I attended the conference ``Knotting Mathematics and Art: A Conference in Low Dimensional Topology and Mathematical Art", University of South Florida, Tampa, Nov. 1-4, 2007. I gave a short talk about my mathematically inspired sculptures, and had my ``Hypocycloid Trefoil Knot" included in the exhibition ``Rhythm of Structure: Beyond the Mathematics", curated by John Sims. On this and linked pages I show pictures of the exhibition pieces, and some pictures I took at the conference.
Before the conference started, a group of USF Math Club students and a few professors from the conference, led by Prof. George Hart, constructed a 120-cell in the Museum of Science and Industry using over 3600 Zometool pieces. This wonderful geometrical construction is a projection to 3-space of a mathematical object in 8 dimensional space related to the root system of type E8. Here are pictures of the construction process. There are more pictures from the construction process on Prof. Hart's website. The team included myself and Prof. John H. Conway.
Natasha Janoska, one of the organizers of the conference, introduced John H. Conway (Princeton), who gave the Nagle Lecture ``From Topology to Symmetry". Ivar Peterson (Mathematical Association of America), gave the first plenary talk ``A Journal into Mathematical Art". I got him to pose in front of his first slide holding a bronze figure eight knot which I made and brought for my talk.
John Conway also gave a second talk on three dimensional lattices and associated symmetries.
Bathsheba Grossman did not attend the conference, but did contribute one sculpture to the exhibition. Charles O. Perry attended and contributed three bronze sculptures shown below.
Tony Robbin attended the conference, gave a talk ``Painting and higher dimensional projective space", co-presented a plenary talk with J. Scott Carter (University of Southern Alabama) ``Collaboration across the two cultures", and contributed two paintings to the exhibition.
Brent Collins contributed two wood sculptures to the exhibition, and along with his collaborator, Carlo Sequin (Berkeley), contributed to a plenary talk ``Analysis and synthesis of intuitively conceived geometrical art" given mostly by Carlo.
Carlo showed how he used a specially developed computer program to design sculptures based on minimal surfaces which can now be manufactured by a layering process. Examples of such models are shown below, along with a picture of people posing after the talk. Brent Collins is on the far left, and Carlo Sequin is third from the left.
Nat Friedman (SUNY, Albany) and Helaman Ferguson did not attend the conference, but contributed sculptures to the exhibition.
In the Oliver Gallery at USF I took the following pictures of installations on the walls, including curator, John Sims. John also contributed some of his own art to the exhibition, which can be seen on the conference website. I am not sure of the artists, since I did not take notes as I was taking the pictures, but I may be able to find out and add their names here later (especially if they write to me to complain).
In the Museum of Science and Industry, where the 120-cell construction was exhibited, a hallway of framed two-dimensional art was exhibited, including work of Radmila Sazdanovic.
Also in the Museum of Science and Industry we enjoyed a reception, a talk by John Sims, a musical performance of a jazz piece based on the digits of pi, and saw a quilt based on the digits of pi.
To see more types of sculpture I have tried, follow the following links:
Links back to:
Webpage of Alex Feingold,
Department of Mathematical Sciences,
Binghamton University.