art, really? What is it good for? Do we really need it?

I've been giving a public talk about Art and Mathematics for a few years now as part of my University's outreach program. Audience members are usually well-educated but may not have much knowledge of math. I've been concentrating on explaining Richard Taylor's analysis of Jackson Pollock's work u...

This is a similar question as the art question about music here. I am trying to understand how to formulate different styles of cubism mathematically. Ok, we surely will not end up to one definitions so let me break it to some styles: block minimization style where you try to get the same messa...

There are certain buildings and places on this planet where mathematicians can find delight because of the history, the art, the architecture, and for other reasons. For example, the Alhambra with it's heavy use of geometric patterns. Or, perhaps, going to the leaning tower of Pisa and playing ...

My teacher Kirsi of Mat-1.3000 in Aalto University stated 17 symmetry classes for planes and 14 for spherical things (some lecture slides here). She used Conway Thurston's notation to classify symmetries. Now what is the amount of symmetry classes with cylinders or what about torus or other shape...

I am trying to create a house/texture in 3D and in 2D with fractals, perhaps related. My friend said that fractals can have different dimensions such as 1.74, 1, 4.71111... and pretty much anything. Now I want to create a castle from some fractal such as Mandelbulb fractal. Some fractals have the...

Stephen Hazel suggested some dimensions such as time, pitch, velocity of note down event, current root note of chord, chord type(major/minor/7th/etc), pan of the mix, volume of the mix and holding pedal. Vi Hart has popularized orbifolds with notes. This is very limited: sounds and music are ch...

You are probably familiar with "mirror anamorphosis," the rendering in a painting of a distorted figure that can be undistorted by viewing in an appropriately tilted or curved mirror. The skull in the Hans Holbein painting (the streak at bottom center) is perhaps the most famous example:            

My Maths department is re-branding itself, and we've been asked to find suitable images for the departmental sign. Do you have a favourite mathematical image that could be used for the background of an A1-sized sign?

This delightful animation by Stefan Nadelman depicts "the additive evolution of prime numbers", set to Lost Lander's song "Wonderful World": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZkQ65WAa2Q. (If you haven't watched it, you may want to do so before reading the rest of the question.) Counting $1$ as p...

I can not understand is this picture 2D or 3D .what is the rule or condition to be a 2D or 3D picture.How can I understand that?please help me?

I really enjoy the style of technical diagrams in many mathematics books published in the mid-to-late 20th century. For example, and as a starting point, here is a picture that I just saw today: Does anybody know how this graphic was created? Were equations used for the surfaces and then a pl...

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask about this, but is there any legitimate peer-reviewed paper refuting the significance of the golden ratio in art? I can find numerous websites and blogs scattered around the web on this topic, but I don't feel they are solid enough. If there are better ...

I have a square with a side length of 100 cm. I then want to rotate a square clockwise by ten degrees so that it is scaled and contained inside the existing square. The image below is what I'm attempting, but with a square, not a triangle. (Image created by Alain Matthes). And here is the ...

There is a concept I have seen on Pinterest called Infographics. The use of colourful pictures and graphics and diagrams that can show in a pictorial way some explanation of advanced math principles. So I was wondering are there any specific 'infographics ' that explain important ideas in Group T...

Let me be honest here: I know very little about Knot Theory. I'm sorry. I've a friend though, someone with no training in Mathematics at all but who is huge fan of knots (for whatever reason), who knows even less than I do about it, apparently. Thus I'd like a book or something as a gift we'd bo...