Math and Art

As an engineer, one may make the assumption that I am obssessed only with math and not art. This is definitely false! This week has depicted the integration of math into art and I am relieved that this topic is being covered because I believe math is really under-appreciated by the conscious of many. From lecture, much art is the use of simple geometries that are used to create complex ones and  they all combine mathematical formulas to produce perspective. Take this mobius strip for example: the curvature of this can be defined by mathematical formulas and creates a surface that technically only has one edge and one face making it one of the puzzling yet brilliant pieces of artwork.

 

Mobius Strip: the curiosity that has only one side and one face.

Maurits Cornelis Escher was one of the artists that explored the mathematical principles of topology, polyhedrons, tesselations, and logic space in order to create works of art that are regarded heavily by mathematicians. Below is one of his pieces of artwork that creates two different perspectives of the same area with a use of a central point.

Up and Down; lithograph 1947

As you can see his use of the vanishing central point to expand views not only creates perspective but creates the artistic illusion of the floor being the ceiling of the same building.

There are even more cool integrations of math that occur in artwork. The use of fractals shows extremely similar processes to that of a PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controller used in engineering design. Both of these essentially create iterations, or repeated processes, that later result in a final product: for the fractals there is repetition of shapes to create a desired pattern, for PID controllers there is repetition of input to continuously adjust output.

Iterative Process of Recursion for Fractals

PID Controller for processes

For a better understanding of what a PID controller does, you can watch this video above.

A modern use of science and art is Nathan Selikoff's sound clock in which the sounds create visual vibrations on a virtually projected clock. This is very inventive because it takes an everyday piece of machinery and creates it into an artform that integrates the science of sound waves.

For me, it is quite clear that there resides a plethora of similarities between art and science through the use of mathematics. HOWEVER, it is clear that we have forgotten the history of how art has developed and create this realm that art is not scientific or mathematical when it clearly is! We need to bring awareness of these similarities and restore creativity in the arts and sciences.

References

Uconlineprogram. "Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov." YouTube. YouTube, 09 Apr. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Roy, Peter V. "African Fractals." African Fractals. National Science Foundation. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Smith, Sidney B. "The Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher." The Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher. Platonic Realms, 13 Mar. 2014. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Douglas, Brian. "PID Control - A Brief Introduction." YouTube. YouTube, 13 Dec. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Selikoff, Nathan. "Nathan Selikoff | Fine Artist Playing with Interactivity, Math, Code." Nathan Selikoff. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.