Archive
Wind Art
This sculpture by Charles Sowers functions simultaneously as a stimulating piece of art, a representation of data, and an illustration of vector fields.
Windswept is a giant billboard covered in little aluminum arrows that twist and turn in the wind. The arrows can be thought of as bits of data, namely, the direction of the wind that point. Taken together, and dynamically, they give a sense of the complicated nature of swirling and changing winds.
Just like this wonderful wind map, this sculpture represents mathematical ideas in a beautiful and thought-provoking way!
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Mathematical Snow Art
This is unbelievable: artist Simon Beck creates large-scale works of art by walking intricate paths in the snow. Check out the photos at his Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/snowart8848
Creating these works obviously requires great detail in planning and often days to execute. I don’t know how mathematical Simon Beck is, but his art is clearly mathematical in nature.
This really puts my snow art to shame. I’ll definitely aim higher next time!
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MfA Workshop with George Hart
As part of its mission, Math for America creates and supports interesting and diverse math learning opportunities for both teachers and students. A recent workshop led by George Hart, Chief Content Director of the forthcoming Museum of Mathematics, did just that, inviting a group of math-enthusiasts on an adventure through the worlds of geometry, engineering, and sculpture.
Inspired by Escher’s Planaria, Professor Hart designed and manufactured a linkage-system that can be used to build a face-centered cubic lattice. After assembling the pieces, the participants in the workshop were encouraged to build away!
It’s probably only natural that we became consumed with building something tall. And as we did, conversations arose about the role of symmetry in nature, as stability and strength in our structure seemed to demand it.
A fun, engaging, and mind-opening exploration of geometry, and much more! You can see more photos from this workshop on my facebook page and Professor Hart’s website.
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3D Street Art
The painter Edgar Mueller uses dilation and perspective tricks to create absolutely mind-blowing three-dimensional pavement art.
The website is a little clumsy, but there are some really cool projects here, including The Crevasse, The Waterfall, and Lava Burst. There are also several videos showing how the artist puts these perplexing pavement paintings together.
For an interesting application of this idea, check this out: a 3D pavement painting of a child playing in the middle of the street! The idea was to get the attention of speeding drivers. I bet it did just that!
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Math Encounters: Craig Kaplan on Math and Art
Craig Kaplan’s Math Encounters talk, “Revolution and Evolution in Math and Design,” was a whirlwind tour of the design space that lies at the intersection of computer science, mathematics, technology, and art. Kaplan, a professor of computer science at Waterloo university, is an innovative software engineer, an accomplished artist, and a passionate and engaging speaker. His talk wove together the mathematical and cultural history of Islamic art, tilings of the plane, non-Euclidean geometries, and the mathematics of aesthetics.
The Math Encounters series, sponsored by the Museum of Mathematics, strives to bring mathematics to the public through dynamic speakers, meaningful topics, and engaging interactivity. In that spirit, after the talk Kaplan and George Hart led a fun, collaborative workshop where the audience teamed up to create a work of art themselves!
Using some tape, some scissors, and some clever mathematics, each group turned their table into a “tile” using the techniques Kaplan covered in his talk.
And as each group finished their “tiles”, we started putting them all together!
It was a fun and fitting end to an inspiring and mind-opening evening! You can learn more about Craig Kaplan and his work at his webpage.
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Weavings and Tilings
At the Bridges Math and Art Conference in Portugal I learned quite a bit about mathematics and weaving. One of the many simple and fun ideas I left with was using weaving to explore tilings of the plane.
With some graph paper to plan your tiling, some pre-cut construction paper to assemble them, and some patience to work through the process, you can produce some nice results. Here are some examples from a recent Math for America workshop I led on Math and Art. More images can be seen on my Facebook page.
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Math Photo: Anamorphic Art
At the Bridges Math and Art Conference, I was exposed to a wealth of fascinating mathematical and artistic ideas, like these anamorphic images by Jan W. Marcus.
The challenge for the artist is to produce an image on a flat surface that will appear rectangular when viewed on the surface of the cylinder. My mind swirls with thoughts of vector projections and polar coordinates when I view these images.
Not to be outdone, Francesco De Comite created a three-dimensional curved sculpture that projects to a polyhedron on the surface of a sphere!
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Mr Honner 