Long before the advent of Photoshop filters like “Gaussian Blur” (a form of Fourier Transform shown above), Kurt was fascinated by such transformations, and curious about the underlying archetypal information contained within them. His interests in the visual world merged with his interests in the mathematical world, and with his colleague Clifford Barney, in 1976 he conceived of an experiment to potentially identify archetypal truth.
In their proposal, they write, “Fourier analysis of the optical transforms will be of importance in showing the deep mathematical structure manifested in cultural forms. Thus may the temporal be related to the universal.”
Following the explication of the experiment, an addendum discussing fifth-degree equations, Laws of Form, Pascal’s Triangle, and Fritz Perls’ five “layers” of personality was included.
