The 20-arm figure of Sadasiva can be seen several ways: as someone with 20 arms, or as someone waving their arms, or as someone showing 45 different paired-combinations of arm position. In flatland, at least, this ambiguity of space and time occurs in such multiples; usually the viewer has no problem in distinguishing time variation from spatial variation.

The pedestal design may prove interesting to those contemplating sculptural pedestals and curatorial additions to sculptures.

-- Edward Tufte, September 15, 2005

Unexpected details from a small multiple diagram

Here's an otherwise typical small-multiple how-to diagram which conveys an important bit of extra information: babies don't stay still during diaper changes.

The different line weights in the drawings on the right are work better on paper than they do on my computer screen. From Planning your Pregnancy and Birth.

-- Rob Mahurin (email), October 10, 2005

Bibliodissey has an interesting piece on various uses of multiples for comparison or time-compression. Beautiful illustrations, and nice set of links.

-- Paul Atlan (email), May 24, 2008

Stroboscopic multiple exposure photographs of synchronized platform diving offer a doubled narrative through space and time. Taken during the events of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, these photos show 7 exposures of 2 men diving the same dive at the same time. 1+1 = 3 as we can see each diver individually and also the differences between the divers's trajectories -- small differences one could not discern in a live performance. At least, I could not. These images remind me of the many-armed goddess sculpture as well as stereoscopic images.

From msnbc (flash required) "Stromotion: 10m synchro platform"

http://www.nbcolympics.com/diving/photos/galleryid=195662.html

• synchrodiving.tiff

-- Sean Garrett-Roe (email), August 12, 2008