Poetic, bizarre, decadent, and pretty darn cool, the first thousand letters of π (Pi) were drawn in the sky over San Francisco this week. Everyone has spent time deciphering objects out of clouds, but it’s a rare day when you get a literal lesson in math while gazing up at the wild blue yonder.
As part of the ZERO1 Biennial—a months long festival celebrating the coming together of art and technology—an artist known only as Ishky used several planes to skywrite the first 1,000 digits of Pi over the city, in a piece cleverly (and obviously) titled Pi in the Sky.
The stunt used five planes flying in formation equipped with synchronized dot-matrix-like smoke printers to slowly spell out the sequence. Each digit measured almost a half-mile in height, so anyone on the ground could easily distinguish the numbers, even though the planes were flying at almost 10,000 feet. A sixth craft was used to film the stunt from the air, but the wider view from the ground made the piece seem far mor grandiose.
And just in case you wanted confirmation of those first thousand numbers, here they are:
1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923 0781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460 9550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954 9303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485 6692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817 4881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384 1469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185 4807446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912983367336244 0656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702770539217176293176 7523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277857713427577896091 7363717872146844090122495343014654958537105079227968925892354201 9956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960518707211349999998 3729780499510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533 4468503526193118817101000313783875288658753320838142061717766914 7303598253490428755468731159562863882353787593751957781857780532 171226806613001927876611195909216420198
