Objectives of the workshop:

This workshop will present a series of open source programs along with their theory and technology that permit to create maths art, like images and animations from the world of algebraic geometry or ornaments with symmetries.

One of these programs is SURFER, a ray tracer in real time, which plots points in space whose coordinates fulfil a given algebraic equation. The programs and contents of the workshop are based on the traveling exhibition IMAGINARY, which was designed by the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach for the Year of Mathematics in Germany (2008) and has to date been shown in over 50 cities and 15 countries. It features visualizations, interactive installations, virtual realities and objects in 3D in a didactical and artistic fashion. In the workshop, which appeals for the first time to artists, the necessary mathematical basics to use the programs will be imparted, in order to enable the participants to explore the visual world of mathematics. The theoretical teaching will be an interactive, motivating and playful experimentation, involving the intuition and creativity of the participants. You might think of these programs as a unique digital camera to shoot videos and fotos in various mathematical fields. In the workshop many images and their equations from exhibitions or users from all over the world will be shown.

Title picture by Torolf Sauermann (www.evolution-of-genius.de).