Math + Art

Theo Jansen's "Strandbeest"

In the fifth grade, my teacher introduced class projects in which we played with perspectives, rulers, and protractors to draw out detailed cityscapes, and I discovered that being a terrible artist didn’t necessarily mean that I was a terrible artist. In the Math + Art section of this course, I could explore this idea in more depth. For one, I had been unaware of how closely tied art and biology were in centuries past. As Vesna related, Al Haytham around 1000 AD related perspective to the science of vision, and ended up defining the scientific method. Similarly, in his TED Talk, Theo Jansen combined physics and electricity with the artistic aspects of proportions and geometry to produce “mechanical beasts” that walk along the ocean, using electricity and wind power to move themselves.

            Perhaps most interesting, I thought, were Pollock’s fractals. These works of art are the shoreline where art and science meet, as mathematical formulas produce figures that repeat themselves in different sizes to create a geometrically and aesthetically beautiful image. Pollock took this mathematical concept and reproduced it in his paintings. His “canvases seemed to create repeating patterns at different size scales – just like fractals.”

Number 14, one of Pollock's famous paintings

            The unfavorable critical response to Pollock’s seems anachronous at first, especially considering the natural predisposition to the type of repetition found in these fractal forms. DNA strands contain repeating segments of purines and pyrimidines, muscles are composed of myofibrils that in turn consist of thick and thin filaments, and so on. Yet critics were repulsed by the concentrated fractals produced by Pollock. James Wise, an adjunct professor of environmental science, suggested that settings “with high fractal dimensions” were ones in which early humans were “most vulnerable, and thus most uneasy,” which could explain these reactions to Pollock’s work.

A visual mix of art and science - a musical rollercoaster
Overall, science and art can provide guidelines and insights to each other’s work. As technology entered the mix (e.g. computer-generated animation replacing hand-drawn images in movies), the mingling between these two disciplines increased. Many forms of art are now impossible without the science to produce them, and much of modern science would be incomprehensible without photographs, drawings, and diagrams to visualize microscopic entities. This relationship extends throughout other fields. Architecture requires aesthetics and mathematics, while musical scales have both a mathematical and artistic element to them.

Sources

Pollock, Jackson. Number 14. Digital Image. Number 14: Gray. Yale University Art Gallery, 2012. Web. 

Vesna, Victoria. "Math and Art." Lecture. 

Jansen, Theo. "Transcript of 'My Creations, a New Form of Life.'" TED, March 2007. Web. 

Jansen, Theo. "Mini Beasts." STRANDBEEST. Theo Jansen, n.d. Web. 

Virtualrepublic. "ZKO Rollercoaster // GREAT EMOTIONS." YouTube, 14 May 2009. Web. 

Two Cultures: Science and Art

In my second year at UCLA, I took my first class in Haines Hall – an English course. As the twenty-odd students began to introduce themselves, we noticed something intriguing. Unwittingly, the science majors in the class (all five of us) had clustered together, occupying one section of the room. The two cultures in the room had already segregated themselves.  

The Beast and a Book, reminiscent of the stereotype of science students in an arts course

I’m a neuroscience major, a science student who enjoys research and biology, but I also love reading. I’ve devoured pretty much everything from Rebecca to Les Miserables, although I confess to sympathizing with the scientists Snow despaired of, who attempted and abandoned Dickens as an “esoteric, tangled” writer. My life is a blend of Snow’s two cultures, and I believe that in our world, the gap between them is shrinking fast.

In my research lab, copies of A Song of Ice and Fire occupy tables alongside neuroscience and physics texts, and a poster of lab safety rules has an image of Remy from Ratatouille on it.

Remy uses his biology to excel at the art of cooking in Ratatouille

We occasionally veer off topic to argue about how research in cognition and neuroscience may impact our understanding of consciousness. Back in high school, my trigonometry teacher taught us to draw fractals, cute little circles embedded in triangles, a mixture of the perfect angles of geometry and the beauty of art. And the arts show many of the same symptoms of being inclusive of the other culture. Movies and TV shows, such as Netflix’s Daredevil, approach themes traditionally relegated to the arts, such as guilt or religion, and infuse them with scientific aspects, from plausible explanations of superhuman abilities to the physical accuracy in the choreography of its brutal action sequences.   

Charlie Cox as the titular vigilante in Netflix's Daredevil

Science as a whole interacts heavily with art, from skillfully rendered diagrams of the body and its pathways to books such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Snow praised the sciences for their democratic environment and for engendering social responsibility that transcends race or class. But I believe that in our world, science and art have begun to intermingle enough that they cannot – and should not – remain discrete, giving way instead to that third culture. Science is objective, ideally free from human bias, and the arts provide insight into who we are, both to ourselves and each other. The Internet created an amalgamation of science and art that facilitates communication between them, and can facilitate the maturation of the third culture.