Monday, March 12, 2007

Mathematics and art


Two days ago, I met a bright young friend (I found him through one of those Web 2.0 sites) who has a variety of interests: software engineering (his current day job), computer science, mathematics, visual art and literature. He said he's looking for ways of combining two or more of his interests, and we started talking about M.C. Escher's paintings, Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach and H.S.M. Coxeter(the man who saved geometry) . I thought it would be fun to collect some links on my blog.

This morning, I see Swarup pointing us to this video on the fascinating art of hyperbolic knitting. Swarup has also linked to this article on the mathematics behind this art.

6 Comments:

  1. Blue said...

    Oh, I love Hofstadter. Le Ton Beau De Marot would be one of the books I would take with me on a desert island, even though I think a mathematics/linguistics/poetry text would be of very little use on a desert island and would only make me unhappy for the languages I could no longer learn...

  2. Anonymous said...

    Did you forget to mention the name of your new young friend? Is it Anand Bora?

  3. Abi said...

    Blue: I agree with you about Hofstadter. I haven't read le ton beau de marot, but I have read (most of) Godel, Escher, Bach. It was a long time ago, and if time permits, I would like to go back to it sometime.

    Subrahmanya: Yes, it *is* Anand Bora. With his permission, I have added a link to his page with some of his art.

  4. Wavefunction said...

    I am sure you must have heard about the fantastic Penrose tiling-like architecture found recently in Uzbekistan by a Harvard student. This showed that Islamic mathematicians were 500 years ahead of their time, and also got the student a paper in Science. It's truly fascinating. If you haven't heard about it, here are some links:

    1. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2006_02_17/profile_peter_lu

    2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6389157.stm

  5. gaddeswarup said...

    Abi,
    There is a lot of stuff if you google under 'mathematics in art' or a similar title. Here is a link with lots of references:
    http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/math-art-arch.shtml

  6. anandi said...

    I thank all the people for giving such good links...
    I will go through them in my spare time and apply them..
    Thanks once again!!