Gordon Monro - Maths and Art conference

Mathematics and Art conference

Here are some brief comments on this conference, from the point of view of music and mathematics.

This conference was held at Bond University, Queensland, 10-12 December 2000.

My paper at the conference

I found the conference reasonably interesting. The papers were very mixed: some great and some were pretty boring. I think part of the problem was that no-one knew what the audience would be like: it was difficult to know what to assume. In the event it turned out to be mostly (though not entirely) people with a solid mathematics background.

There were only four papers on music (out of nearly 20 in total):

"The design of novel bells", Neil McLachlan and Anton Hasell
"Teaching statistical dependence using music", Michael Bulmer
"Mathematics and its development through music", Aroon Parshotam and John Haynes
"Some experiences with algorithms in musical composition", Gordon Monro

The other papers were on perspective, patterns and other topics related to the visual arts.

For me, the big excitement was the paper on bells. Neil McLachlan obviously has a very solid maths/physics background as well as musical knowledge, and Anton Hasell is a sculptor who works with metal-casting techniques. By using finite element analysis, they can control the frequencies of overtones of their bells in ways which have apparently been essentially impossible until now. They are involved in a Centenary of Federation project in Melbourne which will use their bells in an installation.

Neil is involved with the developing sound program at RMIT, which sounds as though it could be very exciting.

Michael Bulmer's paper was on MIDI notes generated according to random laws of various kinds. Michael had a classy presentation using Mathematica to generate stuff in real-time.

The paper by Aroon Parshotam and John Haynes was something of a disappointment. It listed historical connections from Pythagoras on, and much of the rest of it could be summarised as: mathematics has a creative aspect, therefore mathematics has something in common with the creative arts. I rather naughtily suggested that much of the paper would still hold if the word "music" was replaced by "gardening" (I was especially thinking of designing and laying out gardens).

Of the other papers, I would mention:

"Hyperseeing, hypersculptures, knots and minimal surfaces" by Nat Friedman. Nat is a mathematician and sculptor from the USA who has made striking sculptures based on (mathematical) knots.
"Mathematics, perspective and art", by Sasha Grishin. Sasha (in Art History at the ANU) talked about what the Renaissance artists actually did (and they were working before the mathematical theory of projective geometry was developed). He pointed out ways in which the artists broke the mathematical rules for specific artistic or psychological effects.
The lecture by Jin Akiyama (Japan). Jin has a mathematics program on Japanese TV, and in collaboration with a visual artist has developed some amazing mathematical models. These are solid objects dissected into pieces, which can then be re-assembled "inside out": all the surfaces that were originally on the outside are now hidden in the interior, and vice versa. Sometimes the "inside-out" object is the same size and shape as the original, sometimes it is something else. (Of course, it has to have the same volume.)
"Visualising mathematics as a cultural imperative" by Peter Smith. Peter Smith is a statistician at RMIT, and also a painter whose works hang in various well-known galleries. His paintings currently tend to be lush sunsets and the like, scribbled over with mathematical formulas and diagrams explaining some aspect of what we are seeing (such as data relating to air pollution). So the painting is scientifically accurate. Several of Peter's paintings were on exhibition during the conference.