Maths and art
Intersections between mathematics and artistic expressions: music, painting, architecture, design
Two magnificent reissues: Fenouillard, Camember, Cosinus
Two recent—and entirely different—initiatives deserve attention.
Spiral Jetty: Great Salt Lake's mathematical spiral
In 1970, American land-art pioneer Robert Smithson used bulldozers to create an enormous spiral of volcanic rock northeast of the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, in the western United States
Tangente's 30th anniversary program | Tangente Magazine
Here is the programme (which will be updated regularly) for Tangente's 30th anniversary celebrations at the Musée des arts et métiers on Sunday, December 3, 2017. Admission is free for everyone!
Tangente Day programme: 2 December | Tangente
Here is the programme (which will be updated regularly) for Tangente Day at the Musée des Arts et Métiers on Sunday, 2 December 2018. Admission is free for everyone. Save the date!
Charlie Chaplin's polynomial
Representing the motion of an object, such as a ball, in a film is now within everyone's reach thanks to new technology! Here is an example based on a famous scene from the silver screen, with the help of a graphing calculator...
No doubt about it | Tangente Magazine
We were used to highly faceted origami figures with clearly visible folds. Now a group of Austrian researchers has given these forms much smoother contours.
Malevitch: Geometry at the heart of Suprematism
A hundred years ago, the artist Kasimir Severinovitch Malevitch (1878–1935) was appointed commissioner for the preservation of buildings and the arts
Special effects
Computer-generated imagery (sometimes called "3D") makes it possible to create fictional worlds on a computer, whether ultra-realistic or cartoon-like, according to the wishes of graphic designers, filmmakers and artists… But how do you create a world? With mathematics!
Fractals in film: from geometry to special effects
Fractal geometry was central to the earliest computer-generated imagery on the big screen. The study of self-similar forms found in nature gave rise to the first computer-generated images… and thus spawned an entire entertainment industry!
Georges Méliès: special effects, anamorphosis and maths
Georges Méliès is often described as the creator of cinematic spectacle, while the Lumière brothers are the inventors of the cinematograph. In fact, Méliès was passionate about technology. He found solutions to problems that can readily be expressed in mathematical terms.
Three camera forerunners: from Marey to the Cinematograph
The pioneers of cinematography used objects that were sometimes unusual, which you can still admire at the Musée des arts et métiers (60 rue Réaumur, 75003 Paris).
Mathematics in fiction films
The world of mathematics is sometimes represented on screen, with varying degrees of success. Films offer a jumble of simple plot devices, biopics, realistic or imagined depictions of the mathematical world, and even the scientific fiction theorized by Denis Guedj.
Mathematical calligrams | Tangente Magazine
A calligram is a poem arranged on the page to form an image, usually related to its subject. Here we present several quotations about mathematics in the form of calligrams.
Poets talk to us about math… and vice versa
Mathematics and poetry are two ways of making sense of the world. Worlds apart? Not quite.
Literature and mathematics: Perec joins the Pléiade
Perec in the Pléiade, Nabokov in Big Data, and mathematics in a "digest"
Goldberg Variations and Exercices de style: maths and music
Bach delighted in weaving combinatorial and geometric structures into his compositions. His famous Goldberg Variations are a masterpiece of the genre. Vincent Rouquès, a Paris-based choirmaster, drew on this richness by pairing them with Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style...
The luthiers' secret code decrypted | Tangente
The luthiers of the Parisian house Gand & Bernardel, a famous dynasty of violin makers from 1795 to the Second World War, had a code that let them work on their slips with complete discretion.
Espace de l'art concret: maths and geometry | Tangente
In Mouans-Sartoux, in the Alpes-Maritimes, a strange apple-green cubic building catches the traveller's eye. Dedicated to concrete art, it gives pride of place to geometric abstraction. In particular, works by François Morellet and Josef Albers can be found there.
Correspondence analysis
How can social data be examined without falling prey to preconceived ideas or stereotypes? Correspondence analysis, though now losing ground to other techniques, is a method that makes it possible to replace common sense and preconceptions with neutral, objective factors.
Penrose designer: aperiodic tilings & quasicrystals | Tangente
Roger Penrose's non-periodic tilings are inspiring designers too!