About this website, turning mathematics into art
Click on “it” at the bottom right to view the Italian translation.
This website has been set up as a showcase for just a few of the ways that mathematics can be turned into artworks, designs, prints and animations. The pages in the maths menu explain this process and are intended for people with an interest in mathematics, the emphasis being on the mathematical concepts rather than the other interesting and related areas of computers and art.
The pictures in the gallery have the shapes and forms of objects that belong to the world of pure mathematics with each picture being a representation of a specific mathematical dynamical system. Every picture has been created by writing original c++ code on a computer starting from scratch. Often the mathematics used is resolution independent, so very large digital image files can be created with no loss of quality. This means that high quality prints can be designed at custom sizes to suit specific purposes. In the same way, animations can also be made at custom resolutions.
Many of the pictures are of fractal forms and shapes. Fractals are all around us in nature and it was this mathematical research, which proved the existence of some new fractal shapes, that provided the inspiration to create pictures of them.
It's worth noting that none of the “special effects” available in graphics software like Photoshop have been used in the creation of these images. The Gimp software was used for basic things like resizing and adding a signature. For the fractal pictures no third party software for creating fractals has been used either.
Even though most of the work is done on a computer many of the pictures use photographs, hand-painted pictures and oil pastel drawings as starting points, or sometimes just as the sources of palettes of natural colours. The process overall involves the same creativity and freedom that an artist uses when confronted with a blank canvas. Mathematics and computer code are used like a painter uses brushes, just as tools. What matters are the end results, the pictures and the animations created, which are unique and original artworks.
About Graeme Boore
After graduating from Oxford University with a maths degree in 1983, Graeme began work at Rank Phicom Video Duplication and then SVC Television in Wardour Street, London. This was the start of a successful career in the film industry working in post-production across Europe as a VFX supervisor, using state of the art technology like Mirage, Harry, Henry and Flame. He has also returned to mathematics with an MMath and an MSc from the Open University followed by a PhD in fractal geometry from the University of St Andrews. These “Dynamical Designs” are the result of many years of experience working with pictures combined with a continuing study of mathematics.