A visualisation of a complex mathematical theory or the new marque for a German mobile phone network?

At last the truth can be told. All those weird 3D swirly logos that you see everywhere right now? Creative Review has traced them back to a shadowy research facility buried deep in the heart of Europe...

The Department of Mathematics at the University of Innsbruck innocently dubs its top secret work an investigation into "Explicit Resolution and Related Methods in Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory", but we know better.

Supposedly this little feller is a visual expression of the following equation: (x2+y2)3 = 4x2y2(z2+1)

but surely it is just an early working model of this...

... Wolff Olins' new logo for Wacom... with maybe a hint of (x2+y2)3 = 4x2y2(z2+1)

These so-called scientists want us to believe that "the goal of the project is to develop theories and algorithms for solving problems related to the resolution of singularities in algebraic geometry and number theory" using POV-Ray software to hatch out their oh-so innocent images.

Rubbish. The goal is to systematically fill the world with downright bizarre 3D web 2.0 logoids (new word). Surely this, masquerading as x2+y2z+z3=0, is, in fact the new mark for a go-ahead Spanish financial services provider?

While expect to see this attached to a Belgian telecoms brand any time soon

yz(x2+y-z) = 0? Surely it's the central pillar in the brand architecture of a leading Norwegian internet service provider?

And did a certain phone company calculate that x2yz +xy2+y3+y3z might equal "Swisscom-munication"?

How about this for a drugs company?

Behold the guilty ones - they may not look evil but...

See more "equations" here

Thanks to Rodolph Pilaert for the link