Week 2 - Mathematics and Art

This week’s topic is the influence of mathematics in art. I don’t personally have much experience with art concepts because I, as Professor Vesna alludes to in her lecture, have been trained to focus only on math and science as opposed to art and other creative topics. In spite of my general lack of artistic knowledge, I was able to connect to some of the topics mentioned in the lecture and found it very interesting that math and art are so interconnected. I remember doing a short project in grade school on the Golden Ratio, which we find in this week’s material is found very often in nature, as shown in the first image below:

https://lucas2012infos.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/the-golden-ratio-fingerprint-of-god-19-august-2012/

The idea that mathematical concepts are mirrored in nature is not a particularly surprising to me, but it does turn out quite beautiful – my favorite piece from this week was the explanation of the Mandelbrot fractal and how natural shapes can be derived from this mathematic concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ivRQDbAduoM

It is rather obvious that math and art have come together in recent years due to the prevalence of computers and the migration of a large portion of artistic creations to the digital medium. However, the connection to nature is what I found most interesting about this week’s topic. After hearing it through the class, it seems like a straightforward connection to make, from math to nature to visual appeal. That said, I never really stopped to think about that connection, and certainly didn’t have exposure to the examples in the course resources section for this week. I was also intrigued by the music and computing link, because digital music is a form of artistic expression that I hear nearly all of my waking hours, but unfortunately I have not yet had time to read through the whole site and have put a bookmark in that for now.

Sources

"The Golden Ratio – Fingerprint Of “God” – 19 August 2012." Lucas 2012 Infos. N.p., 19 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

DlimitR. "Fractals - Mandelbrot." YouTube. YouTube, 17 June 2006. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Burk, Phil, Larry Polansky, Douglas Repetto, Mary Roberts, and Dan Rockmore. "Music and Computers." Music and Computers. Columbia University, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Abbott, Edwin Abbott. "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions." Flatland. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

"Mandelbrot Set." Wolfram MathWorld. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

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