The Institute publishes books and brochures related to our lectures and other topics of interest. Model kits and sundry other supplementary materials are also produced and will soon be available for purchase on this page.

The Institute has on ongoing relationship with Cabinet magazine to publish in each quarterly issue an interview with one of our speakers. Issues of Cabinet are available through their website.
[ Cabinet ]

The second volume of the Institute’s in-house series of individually printed and hand-bound books inspired by IFF lecture topics.

For two thousand years mathematicians knew about only two kinds of geometry – the plane and the sphere. But in the early nineteenth century they became aware of another space in which lines cavorted in aberrant formations. Offending reason and common sense, this new space came to be known as the hyperbolic plane, in homage to its abundant excess of parallel lines. Though the formalities of this space were known for 200 years, it was only in 1997 that mathematician Daina Taimina finally worked out how to make a physical model of the hyperbolic plane. The method she used was crochet. Here, IFF director Margaret Wertheim presents a brief history of hyperbolic space and a field guide to its crocheted manifestations.

This book is individually hand-made at the Triage Bindery.

$20 (plus S+H)

Members receive a complementary copy.

Field Guide to the Business Card Menger Sponge

by Margaret Wertheim

The Figure that Stands Behind Figures:
Mosaics of the Mind

by Robert Kaplan

The first volume of the Institute’s in-house series of individually printed and hand-bound books inspired by IFF lecture topics.

Based on our Inaugural Lecture in April 2003, The Figure that Stands Behind Figures is a charmingly erudite essay from mathematician Robert Kaplan about the history of figuration in Western culture. From the whimsical drolleries that encrusted the margins of medieval texts to the geometry of periodic and aperiodic tiling patterns, Kaplan traces the evolution of the “figure” in Western thought and challenges readers to discover for themselves the protean algebraic figure that stands in for all others.

This book is individually hand-made at the Triage Bindery.

$20 (plus S+H)

Cabinet Magazine

The Institute For Figuring has an ongoing collaboration with Cabinet magazine, which features in each issue an interview with one of the Institute’s speakers.
[purchase from Cabinet's site]

Web archives of these articles are available on the Institute website here:
Issue 16

Issue 17

Issue 18

Issue 19

This item is the Catalog Pack of The Institute’s first exhibition, “Lithium Legs and Apocalyptic Photons: The Imaginative World of James Carter”, held at the Santa Monica Museum of Art (2002). Carter, a former abalone diver and gold-miner, has created an entire alternative theory of physics from the subatomic to the intergalactic, a radically other vision of reality based on the concept of absolute motion and a new kind of particle that Carter terms the “circlon.” The pack contains a catalog essay booklet that accompanied the exhibition, plus a selection of images illustrating Carter’s alternative theory of everything.

Price: $8

The Other Theory of Physics

by James Carter

See the entire theory in a book written and published by James Carter himself. From his subatomic theory of circlons to his radical denial of gravity, Carter is never one to tow the line. Learn about “lithium legs,” “chromium crosses,” and “apocalyptic photons” so powerful a single one might contain the energy of a galaxy. The ultimate expression of outsider science, gorgeously illustrated throughout.

Price: $25

As part of his theory of physics, James Carter has conceived an alternative explanation for the atomic elements, in which each element is composed of a set of tiny interlocking rings called “circlons.” In Carter’s conceptualization, circlons fit together like subatomic Lego and build up naturally to form a pattern that matches the Periodic Table. This item is a handsomely produced wall chart, printed by Carter himself, that outlines his atomic theory. On the back is his alternative explanation for the creation of the universe.

Price: $15