[HN Gopher] A Mathematician in a School of Art
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       A Mathematician in a School of Art
        
       Author : nkoren
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2024-11-12 22:40 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.mathvalues.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.mathvalues.org)
        
       | tivert wrote:
       | I'm reminded of this cringe shirt that shows up in the ads I see
       | quite a bit: https://www.geeksoutfit.com/products/the-great-
       | fibonacci-wav....
       | 
       | The ads usually feature several shirts. The above one, and 5
       | others that advertise the wearer is an asshole (e.g.
       | https://www.geeksoutfit.com/products/my-level-of-sarcasm-is-...).
        
         | EstanislaoStan wrote:
         | Why do you subject yourself to ads?
        
           | setopt wrote:
           | If you're on a mobile device, adblockers are often crippled
           | so a lot manages to slip through.
        
             | mkl wrote:
             | uBlock Origin on Firefox Android is not crippled. I
             | essentially never see ads.
        
         | bigstrat2003 wrote:
         | That shirt isn't cringe, it's really cool. I don't know why you
         | feel the need to go out of your way to hate on it.
        
       | jhncls wrote:
       | A fellow mathematical sculptor is Carlo Sequin [0]. Also Jos
       | Leys' mathematical imagination is an explorative wonderland [1].
       | 
       | [0]: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/ [1]:
       | https://www.josleys.com
        
       | Jun8 wrote:
       | "There were several motivations behind the spiral. The first was
       | an interest in the spiral patterns of both Celtic and Islamic
       | art, and a desire to create a similar effect with as few rules as
       | possible"
       | 
       | Quasi-periodic Islamic wall tilings are a whole interesting black
       | hole, e.g. see this paper
       | https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1135491
       | 
       | This really resonates with me. Unfortunately "the two cultures"
       | polarizes people into viewing artists as airheads doing random
       | artifacts or mathematicians as weirdos working on mostly useless
       | stuff - the "I'm bad at math" confession to bond with people is
       | common.
       | 
       | How can we encourage more people to study both art & math? Or
       | Humanities and Science in general, e.g. English and Biology?
       | 
       | I've always fantasized about having $10M discretionary money
       | (haven't done the math, really, just a random figure) and opening
       | a "Arts and Sciences Academy", which would be a high school where
       | Arts trivium (music, literature, sculpture) would be studied on
       | equal footing and intertwined with Sciences trivium (math,
       | physics, biology) - I know an eclectic mix.
       | 
       | I don't know why the very rich not pursue setting up schools like
       | this?
        
         | dartos wrote:
         | FWIW the prevalent "I'm bad at math" vibe has a lot to do with
         | how math is taught vs like English or science
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | A work cant be justified as art solely by the technique
         | employed in its creation, otherwise it would just be a craft
         | representing the technical skill of the creator.
        
         | noelwelsh wrote:
         | Craig Kaplan has also done a lot of really nice work on Islamic
         | tilings: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/publications/
        
         | Affric wrote:
         | 100%
         | 
         | Imagine if your maths class was getting you to draw curves and
         | make art from tilings with a view to making art as opposed to
         | the same 6 recycled examples about how fast a car is going or
         | how to tile a floor.
         | 
         | Mathematics funnelling students into engineering has to be one
         | of the biggest trapping in local maxima strategies in all of
         | education.
        
       | smokel wrote:
       | People sometimes combine two fields of study to create something
       | novel and intriguing. However, such combinations often fall
       | short, failing to satisfy the standards of either field.
       | 
       | Unfortunately, the typical art audience rarely appreciates the
       | elegance of mathematical theorems, especially when they deal with
       | something as complex as, say, the Riemann hypothesis. Similarly,
       | scientists often struggle to understand the appeal of performance
       | art, where an artist might, for instance, stare at an apple for
       | an hour.
       | 
       | It is one thing that there is not enough audience for a niche
       | thing, but the lack of criticism is even worse in my opinion.
       | 
       | I'm probably being a bit too harsh here, and I'm probably just
       | jealous, but it's something that keeps frustrating me. "Circuit-
       | bending" [1] was a particular annoying crossover of art and
       | electronics that still makes me shudder. Using the golden ratio
       | for no good reason is also up there.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_bending
        
         | enugu wrote:
         | A formal program with funding, faculty and grad students would
         | greatly help to make something which is not superficial.
         | (Although I don't know of how much making art is a university
         | subject, art criticism seems to be more in vogue).
         | 
         | Currently, undergrads take double majors (Witten was a history
         | grad!). But, this doesn't tend to happen at the graduate level.
         | The obstacles can be getting funding(siloed into departments),
         | and courses being demanding enough already for one subject.
         | 
         | Faculty sometimes do hold a side appointment in other
         | departments. But, the main incentive emerging from the academic
         | job system is to get specialized expertise and publish in high
         | reputation journals.
        
         | cwmoore wrote:
         | As one of my contributions to "failing to satisfy the standards
         | of either field" (math, astrophysics, or fine art), I wonder
         | whether you would love or hate https://www.ouruboroi.com
        
           | adamgordonbell wrote:
           | Or this, the uroboros quine. Which I think is for sure art.
           | 
           | https://github.com/mame/quine-relay
        
           | rendaw wrote:
           | I like generative art! And that seems interesting! But it
           | seems totally broken on my computer - it flashes with random
           | frames at 6k jump days for a few seconds then stops. The stop
           | button does nothing, there's no way to restart it, the cursor
           | can't be modified, etc.
           | 
           | I assume it'd be a smoother animation at a smaller number of
           | jump days, I'd like to see that.
           | 
           | Edit: I finally got it working by changing the parameters,
           | going to the order page, then clicking on the qr link. I did
           | it with 1 jump day. But it still flashes like crazy (colors
           | inverting ever frame) and there's massive moire patterns,
           | among the low resolution and other graphical glitches. I
           | think the idea is cool so I'd like to see something more
           | fleshed out. Is this something you could do on e.g.
           | shadertoy?
        
         | theamk wrote:
         | Circuit bending is pretty neat from electronics designer
         | perspective: given the current electronics design state-of-the-
         | art (MCU all the things), how do you design the circuit which
         | responses to the random poking in a most interesting way,
         | without being damaged?
         | 
         | It really forces one to bring back that obscure subset of
         | analog-era skills... "This oscillator is almost never used
         | because of bad Vcc-related frequency drift and distorts output
         | in presence of even slight parasitics? Great, let's put it into
         | the design!"
         | 
         | (Note that making entire circuit out of DFN parts with 3 mil
         | traces, and then leaving large prominent test points is
         | considered cheating :) )
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | Doing art through your intellect is like breathing through a
       | pinhole.
        
       | downboots wrote:
       | Someone suggested sharing this gallery into this thread
       | https://mathemalchemy.org/2022/01/19/mathematical-connection...
        
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