Oval

All Music Guide:

Although Oval are perhaps more well-known for how they make their music than for the music they actually make, the German experimental electronic trio have provided an intriguing update of some elements of avant-garde composition in combination with techniques of digital sound design, resulting in some of the most original, if somewhat challenging, electronic music of the contemporary scene. Originally composed of Markus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz, and Frank Metzger, Oval gradually became the work of just Popp, with Metzger providing most of the visual and design work. The bulk of Popp's work, released through the Force Inc.-related Mille Plateaux label, incorporates elements of what could be described as "prepared compact disc": manually marred and scarified CDs played and sampled for the resultant somewhat randomly patterned rhythmic clicking. Layered together with subtle, sparse melodies and quirky electronics, the results are often as oddly musical as they are just plain odd. Popp brought this approach to bear on the first full-length Oval releases -- Wohnton, Systemische, and 94 Diskont -- as well as a number of compilation tracks. Although a rung below marginal in their home country and even more obscure in the States, Oval's remixes of Chicago post-rock group Tortoise brought them in contact with American audiences; both Systemische and 94 Diskont, as well as Markus Popp's work as Microstoria (with Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner) were reissued domestically by Thrill Jockey in 1996. One year later, the Dok LP featured Oval's collaboration with Christophe Charles. After 1999's Szenario EP, Popp and co. returned in 2000 with a two-part release, Ovalprocess and Ovalcommers. Oval then disbanded, with Popp collaborating on a project called So with Japanese vocalist Eriko Toyada, and Metzger recording on his own for Mego and other labels. Ten long years later, Popp returned with a solo Oval record, titled O.

Wikipedia:

An oval (from Latin ovum, "egg") is a closed curve in a plane which "loosely" resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition. In common English, the term is used in a broader sense; any shape which reminds one of an egg. The 3-dimensional version of an oval is called an ovoid.

Oval in geometry

The term oval when used to describe curves in geometry is not well-defined, except in the context of projective geometry. Many distinct curves are commonly called ovals or are said to have an "oval shape". Generally, to be called an oval, a plane curve should resemble the outline of an egg or an ellipse. In particular, the common traits that these curves have are:

Examples of ovals described elsewhere include:

An ovoid is the 3-dimensional surface generated by rotating an oval curve about one of its axes of symmetry. The word ovoidal refers to the characteristic of being an ovoid and is often used as a synonym for "egg shaped".

Projective geometry

In the theory of projective planes, oval is used to mean a set of + 1 points in a projective plane of order , with no three on a common line (no three points are collinear). See oval (projective plane).

An ovoid in the finite projective geometry PG(3,q), is a set of + 1 points such that no three points are collinear. At each point of an ovoid all the tangent lines to the ovoid lie in a single plane.

Egg shape

The shape of an egg is approximately half of each prolate (long) and is a roughly spherical (potentially even slightly oblate/short) ellipsoid joined at the equator, sharing a principal axis of rotational symmetry, as illustrated above. Although the term egg-shaped usually implies a lack of reflection symmetry across the equatorial plane, it may also refer to true prolate ellipsoids. It can also be used to describe the 2-dimensional figure that, revolved around its major axis, produces the 3-dimensional surface. Refer to the following equation for an approximation of a 3D egg where the letter "a" represents any positive constant:

Technical Drawing

In technical drawing, an oval is a figure constructed from two pairs of arcs, with two different radii (see image on the right). The arcs are joined at a point, in which lines tangential to both joining arcs lie on the same line, thus making the joint smooth. Any point of an oval belongs to an arc with a constant radius (shorter or longer), whereas in an ellipse the radius is continuously changing.

In common English

In common speech "oval" means a shape rather like an egg or an ellipse, which may be two-dimensional or three-dimensional. It also often refers to a figure that resembles two semicircles joined by a rectangle, like a cricket infield or oval racing track. This is more correctly, although archaically, described as oblong. Sometimes it can even refer to any rectangle with rounded corners.