Roots of the current wave go back to the end of the 20th century, but artists today call on a wider spectrum of mathematical muses and use more modern tools.
Now interest in math art appears to be blooming, shown by an uptick in exhibitions and even academic journals. Many of them exchange ideas every year at the international Bridges conference on math and the arts or meet at the biennial Gathering 4 Gardner, named for Martin Gardner, who wrote the celebrated Mathematical Games column in this magazine for 25 years. They weave, and they sketch, and they build. They ask questions using the language of numbers and group theory and find answers in metal, plastic, wood and computer screen. Some mathematicians and artists see a false choice between math and art.
Visually, these transformations can appear as intensely beautiful symmetries, such as the radial patterns of snowflakes. Mathematicians who study group theory, for example, analyze rules governing rotations or reflections. A proof or equation can have an elegant, aesthetic effect. There will never be a finite number of primes, for instance, and the digits of pi will go on forever.*īeneath that certainty, however, lies a sublime attractiveness. The discipline is driven by rules and principles that are eternal and stoic. We often regard mathematics with a cold reverence.
