ART ILLUMINATE MATH SERIES

Yet his works reveal an extraordinary sensitivity to mathematical structures, shapes that are universal and not bound by cultural reference. The US artist was a secret mathematician by virtue of his lack of balance and penchant for alcohol, using what mathematicians call a ‘chaotic pendulum’ when staggering around to create his drip paintings.Īnish Kapoor originally wanted to be an engineer but gave up after finding the maths too challenging. I find a hyper-dimensional solid in one of Salvador Dalí’s most famous works, Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), and discover how Jackson Pollock was unconsciously tapping into geometric structures called fractals – shapes that mathematicians only discovered in the 20th Century. In my programme on visual art, I investigate how Renaissance artists helped mathematicians of the period rediscover shapes first found by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes – their descriptions had been lost over time, but they were uncovered through developments in drawing. The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges strove to find an explanation for the shape our finite universe by writing The Library of Babel and Zaha Hadid’s parametricism movement is helping to seed our urban environment with forms that are both mathematical and natural at heart. Philip Glass is fascinated by the power of number to create rhythms that draw the listener into his meditative world, rhythms that nature beats to.

Through their work I look at the range of mathematical ideas they have been drawn to, sometimes consciously but often quite unconsciously.

ART ILLUMINATE MATH SERIES

In my radio series The Secret Mathematicians, I have explored the artistic practices of a whole range of composers, writers, architects and artists. Poets, playwrights and novelists have all played around with exciting forms and patterns and frameworks that have mathematical shapes to them. But the shapes and forms that now populate the skyline are as informed by the aesthetic of mathematics as by its power to ensure the building doesn’t fall down.įor me, one of the most exciting revelations has been that even the art of the written word has mathematics hidden inside it. Architecture has a very necessary connection with mathematics, which is what guarantees the building will make it from the drawing board to the city landscape. The visual arts have an obvious connection to mathematics given that every time you paint a line on a canvas or carve a surface from a sculpture, geometry is emerging.

While the abstract quality of music might make it a natural partner with mathematics, the other arts also provide fascinating examples of mathematical ideas bubbling away underneath the artist’s output. This prime number life cycle is believed to be connected with its ability to keep the species out of synch with a predator that also appears periodically in the forest. At the end of the six weeks they all die and we have to wait another 17 years before the next generation emerges. There is a species of cicada that lives in the forests in North America that has a very curious life cycle: the cicadas hide underground doing nothing for 17 years and then, in the 17th year, the insects emerge into the forest for a six-week party. The intriguing thing for me is that the musician and the mathematician’s attraction to primes to keep things out of synch can already be found in the natural world. The effect of the choices of prime numbers 17 and 29 are that the rhythmic and chords sequences won’t repeat themselves until 17 times 29 notes through the piece, by which time the movement has finished. So as the 17-note rhythm starts for the second time, the chords are just coming up to about two-thirds of the way through its sequence.

If you look at the piano part, you'll find a 17-note rhythmic sequence repeated over and over – but the chord sequence that is played on top of this rhythm consists of 29 chords. In the opening movement, Messiaen uses the indivisible numbers 17 and 29 to create a sense of never-ending time. In this piece, Messiaen creates an extraordinary sense of tension by employing one of the most important sequences of numbers on the mathematical books: the primes. Take the 20th-Century composer Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

Art illuminate math