Discovering that "the infinity could
be in a finite space" is the general concept of the demonstration, which was
opened in September at the Mirador Interactive Museum (MIM) in Santiago and is based
on the work "Gallery of Prints" (1956) of Dutch artist Maurits
Cornelis Escher and the processing line, raised by the mathematicians Bart de
Smit and Hendrik Lenstra Jr. (2003) to finish the work, so far inconclusive.
The exhibition developed in collaboration
with researchers from the Department of Engineering Mathematics, DIM allows its
visitors “to discover that constructions that seem impossible, there are not, explained
Ivan Rapaport, Head of Research of Anillo en Redes Project.
"Our purpose is arousing mathematical curiosity
in children. We decided to advise the MIM in the installation of two exhibition:
'Square Wheels', which opened in 2007, and now 'Find the Infinite', which began
on September 25. Always the idea is pushing people to question the reality,
putting them in front of mathematical constructions aesthetically beautiful and
unusual, "says Rapaport.
How does it work?
The exhibition joins the math with art. To do this, the researchers used a
software based on a mathematical operation called processing line, resulting in
an stunning photography of people who are looking at it.
"This is something unique in the
world," said computer scientist and mathematician, Nicolas Schabanel, of
Anillo Project. "In museums, physicists show their work as experiences, do
not talk about the equations that they resolve, but math is much more
difficult, because the objects that we manipulate are abstract. Now, with the
help of computers you can see, and this allows us to be on equal footing with
physicists to show an experience of science," he said.
As the researcher explained, what you see
on the screen is a transformation of the image captured by a camera that is
over the screen and that is a reproduction towards infinity of the same image
taken originally. What happens in this exhibition and in the same piece of
Escher also relates to the so-called Droste effect (image that contains itself
into a smaller version, which in turn contains another like smaller, and
theoretically infinity).
|
