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MT226 :: Mathematics and Art - John Sharp
MT226 :: Information about the artists
Natalie Dower
Natalie Dower trained at St Martin’s, Camberwell and the Slade. Since Natalie moved away from figurative work in the mid-1960s she has been seen as a constructivist artist employing a combination of geometry and system in her work.
Her work encompasses both painting and sculpture. She finds structure is the vital element in painting so it is not surprising that she also creates reliefs and sculptures. Her work on the square to triangle dissection puzzle by H E Dudeney has inspired her for many years.
You can see examples of her work here
Brock Craft
Brock Craft is a Research Fellow at the London Knowledge Lab. He works on technology-enhanced learning (TEL), and interactive artefacts. His areas of specialist knowledge are Physical Computing, Information Visualization, and Human-Computer Interaction.
As an artist he works with interactive art using electronics and computing. For his Brockenspiel, interactive musical instrument see the projects section of his website. He also works with computer generated art, examples which are also shown there. These complex two-dimensional images are produced using context-free grammars, which are logical mathematical constructs. They can very economically describe highly complex processes and structures, such as the one that produced this picture.
Louise Mabbs
Louise Mabbs is one of the UK’s leading textile artists and teachers. Over many years she has developed the use of mathematical colour sequences in her designs, with a particular interest in the Fibonacci sequence.
In recent years her work has gone much more into sculptural, three-dimensional forms, involving ideas from origami (see her book, The Quilter’s Guide To Twists and Tucks, 2006), and mathematical ideas of knots and links, such as the Borromean Rings and Celtic knots. Spirals also feature in her work.
Michael Field
Michael Field is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston. In 1988, he started using some of his work on symmetry and chaos to create patterns and designs. Early examples and explanations of this work appear in the book ‘Symmetry in Chaos’ (OUP, 1992, co-authored with Martin Golubitsky; an updated and revised edition appeared in 2009, published by SIAM). Michael has used his software and techniques as the basis for interdisciplinary courses for art students as well as seminars for mathematics teachers in Houston.
His software and techniques are continually evolving, with new series of art works regularly exhibited internationally. He is a regular contributor to the Bridges conference. His 2001 creation, ‘Armies of the Night’, is on permanent display at the London Knowledge Lab.
More of his work can be seen here
Tony Wills and John Sharp
Every so often you learn of a new concept that is so simple you wonder why it was not thought of before. One such case is D-Forms, where joining the edges of two flat surfaces that have the same length of perimeter creates surprising and often new three-dimensional forms. The product designer Tony Wills invented the concept of D-Forms and he has collaborated with John Sharp in exploring the concept. The picture is a D-Form of a square and a circle which Tony calls a squaricle.
Both John and Tony have presented D-Forms at Bridges. Tony has used the concept in his work, particularly in the D-Form street furniture range, which uses D-Forms as moulds into which artificial stone is cast to create elegant architectural elements. They have also been investigated for aircraft propeller shapes. John has written about D-Forms in the book D-Forms Surprising new 3-D Forms from flat curved shapes (Tarquin 2009).
