Week 2: Math and Art

Asking people how closely related math and art are, one might say they are worlds apart. An analysis of early 20^th century science and literature, however, reveals a tremendous nexus between the two. In The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Linda Darlymple Henderson discusses a strange obsession that arose among artists and scientists alike in the early 1900's – the 4^th dimension. Was this a scientific phenomenon or an artistic one? As Henderson elegantly explains, it was both. Duchamp, for one, found something “deliciously subversive” about the new geometries of the 4^th spatial dimension and how it challenged long standing truths. This is a highly imaginative and social perspective on the topic. When Einstein revealed Relativity to the world people found out that ideas of the 4^th dimension could be entirely explained by mathematics.

A Tesseract: The four dimensional analog to a cube. 

But even before Einstein, mathematics was found in literature. Edwin Abbot’s (A Square’s) Flatland delved into the puzzling the world of dimensions and became very well known when Einstein caused a resurgence of interest in dimensions. In addition to being a quirky piece of social commentary, it boldly asserted that there must be more dimensions than the three in which we live, and it did this with reasoning and logic by taking us on a journey through the eyes of a two dimensional figure that discovers the third dimension.

Movies are another art form that can be found to have mathematical bases. Good Will Hunting, for one, follows the tribulations of an un-ambitions and lost genius trying to discover what role mathematics is going to play in his life, and more importantly, what role he, as a mathematician, can play in society at large.

Looking at pieces of art and how they changed over the centuries one can easily see hundreds of ways mathematics is ingrained into them (such as vanishing point geometry). One that I found especially interesting is de Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

The Vitruvian Man: A mathematical model of the "perfect" proportions of a man. 

Is this a work of art or math? Cases can be made for both, but clearly it is an exquisite example of the interplay of both fields.

The ultimate lesson I learned this week was that scientists and artists are not very different at all. In fact, they are both making an attempt to understand reality. Scientists are merely trying to reconcile mathematics with the external world they perceive and artists are trying to reconcile the laws of mathematics with an internal – a social and psychological – world they want to understand. 

What appears to be an intricate artistic design can actually be drawn in a matter of seconds by someone who knows very little about drawing. This is done with the help of mathematics and symmetry encoded into a web program, and about 15 seconds of  my time. With the aid of math, the limits of what a more talented artist can do are even more boundless than before. 

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Sources:

Abbott, Edwin Abbott. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

De Vinci, Leonardo. Vitruvian Man. 

"Gustav Mahler." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Redd, Nola Taylor. "Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified          Explanation." http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

"Silk – Interactive Generative Art." Silk – Interactive Generative Art.  Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

"Tesseract." -- from Wolfram MathWorld.  Web. 13 Apr. 2015.