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.

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.

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!

Jackson Pollack and Fluid Dynamics

This is an interesting article about Harvard mathematician L. Mahadevan, who studied the physics of how the artist Jackson Pollock created his work.

http://www.scimag.com/news-DA-Jackson-Pollock-Artist-and-Physicist-070511.aspx

The author contends that Pollock was essentially experimenting with, and learning, fluid dynamics as he developed his artistic technique.

The drips, drops, and coils seen in Pollack’s work are the result of careful attention to the properties of the various liquids used, and the height and angle of application.

According to the article, Pollock was experimenting with “coiling fluids” quite some time before the first scientific papers appeared on the subject!

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