Berkeley City College

Venue: Berkeley City College

2050 Center St, Berkeley CA
(1/2 block West of the Downtown Berkeley BART station)

Link to Google Maps

Dates: Friday-Saturday, October 3-4, 2014, 10 am – 5 pm

Speakers and Workshop Leaders:

• Carol Bier – a researcher at the textile museum who is expert in how mathematical patterns appear in the fiber arts.
• George Hart – a research professor at Stony Brook University who is also an internationally known sculptor.
• Vi Hart – a “mathemusician” well known for her popular YouTube videos that explore the creative sides of mathematics.
• Andrea Hawksley – an MIT trained artist who makes mathematical constructions using anything from sunglasses to hair bands.
• Chris Palmer – an internationally known origami expert who has designed amazing paper-folded artworks.
• Karl Schaffer – math professor and co-director of Math Dance, a pioneer in bringing a mathematical outlook to the world of dance.

Schedule at a Glance:

FRIDAY

• ALL DAY, 10 – 5 – Art exhibition, mathematical short videos, and informal exchange room
• 10:00 am
  • George Hart – Lecture – “From Mathematics to Sculpture”
  • Carol Bier – Workshop – “Folding and Cutting Islamic Geometric Patterns”
• 11:00 am
  • Chris Palmer – Lecture – “CNC Pre-creasing – Origami prepped by Robots Designed and Folded by People”
  • George Hart – Workshop – “Group Sculpture Assembly”
• [LUNCH BREAK]
• 1:45 pm
  • Vi Hart – Special Activity – “Clap To It!” (group audience clapping activity)
• 2:00 pm
  • Karl Schaffer – Lecture – “Mathematics and Dance”
  • Carol Bier – Workshop – “Folding and Cutting Islamic Geometric Patterns”
• 3:00 pm
  • Karl Schaffer – Workshop – “Polyhedra on a Shoestring”
  • Vi Hart & Andrea Hawksley – Workshop – TBD
• 4:00 pm
  • Karl Schaffer – Workshop – “Polyhedra on a Shoestring”
    Vi Hart & Andrea Hawksley – Workshop – TBD

SATURDAY

• ALL DAY, 10 – 5 – Art exhibition, mathematical short videos, and informal exchange room
• 10:00 am
  • Karl Schaffer – Lecture – “Mathematics and Dance”
  • Carol Bier – Workshop – “Folding and Cutting Islamic Geometric Patterns”
• 11:00 am
  • Karl Schaffer – Workshop – “Polyhedra on a Shoestring”
  • Andrea Hawksley – Workshop – TBD
  • George Hart – Curator’s Tour – Hear mathematical commentary on selected works in the art exhibit
• 12:00 pm
  • Karl Schaffer – Workshop – “Polyhedra on a Shoestring”
  • Andrea Hawksley – Workshop – TBD
• [LUNCH BREAK]
• 2:00 pm
  • Chris Palmer – Lecture – “CNC Pre-creasing – Origami prepped by Robots Designed and Folded by People”
  • Carol Bier – Workshop – “Folding and Cutting Islamic Geometric Patterns”
• 3:00 pm
  • George Hart – Lecture – “From Mathematics to Sculpture”
  • Chris Palmer – Workshop – “Folding CNC Pre-creased Origami”

Activity Descriptions:

Art Exhibition. The MoSAIC Art Exhibition consists of forty-five works of mathematically inspired fine art traveling to a half dozen venues around the US over the next year.  Curated by George Hart, the artworks were selected to show a wide range of media and mathematical ideas.  Don’t miss this chance to see prints, sculpture, fiber arts, 3D prints, carved stone, clothing, and ceramics by some of the most creative math-inspired artists in the world.

Informal Exchange. Anyone can bring works to display related to math and art.  It is a place to relax and chat with other people having similar interests.  Bring something cool to share!

Math Videos. A continuous showing of videos conveying mathematical ideas and ways of thinking.  If you like Vi Hart’s math videos, you’ll enjoy this collection by a variety of video artists.

CNC Pre-creasing – Origami Prepped by Robots Designed and Folded by People. A variety of designs will be folded with instruction from machine pre-creased patterns supplied by the artist.

Curator’s Tour. Hear mathematical commentary on selected works in the art exhibit

Group Sculpture Assembly. Participants will help construct an intricate mathematical sculpture designed by George Hart from laser cut wood components.

Folding and Cutting Islamic Geometric Patterns. Geometric patterns abound in Islamic art. Exhibiting great ingenuity over the centuries, Muslim artists and craftsmen created beautiful patterns to adorn architectural monuments and exquisite objects. A pattern can be created by a unit that is repeated according to an organizing principle. In this workshop together we will create geometric patterns that are familiar in Islamic art, by means of paper-folding and cutting.

Folding CNC Pre-creased Origami. A variety of designs will be folded with instruction from machine pre-creased patterns supplied by the artist.

From Mathematics to Sculpture. George Hart will present and discuss examples of his mathematically informed sculptures, which generally apply computer technology in their design and/or fabrication. These include works made of metal, wood, plastic, or found objects, and often use laser-cutting, plasma-cutting or 3D-printing technologies in their realization. Mathematical and computer science aspects of these designs and their underlying foundations will be discussed. Physical examples will be on hand for people to see and enjoy and a few short videos will be shown.

I Accidentally Binary. A short workshop for noises and people.

Mathematics and Dance. What do mathematics and dance have in common? In this talk we will see examples of mathematical problems and puzzles arising in, inspired by, or generating dance and choreography. Areas briefly considered will include polyhedra with loops and PVC pipes, finger geometry, tangram-like dissections, permutations and hamiltonian cycles, combinations from the ballet barre, symmetry explorations, rhythmic star polygons, and n-body choreographies.

Polyhedra on a Shoestring. String figures, the imaginative designs created with simple loops of string, are found among the world’s most ancient cultures. We will see how to use large loops of rope to explore polygons and polyhedra, and also for creating simple and surprising movement phrases. We will also use six strings of three colors to sequence through all five Platonic solids.

Snuballoons. We will create computationally efficient balloon polyhedra, by working together to make modules that combine into the icosahedron (which is a snub tetrahedron), the snub cube, and the snub dodecahedron. There will be many balloons. We might even make other things. But they will be EFFICIENT!

Sproingy Sierpinski Hair Band Sculpture. Come create colorful sproingy sculpture from hair ties. We will put hair bands together into giant fractal sculptures to stretch out and boing. Each participant will create their own small Tetrahedral Sculpture out of hair ties. We will then combine the many smaller tetrahedra into a giant Sierpinski Fractal.

Workshop Poster:

To download a 300dpi, 8.5×11 PDF version of this poster, right-click this link and choose “Save Link As…” or “Download Linked File As…”