The Joint Mathematics Meetings were held in San Diego this last January (2008), and they held an art exhibit, showing off art that displayed mathematical theories or laws. Above are two things displayed.
At right here is Outside Ring by Robert Bosch, Professor of Mathematics, Robert and Eleanor Biggs Professor of Natural Science, Department of Mathematics, Oberlin College, Founder of dominoartwork.com. It is a continuous line drawing constructed from a 3000-city instance of the Traveling Salesman Problem. The line is a simple closed curve drawn with white ink. It divides the plane into two regions: in (drawn with red ink) and out (drawn with black). From afar, the piece looks like an alternating link, a knot formed from two interlaced loops, one red and one black.
Here we have Dodecahedron VI: Great Dodecahedron by Dr. Vladimir Bulatov. He says “This is my interpretation of a great dodecahedron. It is a regular polyhedron consisting of 12 regular pentagons joined along sides. All internal intersections were eliminated.”
There were hundreds of other displays, typically with more than one piece of art per artist. Most are amazingly cool like those. Some are too esoteric for my little mind to enjoy, though I appreciate the depth of though in the math.
“There’s a mathmatical equation for how bad your tie is.”
Name that movie!