Mathematics and the Arts

Young Arts Week 2011

2011-01-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

Young Arts is a program of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. It identifies emerging 17 and 18 year old artists and assists them at critical junctures in their educational and professional development, and raises the appreciation and support for the arts.

Last week a group of us BTW teachers had a chance to attend the Young Arts Conference in Miami Florida.
My journey began Tuesday morning when I left Dallas at 21 freezing degrees, and landed in Miami at 82 degrees gorgeous. I had no idea that time was going to slip by so fast. Most of my impression of the city was based on the shuttle trips. Palm trees are everywhere and the taxi drivers are as good as New York drivers.

That evening we had dinner with our student group. Emily McDaniel was a finalist in dance choreography. Mason Manning, Jenna Mitchell, Sami Noell, Taylor Rodman and Emily performed at the Guzman Theater the next night. Emily's dance was a true reflection of her sensitive and observant nature. Her composition was artistic, expressionist and non-linear. the performance moved the audience. At times the theater was dead silent and then a gasp as one of the dancers would make a lip to another perfectly timed and controlled. They looked as if they were Greek Gods who had charmed us into a trance.
Watch the video below: http://youngarts.org/blog/watch-live-12th

Tuesday night, was the theater finalists performance. To be honest, I thought many of our seniors could have been just as good and even much better. I think there is an x factor to this competition that is not obvious.

Wednesday before the dance show we visited the New World School of the Arts.
I love meeting other educators. It seems we are all made of the same stuff. I felt I was talking to kinder souls. It seems that they have all the same issues as we do. They have some solutions and we have other solutions. One of our major differences is their open campus for lunch. Their students are allowed to go to any 1 mile radius distance public eatery. It has worked out well for them.
When we first walked into their building, the art all over the wall was abundant. There was student work everywhere. The building was old and often with some trash in the hallways- it reminded me of the way BTW was in ten years ago. But nevertheless the atmosphere was all about creativity and art. Their auditions are based solely on talent. They only accept 9th and 10th graders. their strongest academic team is in the 9th grade. Their philosophy is that the lower class man should work harder academically and the upper should work harder artistically.
Their policies on cell phones, dress code, and AP's are similar to ours.
They have less technology advances than we do at BTW. We have tons more Apple labs and technology courses. So i was surprised to find out that often they are finalists in the Cinema Arts category. I had a chance to speak to the Technology instructor and he said he mentors those students who compete in Cinema Arts after school. So, I'm really excited to get some of our wonderful Film Club students to enter and WIN!

Oh! I Think this is the Kardashian sisters Condo

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

2010-10-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover

2010-10-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

LInks/ Creativity Class

2010-08-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

http://pecha-kucha.org/

http://sptnk.org/about.html

http://gregorysholette.com/

http://www.theatlasgroup.org/

http://www.communityarts.net/

http://www.20x20magazine.com/

https://www.adbusters.org/

http://www.untitledprojects.com

http://repohistory.org/who.html

http://www.theatlasgroup.org/

http://walksquawk.org/

http://www.theiwt.com/IWThome.htm

http://massmoca.org/

http://culturepush.org/

http://www.petersarkisian.com/indexflash.html

2010-03-08T16:56:00.001-08:00

No More boring Data!

2009-09-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

DATA DESIGN by Alex Henry (click here for entire blog)
I've recently learned that data is not only used to create statistics, but people actually turn it into art. Artists: Jer Thorp, James Paterson, and Mario Klingemann have combined data and design.

BC Budget Visualization Tool from blprnt on Vimeo.

CYMATICS by Calli Young

Cymatics is the process of visualizing sound. As frequency in sound increases patterens become more detailed and more complex. Cymatics sounds intresting, that sound can create pictures. In this video they show a cymatic picture of Beethoven's 9th. They also showed a cymatic snow flake compared with one from nature. Evan Grant believes that sound could have helped form the universe. This was so intresting the fact there is stuff that we can not see, but it still puts out data.

Gaps between Leonardo and the 21st century

2009-08-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

By Irina Marchenko:
What other art movements, design schools, aesthetical styles should we cite to bridge the gap between Leonardo and the 21st century? How old is Cubism? Did it start with the work of Cézanne? Did it unfold its analytical potential in Picasso’s paintings? Does it essentially mean a combination of geometrical basics with color? Do monochrome drawings from the Baroque period belong here? Timewarps into the art history are worth performing as they reveal amazing evidence of artists’ fascination with mathematical concepts, to wit:

Giovanni Battista Bracelli, the 17th century Italian engraver
see reference in 16th and 18th Century Digital Materials from the Lessing J Rosenwald Collection (Rosenwald 1345), the Library of Congress:

Luca Cambiaso. A Group of Cubist Figures, 1560.

Notably, this Cubist drawing was chosen to illustrate the post (in Spanish) that seeks to find appropriate places for happiness and suffering in human life.

The art history shows how mathematical concepts came to rescue art from crises.

By Irina Marchenko

2009-08-07T21:04:00.001-07:00

219m219 said...

