GROBOTO

Amazing maths and art program.

Flag, Coat of Arms, Business Card

We were asked to design a new flag for NZ, a business card, and a coat of arms. Both the flag and coat of arms had to convey a message as to who we as New Zealander's represent as a country. People have long felt that our flag and coat of arms are outdated and are in dire need of an upgrade. In my flag design, I decided that we must have the inclusion of both Maori and British symbols as they are vital to understanding where we came from. I used the imagery of Coru's which are a popular symbol to Maori interlinking with each other to resemble unity within our country. Not only that but I also included the fern as it represents our country as clean and green, full of nature and greenery. I also chose to lay these out in a way that the image looked like the union jack. This along with the white  blue and red I feel show the connection with royalty and colonization. It is just a rough sketch that I made in illustrator of course.

In my design of the coat of arms I once again wanted to highlight the fact that we were once upon a time, colonized by the British. Much like the flag I also wanted to include elements of Maori culture which is why I placed green stone within the imagery. The greenstone is also only found in NZ just like the fern. Together the green within the image also conveys the idea of our country as clean and green.

And last but not least is my business card, advertising my imaginary company "Little Big Ideas." I am very familiar with photoshop so I thought I would try and push an interesting idea ahead and try and make it. Since the company advertises creative thinking I felt as though the image of a brain was perfectly fitting.

Patterns and Symmetry

In this lecture we were introduced to the relation of geometry and art with the inclusion of patterns and symmetry. One of the exercises was to find the symmetry in all the capital letters of the alphabet. Once again, im not sure what relevance this has in expanding our knowledge of maths and art. Symmetry is a concept we have played around with our entire lives. I did not see why we would have to spend 15 minutes sifting through which letters were symmetrical or not. Obviously some were and some weren't. We explored a whole range of different works of art that revolved around the simple idea of symmetry. For example, the Kaleidoscope. Which works on the reflection of mirrors inside a tube to create amazing and randomized images of color. Jenna actually went home and made herself one using an empty toilet roll and shards of a broken CD case to make a really amazing prototype. We also see these patterns a lot in our everyday lives that we do not realize, whether it be the tiling on the floor of the bathroom or Maori symbols.

Another task was for me to go out and investigate a few modern artists and try and point out the mathematics embedded in their work.
For example here in Yaacov Aga's artwork we can see what resembles folded paper of some kind (in my eyes) with colors over the top of the folds in the surface. Usually, we see colors and shading on sides/surfaces which give an object its 3d appearance, however Yaacov Aga's work has the colors and patterns placed over the tiles in a way that contradicts the 3d nature of the pictures. This is a clear sign that mathematics has been used to have an impact on the audience.

Another artists I investigated was Ellsworth Kelly, in google images I found a piece of art that resembled an exercise that we did in programming not too long ago where we had to randomize a grid of colored squared exactly how she has done on this canvas. She has used randomization as a concept in this artwork. And randomization is an extremely important factor in the world of mathematics. To me it is amazing to see how something with complete chaos and randomness can have such an appealing look to it.

For the last task I thought it would be a neat idea to tessellate hexagons much like the beehive (yet another object of art and mathematics). It would start with small hexagons all multicolored, which would tessellate together to make a bigger hexagon etc. In other words, the overall picture looks extremely simple like a beehive but as you look closer you realize the true complexity of the design. 

Nets

I really didn't quite know what to make out of this lecture from Andy. We spent most of the day simply drawing nets and drawing different faces of 3d cube like objects. I have done this all too many times before having done graphics for 2 years in school. I pushed on however, grit my teeth and tried to pay attention in class. One of the activities was to make a net for a cube, once again, this did not interest me in the slightest. I am not even sure what to write about in this blog post because nothing really stood out for me. We were given a handout sheet where we were supposed make 2 polyhedra objects and join them together to make a pyramid. The only problem with this was that the sheet did not even mention the dimensions and the ones noted down on the white board we were told the next day were wrong (which explained why mine didnt quite fit together as expected)