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the life and work of dirk watkins

Pi Art by an Autistic Savant

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My friend just forwarded me a piece of artwork that was produced by an autistic savant.

[Danial Tammet can] calculate huge sums in his head in seconds and instantaneously recognise prime numbers, but he finds emotions difficult to understand and has trouble telling left from right. One of fewer than fifty such people living worldwide, Daniel is unique in his ability to articulate his savant experience.

He describes his visual experience of numbers as complex synaesthetic shapes with colour, texture and motion. Thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while eighty-nine reminds him of falling snow. Sequences of digits form visual landscapes in his mind.

In March 2004, Daniel set a European record when he recited the famous mathematical constant Pi from memory to 22,514 decimal places in a time of 5 hours.

Here’s his Original Artwork of a Pi Landscape. It’s only £250 (About $495.95 US).

Author: Dirk Watkins

Dirk Watkins was born in Door County. He studied computer science and art at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Dirk now works as a web developer in Milwaukee programming mostly in C#, Javascript, T-SQL and the occasional regular expression. For design he likes to utilize as much standard CSS (positioning and styles) as possible. In his spare time Dirk brews beer, plays guitar, reads, listens to NPR, works on his house, and sleeps on quiet beaches.

2 Comments

  1. If you can find the interview with him that was on public radio its worth a listen. The way he describes numbers makes you want to cry.

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