On Squares
Your opening statement perplexed me, somewhat. From my perspective of a person, reduced to art appreciation, not creation, the judgmental dichotomy “use – abuse” does not apply to artist's choice. I propose “employ and exploit” as a way to establish semantic equilibrium. (As an aside, the blame for overusing, misusing, and abusing judges should fall - these days - on the Senate.) Yet, accusations of abuse against artists by general public, art critics, and fellow artists abounded through history. Such was the case of
Kazimir Malevich, the founder of the Suprematism, who expressed his aesthetic principle in his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. Black Square, 1915, and Suprematist Composition: White on White. 1918, are his emblematic works.

Utilizing abstract geometric forms, he purified art of the residue of things, thus establishing its superiority over objects. If meditation is a space between two thoughts, Malevich's contrived reductionism seeks higher meaning.
The tradition of non-objective art continued in the works by Josef Albers whose “oeuvre reflects an adherence to the deceptively simple principle of visual economy. His paintings commence as objective, mathematically precise constructions, involving straight lines and angles, that form the foundation for his principle concern, the subjective relationship of color and form. His art proves that there is a “world between physical fact and psychic effect.” (“Homage to the Square: Nocturne, 1951.” The James A. Michnener Collection. UT-Austin, 1977. 5.) See The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation site for further information:

Math, Art, and Origami at MIT / Article in http://www.popsci.com

2009-07-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

A father-and-son team study the science -- and art -- of folding

By Emily Stone Posted 04.27.2009
In the computer science lab where they work at MIT, Erik and Martin Demaine have a three-foot-tall metal and plastic sculpture that resembles a sleek, modernist version of a child's Tinkertoy creation.

Erik, a math prodigy who was honored in Popular Science's second annual Brilliant 10, and his father Martin, an artist who was drawn into math through his son, built the piece by starting with a three-dimensional hexagon they folded from paper. They then inputted the shape into a computer and virtually erased all of the paper, so that only the creases remained. Next, they turned back to the tangible and created a dynamic piece of art, using aluminum rods, locked together at the joints with plastic spheres, to represent each crease.

"We took something real and virtualized it, and then made it real again," explains Martin, 66, an MIT instructor and artist in residence.

They also took art, turned it into math and then back into art again. This belief that math and art are complementary endeavors is the key to the Demaines' work. The men use complex mathematics to create beautiful art, some of which is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And they construct sculptures to help solve seemingly intractable math problems. Along the way, the lively and often goofy duo have inspired students to think more creatively about their discipline, and have shown the public that math doesn't have to feel inaccessible.

"We view them as very similar things," says Erik, a 28-year-old assistant professor, referring to math and art. "They're both creative processes. They're both about having the right idea."

Source:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-04/math-art-and-origami-mit

Modern Art and Mathematics

2009-07-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

Many artists find, use and or abuse mathematics in their escapades. The results are always curious and intriguing.
Most people are familiar with the mathematics of the Renaissance artists, such as the use of the Golden Ratio. For example, Leonardo da Vinci used a complex formula based on the relationship 12:6:4:3. These ratios are also very present in music. 3:4 is the interval of one fourth, and 4:6 is a fifth etc. He thought making use of this ratio would “offer praise to the harmonies of the universe".

Naum Gabo Linear Construction No. 2 1970-71 Plastic and nylon filament (Sa) object 1149 x 835 x 835 mm

Modern Art is also prolific in the use the mathematics.Two very different artistic movements, the surrealists and the constructivists, discovered mathematical models at approximately the same time. Constructivist Naum Gabo began to draw direct inspiration from the forms of mathematical models in the early 1930’s. Surrealist photographer and painter Man Ray did a series of photographs in 1936 of mathematical models housed at the Poincaré Institute in Paris.

Henry Moore Stringed Figure, 1937
cherry wood and string on oak base

Henry Moore (1893-1986) used string in many of his sculptures for a short period of time, and this was influenced by stringed models that he had seen at the Science Museum in London. As Moore himself says: Undoubtedly the source of my stringed figures was the Science Museum...I was fascinated by the mathematical models I saw there, which had been made to illustrate the difference of the form that is halfway between a square and a circle. One model had a square at one end with twenty holes along each side, making eighty holes in all. Through these holes strings were threaded and lead to a circle with the same number of holes at the other end. A plane interposed through the middle shows the form that is halfway between a square and a circle. One end could be twisted to produce forms that would be terribly difficult to draw on a flat surface. It wasn't the scientific study of these models but the ability to look through the strings as with a bird cage and see one form within the other which excited me. [Moore, p. 105]

Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) is also known for the use of string in her sculpture, and upon viewing some of her pieces, one is reminded of certain mathematical models. Hepworth was an abstract sculptor, and had some involvement with the Constructivist movement, particularly from the mid 1930's to the mid 1940's, when Naum Gabo was living nearby. The effect of mathematical models on Hepworth is less clear than it was on Henry Moore. It is clear, however, that Hepworth knew about mathematical models.

Barabara Hepworth also had a close and productive relationship with J.D. Bernal, a crystallographer who was interested in the relationship between art and science. Apparently, Hepworth enjoyed visits from Bernal, during which he would discuss with her the mathematics and geometry in her works [Barlow]. Hepworth had an interest in "higher geometry" and she probably viewed the models at the school in Oxford herself, but the exact influence of the models in unclear.