Week 1: Math + Art

       This topic makes me think of how the seemingly unrelated arts: patterns, paintings, music, etc., are linked to math in beautiful ways. As we always hear people say, art comes from life and goes beyond it. Art is used to depict and illustrate people’s receptions and imaginations of nature and life. Meanwhile, the purpose of math on earth is just to explain the myths of nature. In this sense, math and art stemmed from the same origin.

       In math, it is always intriguing to talk about dimensionality. The more dimensionality, the more difficult it is to understand the underlying logic of math. Yet before we noticed, these ideas are beautifully transformed into arts. The origami artist Robert J. Lang plays a between the two and three dimensions, bring the flat surface to pieces of lively art projects. Only by understanding the dimensions so well as an expert could he made his works from uncut papers, which is indeed impressive.

One uncut square of duo Origamido paper

       In contrast to making three dimensions out of two dimensions, the art form of painting sometimes tries to put the three dimensional world on the two dimensional surface. Every starter in drawing is constantly reminded to “not violate the laws of physics,” such as the nearer objects appear to be larger, and the law of perspective, etc. In the article “Vanishing Points and Looking at Art,” Marc Frantz showed how these simple rules are sophisticatedly explained by math, which is quite fun to know about. Another interesting fact I want to mention is about the famous painter Pablo Picasso. He is famous for his “unreadable” style, that objects look distorted in his paintings. And some people said that it was because that Picasso could actually saw the fourth dimension—time. Although sounding impossible, but I actually find such guess plausible. 

The Weeping Woman - Pablo Picasso

       Another resource from this week, the hyperbolic crochet discovered by Daina Taimina, reminded  me of a Ted talk I saw before, in which the Figurer Margaret Wertheim talked about the art project she started—crocheting a coral reef and how this project was integrated with math and other fields of science. She refers to science as the “think tank” and what she was proposing as the “play tank,” which is a way to incorporate arts into science. Just like what we talked about before, the “play tank” is also a beautiful expression of the “third culture.”

TED Talk: The beautiful math of coral - Margaret Wertheim

Bibliography

Lang, Robert J. Perching Cardinal, Opus 689. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.

     <http://www.langorigami.com/artwork/perching-cardinal-opus-689>.

Frantz, Marc. "Vanishing Points and Looking at Art." N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Web. 

     <http://www.cs.ucf.edu/courses/cap6938-02/refs/VanishingPoints.pdf>.

Picasso, Pablo. The Weeping Woman. Digital image. Top 10 Most Famous Pablo Picasso Paintings

     and Artwork. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://listovative.com/top-10-most-famous-pablo-picasso-paintings-

     and-artwork/>.

"Daina Taimina." Crochet Coral Reef. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 July 2016.

     <http://crochetcoralreef.org/contributors/daina_taimina.php>.

TEDEducation. "The Beautiful Math of Coral - Margaret Wertheim." YouTube. YouTube, 24 Nov.

     2012. Web. 03 July 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxS8VtMi9E>.

Week 1: Two Cultures

       In this week's readings, Victoria Vesna and C.P. Snow both talked about the intertwining relationship between arts and science. In “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” C.P. Snow challenged the conflicting conventional definitions that people gave to science and literacy by examining the social changes brought by the industrial and scientific revolution, concluding that these two subjects cannot be clearly divided. Victoria Vesna elaborated on C.P. Snow’s statement in “Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between” and introduced a “third culture,” which is the artists using science to articulate their works. Indeed, as time goes by, this kind of art works are present in our world more and more often.

woodcut art integrating image of mobius strip

       To me, this kind of concept of the reciprocity of arts and science has always been familiar, especially in schools. Growing up in China, the education system requires students to learn both arts and science courses until high school. And then, when I was trying to decide whether to go into science or art field in high school, I realized that some academic subjects are hard to be sorted arbitrarily as arts or science subjects. For example, chemistry is science, but it requires large amount of memorization like literary. And geography, classified as arts, actually uses a lot of scientific methods in collecting and analyzing data, and requires a scientific mind in interpreting them.

the concept of "time zones" in geography

       This weeks readings lead me to think more deeply about the relation of these two essential elements in our life and what people can achieve in light of the “third culture.” I was delighted to have the opportunity to visit the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena last year. The exhibition of students’ designs of prototype concept cars in the hallway really appealed to me. The artistry in the design and the highly modernize functions were perfectly balanced. Although they were just concepts, I do believe the “third culture” will bring them into real life one day.

concept car design by ArtCenter student

Bibliography

Snow, C. P. "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution". New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961. 

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward A Third Culture: Being In Between". Leonardo, JSTOR. Web. 2 April 2016.

Escher, Maurits Cornelis. Möbius Strip II. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/recognition-

     success/mobius-strip-ii/>.

Standard Time Zones Map of the World. Digital image. Time Zone Calculator. N.p., n.d. Web.

     <http://www.calculator.net/time-zone-calculator.html>.

Bhandal, Gurminder. McLaren Supercar. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 

     <http://www.artcenter.edu/gallery/detail/56aaa1af4d9b6faa4d1fb4aa/2296?ret=%2Facademics%2Fstudent-gallery%2Findex.html%3F>.