Week 2 - Math + Art - Blake Kirshner


 Mathematics is intertwined with everything we do in our daily lives. Wether you know it or not from the moment you wake up you do math in your head based on what time it is, how far you have to walk to use the restroom, to how long it is going to take you to prepare for your first activity of the day. I always knew that art and math really were on in the same whenever I tried drawing pictures like an experienced artist. When it comes to drawing three dimensional pictures, shapes, or learning perspective there is a lot of math involved. Brunelleschi discovered linear perspective by controlling the perspective of the observer through mathematics. He made the objects in the picture to scale with the vanishing point making the picture have depth. 

It was interesting learning that drawing perspective is a mathematical theorem alongside geometry. The vanishing point is where the "infinite straight line L" becomes parallel with the views eyesight and the line vanishes out of their sight. I would have never thought that drawing pictures with depth was a strict mathematical formula such as this. Also, I learned that a photo can have multiple vanishing points based on the size of the objects and the perspective of the viewer. 

The math part of drawing pictures has been discovered and thanks to the internet can be accessed and learned from anywhere in the world. However not everyone can combine this knowledge with creativity and dedication. Discovering "beautiful chaos" which is a software that is interactive that allows people to create line patterns, electrical current looking, modern art formed images with diverse coloration was very encouraging. I am not an artist, but if I was one I would take advantage of the technologies that this world has to offer and create my own art using machines like these. 


Perspective / Vanishing point: http://www.cs.ucf.edu/courses/cap6938-02/refs/VanishingPoints.pdf

Beautiful Chaos: https://nathanselikoff.com/works/beautiful-chaos

Math and Creativity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW_LkYiuTKE

- Blake Kirshner 





Comments

jennifer_gudinosanchez_desma9 said…
Hi Blake! You gave great insight as to how math is used in our everyday lives. I honestly didn't even notice how much I use math until you started listing things like measuring distances as you walk and calculating how the time between events. Because these habits are super integrated into my life, never did I realize that I was using math. This same idea I had when it came to art. When I was younger I absolutely loved drawing, but I didn't realize that the methods I was using such as one-point perspective, vanishing point, and linear perspective (as you mentioned) originated from math scientists and discoveries made possible by geometry and optics. It's amazing to see how these two disciplines that have been so divided be used to further each other's work whether that be creating an interactive software powered by mathematical formulas (as you shared) or drawing proportional landscapes. That software, "Beautiful Mess" sounds really cool. I'll definitely check it out. Thank you for sharing that, Blake!
April 8, 2022 at 6:04 PM
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