Mathematicians: The New Artists?
Author(s): Michele Emmer
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1999), p. 220
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576797
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widespread application. Artists working
in cyberspace, and more specificallywith bio-telematic systems andtechnoetic structures, can be agents ofhuman evolution. The full flowering ofa truly interactive art, widely diffusedand deeply enjoined, may bring about asociety fit for the new millennium.
References and Notes
1. The term "technoetic" refers to the technology
of consciousness, according to Roy Ascott, "A Glossary"in the "Essays"section of the on-line installation "Techno Seduction," produced by the Cooper
Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
and accessible at <http://www.cooper.edu/art/techno/essays/gloss.html>.
2. "Hypercortex" is defined as "the global networkof collective cognition," according to Ascott [1].
3. According to David V. Tansley, "All esoteric tradition agrees that man consists of a variety of bodies that are distinct from his physical form." Inthat tradition, with appropriate preparation andprotocols, the "subtle body" links mind to mind
and spirit to cosmos. See David V. Tansley, SubtleBody(London: Thames and Hudson, 1977) p. 6.
4. "Cyberception"is defined as "the emergent human faculty of technologically augmented cognition and perception," according to Ascott [1].
5. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Politics:Theory
Against Fate, Zhiyuan Cui, ed. (London: Verso,1997) p. 415.
6. Unger [5] p. 13.

THE NEW
MATHEMATICIANS:ARTISTS?
Michele Emmer, Dipartimento diMatematica, Universita di Roma "La
Sapienza," Piazzale A. Moro, 00185
Rome, Italy. E-mail:<emmer@mat.uniromal.it>.

The last few years have seen a revival ofinterest in the possible connections between mathematics and artistic creativity. The principal motivation for thisnew interest is the large diffusion ofcomputers with strong graphical capabilities. This diffusion has heightened
the roles of intuition and creativity inthe aspects of mathematical research
connected to the possibility not only ofvisualizing previously known phenomena but making visible the invisible [1].
Mathematical ideas are not subject tofashion, nor do they vary through thecenturies; a theorem proved by Euclid isvalid today and will be valid forever.
How many other human activities canclaim these characteristics of universality
and immortality? Is mathematics thetrue art? In his essay "Mathematics inWestern Culture," Morris Kline wrote:
Of course the creative process must produce a work that has design, harmony

220

Colloquium Presentations

and beauty. These qualities too arepresent in mathematical creations [2].

Clearly,some peculiarities emerge inconsidering the question of creativityinmathematics and in trying to compare it
to artistic creativity.On the one hand,mathematicians claim theirs as the real
universal art; on the other, they claim tobe the only ones able to understand thistruth-so only the participants in thescientific community can take part inthis "banquet of gods" [3]. The only apparent conclusion is that trying to analyze relationships between mathematicaland artistic creativityis a waste of time.
In any case, we may discuss the possibilities opened by new technologies forthe relationship between art and mathematics. The key is to focus on themain directions along which we may
obtain results of interest for each field.
In the visual investigation of scientificproblems, mathematicians have obtained images that have provoked theinterest not only of the scientific community but of a wider audience-artists
in particular. These artists, feeling excluded from being able to fully utilize
the new visual tools, have asked for cooperation from mathematicians and experts in computer graphics.
The use of computer graphics has
made it possible to actually see
unimaginably complex, graphic mathematical objects, opening wide spaces toartistic creativity.Mathematicians verysoon became aware of this extremely
important aspect of their research [4].
Until a few years ago, it would havebeen impossible to imagine a book likein Chaos:A Searchfor Patternin
Symmetry
Mathematics,Art and Nature.Its authors,
the mathematicians Michael Field andMartin Golubitsky,wrote in the introduction:
In our mathematics research, we study
how symmetry and dynamics coexist.
This study has led to the pictures ofsymmetric chaos that we present
throughout this book. Indeed, we
have two purposes in writing thisbook: to present these pictures and topresent the ideas of symmetry andchaos-as they are used by mathematicians-that are needed to understandhow these pictures are formed....
One of our goals for this book is topresent the pictures of symmetricchaos because we find them beautiful,
but we also want to present the ideasthat are needed to produce these computer generated pictures [5].
recallHeinz-Otto
The authors
Peitgen and Peter Richter's book, The
Beauty of Fractals [6], adding:

It is worth noting that the images we
present have a different characterfrom those found in fractal art. While
fractal pictures have the sense ofavant-garde abstract modernism orsurrealism, ours typically have the feelof classical design [7].
Who could have imagined a few
years ago that such declarations could
have been found in the introductionof a volume written by two mathematicians?
We face a revolution in the relationship between mathematics and art that
may engender a very profound creative
cooperation between the two-perhaps
a new Renaissance? [8]Referencesand Notes

1. This was the view of David Brisson, as stated inMichele Emmer, Dimensionsvideo in the series Artand Mathematics(Rome: FILM 7 INT., 1984). The
film is dedicated to Brisson.
2. Morris Kline, Mathematicsin WesternCulture(Harlondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1953) pp. 521-522.
3. Francois Le Lionnais, Lesgrandscourantsdel la(Paris:A. Blanchard, 1962) p. 5.
pensesmathematique
4. For an idea of both the growing importance ofvisual aspects in mathematics and the possible
connections between some of the most recent
mathematical research and the work of artists
who use mathematically influenced visual techniques, see Michele Emmer, ed., The Visual Mind:Art and Mathematics(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1993) or the Visual Mathematicsspecial isstueof
Leonardo25, Nos. 3/4 (1992).
5. Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky, Symmetryin Chaos:A Searchfor Patternin Mathematics,Art andNature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) p. vii.
6. Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter, The
Beautyof Fractals:Imagesof ComplexDynamicalSystems(Berlin: Springer, 1986).
7. Field and Golubitsky [5] p. viii.
8. Michele Emmer, "Le mathematicien artiste," inM. Fr6miot, R. Malina andJ. Mandelbrojt, eds., Le
Status esthetiquede I'arttechnologique,special issue ofAlliageNos. 33/34 (1998) pp. 39-50.

SAMEPERIOD,SAMEPROBLEMS?
Marcel Fr6miot, 2, rue Lieutaud, 13100
Aix-en-Provence, France. E-mail:<mfremiot@lac.gulliver.fr>.
Technological art, whether traditional(painting, sculpture, music, literature)or more contemporary (multimedia,network or interactive media), is charthe
acterized by the juxtaposition-or
several artistic discisuperposition-ofplines. These disciplines have undoubtedly developed in various waysthroughout the courses of their histories; although some of them may havebeen interrelated in the same aesthetic
current, they have not necessarily been