The Art of Mathematics

Although he only made his debut in mathematical art this past January, Marc Chamberland, professor of mathematics and statistics, has already had pieces accepted to two juried exhibitions: His works Inner Square and Borromean Five were shown at the Joint Mathematics Meeting (January, San Diego) and The Bridges Conference (July, Netherlands). 

Part puzzle, part artistic exploration, Chamberland’s work merges mathematical lessons with aesthetics, history, and popular culture. Borromean Five, he says, springs in part from the image of the Borromean rings — three intersecting circles that have appeared as anything from religious symbols to company logos. Further, he says the piece is a “knot-theory type of comparison” to the game rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, popularized on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. “Any given ring ‘beats’ two others and ‘loses’ to two,” Chamberland explains. “That is, each ring covers two others and is under two others.”  

Chamberland says that although he has no formal artistic training, his interest in creating mathematical artwork sparked in earnest in 2008, when the College acquired a 3D printer. Linking the machine to a symbolic algebra computer program, Chamberland used the printer to create Borromean Five.

“Geometry and art have a long history together, as you would expect,” he says, citing Dutch artist M.C. Escher — who also was friends with many mathematicians — as an outstanding example. “Mathematicians go bananas over Escher and have intensely studied his work. But Escher is most complicated on a two-dimensional surface,” he explains. “Three-dimensional work is much more complex. Very few mathematicians can move beyond two-dimensional images to artistically produce three-dimensional constructions. 3D printers open up new doors for mathematicians and art.” 

The Borromean rings concept has also been a source for Chamberland’s research. The five-ring configuration, he says, has exactly one formation that works. He and Eugene Herman, professor emeritus of mathematics and statistics, have also worked on a seven-ring configuration — a complicated project that yields three fundamentally different possible outcomes.

Inner Square can be viewed online at Mathematical Art Galleries.