Friday, April 10, 2015

Conflicting Interests

Like I mentioned in my previous blog posting, my time spent in the Sociology major at UCLA has taught me to think of art, history, and the social sciences in terms of relativity versus concrete truths. Like our professor mentioned in the video lecture posts this week, mathematics tends to communicate with combinations, generalizations, signs, signals, and calculations, while art tends to take shape and communicate through color, emotion and senses. But how is it possible to do this? In order to paint and sculpt these into creation, we need to measure their dimensions and volumes, which are mathematical in nature.

For example, Four Dimensions, which was performed by the Orlando Philharmonic, brings together art and math by combining together the aesthetically pleasing qualities of art with the lines and dimensions of math to bring together a beautiful performance. Also, fractals by Ron Eglash are another example of how "a pattern repeats itself at different scales" and how this combines to creates the "third world" through the use of technology. 

Nathan Selikoff, on the other hand, has showed through his art pieces to express emotion through visual stimulations with computer and 3D technology. Even he admits that mathematical algorithms are out of his control, but are important to his work in order to express his work. This artist and his work help show how entangled art and math actually are and though this, I’m beginning to learn how you can’t have one without the other.



This juxtaposition of the areas of math, art, and science although very different when compared side by side are actually overlapping in the world we live in. When we look at the wood slab below, for example, we might originally think of it as art and feel a sense of a pride to be an American. But at second look, this creation results from shapes and lines sized to create this emotion we feel.




Works Cited:

"African Fractals." African Fractals. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

"Four Dimensions - Real-time Audio-visual Performance - Nathan Selikoff." Nathan Selikoff. N.p.,  2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

Frantz, Marc. 'Lesson 3: Vanishing Points And Looking At Art'. 2000. Presentation.

Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." The Third Culture. AAAS, 13 Feb. 1998. Web. 04 Apr. 2015.

"Music and Computers." Music and Computers. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.




7 comments:

  1. Hi Jessica,

    I really liked the depiction of mathematical lines and dimensions by the Orlando Philharmonic in an aesthetically beautiful performance. One thing which was even more interesting was the use of visual stimulations with computers and 3D technology by Nathan Selikoff to create art showcasing mathematical properties. Another fascinating piece of art depicting the special number Pi was done by Martin Krzywinski, who utilized Circos, a circular visualization software, to artistically illustrate the progression and transition for the first 1000 digits of Pi. (The artwork can be viewed on this website: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/pi/art/) Overall, I really liked your post!

    Cheers,
    Amanda Lim
    UID: 204189841

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  3. Hi Jess,
    I really enjoyed reading your blog this week. Being a sociology major as well I completely agree with you that it has taught us to look at these concepts more as reality rather than concrete truths. It really has allowed me to broaden my thoughts and think deeply into these differences and similarities between math, science and art. The last photo you posted representing the flag on the wood truly represents so many emotions. At first glance you would not think of all these overlapping areas of similarity between math and art although it transforms these thoughts into emotions I would not have thought of before.

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  4. Hi Jessica,

    I really enjoyed your blog. I agree that it's absolutely mind blowing how both Orlando Philarmonic's performance and Nathan Selikoff's pieces are created through intersection of art, technology, and even music! This just goes to show how math continues to influence art allowing not only for the possibility of art through multiple dimensions but also in various forms to stimulate our senses. And, art allows the public to experience the incredible capacity of math without them even knowing it.

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  5. Hi Jessica,

    I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog! Before this lecture, I didn't even consider how much of mathematics is used in art! Now that I think about it, almost all art and architecture requires at least some amount of mathematics.
    I really liked how you ended your blog talking about the assimilation of mathematics and art in the American flag. We tend to look at our national flag as a brilliant piece of art but fail to realize how without the shapes, lines and patterns, this flag would not evoke in us the feelings of pride that we currently feel.

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  6. Hi Jessica,

    I really enjoyed your post. I specifically liked how you integrated your own major with the elements and concepts that we learned in lecture this week. I am also a sociology major, therefore, could really relate to your post. Demonstrating how the Orlando Philharmonic integrates the concepts of Four Dimensions was also very intriguing to me.

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