PROJETS / STATUT ESTHETIQUE DE L'ART TECHNOLOGIQUE / PARTICIPANTS

MICHELE EMMER
Bibliographie | Intervention

Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Piazzale A. Moro, 00185 Roma, Italia
Email : emmer@mat.uniroma1.it
WEB :
http://www.galileo.webzone.it

http://www.leonet.it/culture/nexus96/emmer.html

Michele Emmer is full professor of mathematics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Dipartimento di Matematica, Piazzale A.Moro, 00185 Rome, Italy.He was previously professor at the University of Ferrara, Trento, Viterbo, L'Aquila, Sassari, Venice and visiting professor, among others, at Princeton, Paris Orasy, Campinas, Barcellona and in several Japanese Universities

He is president of the Italian associations for scientific media, part of the European association "Media in Science". Member of the editorial board of Leonardo, of the American Mathematical Society, of the American Ass. for Aesthetics, of the European Math ass., etc. Reviewer for jourlas of matheamtics and journals of art. president of the scientific journal "Galileo" (http://www.galileo.webzone.it); colaborator in the last ten years of the cultural and scientific pages of the newspaper "L'Unità" .

Filmaker, almost all his movies have been broadcasted by the State Italian television and other television; all the videos are distributed in many countries including USA and Canada, France, Spain, Italy in the various version (english, french, spanish, italian).

 

Bibliographie

A project on "Art and Mathematics" started 20 years ago at the University of Rome.
The project is still goin on; parts of the project are:

1) the making of videos and films on the topic of art and mathematics;
2) the organization of exhibitions and conferences;
3) the publications of articles and books.


1) In the last twenty years many videos and films have been made with the cooperation of artists and scientists from all over the world. The complete list of videos includes:

2) Conferences and exhibitions organized:

3) A selection of books and publications:

 

Intervention

MATHEMATICIANS: THE NEW ARTISTS?
No doubt that in the last years a revival of interest for creativity in mathematics has taken place; mainly for the possible connections with the artistic creativity. The principal motivation for this new interest is the large diffusion of computers with high graphics facilities. This very large diffusion has strongly raised intuition and creativity in that part of mathematical research connected to the possibility of visua-lizing not only known phenomena but to make visible the insivible (1).

Mathematical ideas are not subjects to fashions, they do not vary in centuries; a theorem proved by Euclid is valid today and it will be valid for centuries; it will never be over. How many other human activities have this caracteristic of universility, of immortality? Mathematics as the true art? «Of course the creative process must produce a work that has design, harmony and beauty. These qualities too are present in mathematical creations» wrote Morris Kline in his essay Mathematics in Western Culture (2).

There is no doubt that there are some peculiarities in considering the question of creativity in mathematics and in trying to compare it with the artistic one. Mathematicians state on the one hand that the real universal art is mathematics, on the other hand that they are the only ones able to understand this truth; so only the participants to the scientific community can take part in this « banquet of gods» (3). It seems that the only conclusion is that trying to analyze relationships between mathematical and artistic creativity is a loss of time.

In any case it is possible to discuss the new possibilities opened for the relationships betweent art and mathematics by the new technologies. It is possible to focus on the main directions along which to obtain results of interest for each fields. On the one hand the mathematicians have obtained in the visual investigation of scientific problems images that have arose the interest not only of the scientific community but of a large audience, artists in particular; on the other hand artists, feeling themselves excluded from the possibility of using in full the new visual tools, have asked for cooperation mathematicians and experts in computer graphics.


The great possibility opened with the use of computer graphics of seing mathematical objects of which it was not even possible to imagine the enormous graphic complexity, has opened wide spaces to artistic creativity. Mathematicians very soon became aware of this not secondary aspect of their researches. To give an idea of the growing importance of the visual aspects, to point out the possible connections between some of the most recent mathematical research and the work of artists using visual techniques influenced by mathematical ideas see the volume The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics (4) .

Impossible to imagine, untill a few years ago, a book like Symmetry in Chaos: a Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art and Nature. The authors, the mathematicians Michael Field e Martin Golubitsky, wrote in the introduction (5):

«In our mathematics research, we study how symmetry and dynamics coexist. This study has led to the pictures of symmetric chaos that we present throughout this book. Indeed, we have two purposes in writing this book: to present these pictures and to present the ideas of symmetry and chaos - as they are used by mathematicians - that are needed to understand how these pictures are formed.... One of our goals for this book is to present the pictures of symmetric chaos because we find them beautiful, but we also want to present the ideas that are needed to produce these computer generated pictures.» The authors recall the volume of Peitgen and Richter The Beauty of Fractals (6) and add: «It is worth noting that the images we present have a different character from those found in fractal art. While fractal pictures have the sense of avant garde abstract modernism or surrealism, our typically have the feel of classical design.»

Who could have imagined a few years ago that such declarations could have been found in the introduction of a volume written by two mathematicians?

We are probably facing a possible revolution in the . relationships between mathematics and art, in which the creativity of artists and mathematicians will have the possibility of a very profound cooperation; perhaps a new Renaissance? (7)

by Michele Emmer
Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Roma "La sapienza"
Piazzale A. Moro, 00185 Roma, Italia
email: emmer@mat.uniroma1.it

References:

(1) These words are said by David Brisson in: M. Emmer, Dimensions, video, series "Art and Mathematics", (Roma: FILM 7 INT., 1984). The film is dedicated to him.
(2) M. Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Harlondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1953).
(3) F. Le Lionnais, Les grands courants del la pensès mathèmatique, (Paris: A. Blanchard,1962)
(4) M. Emmer, ed., Visual Mathematics, special issue, Leonardo, 25 No. 3/4 (1992). __________, The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics, (Boston: The MIT Press, 1993).
(5) M. Field & M. Golubitsky,Symmetry in Chaos: a Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art and Nature. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
(6) O. Peitgen & H. Richter The Beauty of Fractals , (Berlin: Springer 1986).
(7) M. Emmer , Le mathèmaticien artiste, preprint presented to the Colloqium at Les Treilles.

 

 

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Document mis à jour : Thursday, January 29, 2004 09:29 AM

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