here's a program that produces music from the numbers.

Requirements
Fibonacci Blues is a standalone application that plays bluesy, abstract music based on the Fibonacci mathematical series. It flashes the numbers over a colorful portrait of the Italian math wizard while it's on.

This is a free program for personal use (credit: Otto Henry). You need Apple QuickTime, Sound Manager, and System 7 or higher. For Mac users only (sorry).

Here's the compressed download version:

self-extracting archive file (.sea)

Clicking the link creates a Fibonacci Blues folder on your desktop. Do not remove or rearrange any of the files in the program folder, or the sounds and graphics will not load.

To run the program, double-click on the FibonacciBlues.02.app in the program folder.

Okay, but who was Fibonacci?
Leonardo Pisano, known as "Fibonacci," was born in Pisa, Italy around 1170 and died there ca. 1250. He produced five of the earliest European works on math and introduced Arabic numerals.

If you want to know much, much more about Fibonacci (and math), check out this all-inclusive website.

Questions? Email us at: Jim@readfilm.com