Math & Art
In university, I took advantage of the flexibility of a Liberal Arts education and double majored in Math and Studio Art. These were both two subjects that fascinated and challenged me, and throughout my four years studying I continually sought out ways to combine the two subjects. In my second year, I pioneered a lecture series by faculty in the science departments as an executive committee member on the on-campus art museum’s student committee that examined the intersection of science and art. However, for me personally, the culmination of my Math-Art double major was in my math honours thesis, where I explored the visual representation of algebraic properties using graph theory, and my final art project, where I made my math thesis into paintings. I believe I was able to bring a new perspective to each of the subjects and this was rewarded: I won the studio art prize for most outstanding senior and achieved an honours thesis in maths.
If interested in learning more about the Maths thesis, a copy is available here. Below I share the art project, including the description I made for my final Senior Art Show and a photo of the work in progress.
“Over this past year, I have been working on a thesis in math where I have been categorizing zero-divisor graphs. This categorization of zero-divisor graphs allows one to visually represent underlying algebraic properties using graph theoretic properties. In this project, I pushed this visual representation using the different background colours of each of the canvases to correspond to different types of Artinian rings represented in the zero-divisor graphs. The black canvases correspond to fields, the dark blue canvases correspond to the direct product of fields with fields, the medium blue canvases correspond to the direct products of fields with local rings, the light blue canvases correspond to the direct product of local rings with local rings, and the white canvases correspond to local rings. I also have visually grouped together the zero-divisor graphs that represent similar forms of Artinian rings. The viewer can then follow the algorithms provided in the paper on the pedestal to determine the possible Artinian rings corresponding to each of the zero-divisor graphs.
This project was inspired by the relationship between mathematics and studio art that has been explored for years. Starting with the golden triangle, present in both Greek architecture and Renaissance paintings, mathematics was used to discover the most aesthetically pleasing composition. Contemporary artists, such as Escher and Sol Lewitt, have been using math in relation to their art. Escher explored geometric shapes and space, and Sol Lewitt explored geometric, permutations, and fractions. This project was my exploration of the correspondence between art and math.”
Examples of Zero Divisor Graphs - the inspiration for this piece of art.
