GeomeTreks: A Mathematical Art Odyssey

Year: 2001 Authors: Ivars Peterson

Core claim

Mathematical art is broader and more diverse than commonly assumed, and city streets offer rich opportunities to notice it.

Topics

mathematical art, public sculpture, urban observation, visual mathematics

Domains

Fibonacci numbers, pi, tetrahedra, Möbius strips, sculpture, public art, illustrated presentation, visual art

Methods

city walking, visual observation, art survey, illustrated talk

Media

public sculptures, artworks, slides, street scenes

Paper text

The text below is the locally extracted OCR/Markdown version of the paper. Raw PDF files remain local and are not published here.

BRIDGES Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science

GeomeTreks: A Mathematical Art Odyssey

Ivars Peterson Mathematics Writer & Online Editor Science News 1719 N Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20036, U.S.A. E-mail: ip@sciserv.org

From Fibonacci numbers and the digits of pi to tetrahedra and Möbius strips, mathematics has inspired a wide variety of artists. Many people are familiar with the work of M. C. Escher and aware of the intertwining of math and art during the Renaissance, but the realm of mathematical art is far wider and more diverse than most realize.

Walking the streets of a city can provide wonderfully illuminating glimpses of mathematical art if the “seeing” is done with a keen eye for mathematics. This illustrated presentation highlights public sculptures and other artworks with mathematical themes in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Toronto; Ottawa; Cambridge, Mass.; New Orleans; and other locales.