Monday, August 25, 2008

Another Award in my bag

Kim gave me another award. Thanks Kim!
I think I still have a long way to go to prove myself uniquely creative. Isn't it?

Experience of a lifetime - Finale

Picture of one of the works by Yvonne Kracht

I forgot to mention one of the best moments for me. I met Carlo Sequin who is the main juror of the conference. I gave him my introduction. To my surprise, he knew me. Oh! My god. I'll never ever forget that moment. A person of his stature knew me. He is a gem of a person and anything is less to write about him.

Anyways, the next day, the conference started. Carlo gave the introductory speech which triggered a thumping start to one of the best events of my life. The next five days involved phenomenal talks by Rinus Roelfs, Chaim Goodman Strauss, George Hart, Dick Termes, Paul Prudence, Javier Barrallo, John Sullivan, Benjamin Storch, Akio Hizume, Erik and many others. Of course, it is needless to say that all the talks were extraordinary. Also, I happened to see original works by M.C. Escher. The Escher foundation had organised the exhibit in the university.

On one of the days, we went for an excursion to 7 churches. Exhibits of 7 mathematical artists were organized in these churches. I was dumbfounded as I realized that people had done so much work in this field and I never knew about it. Those works were not only logic driven but also remarkably beautiful.

The time for departure had come. I learnt so many things in those few days which cannot be explained just by writing. You have to be at the place to feel it and learn from it.

I'll write about Amsterdam and the museums some other time.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Experience of a lifetime - Contd.

After meeting Benj, I met other mathematical artists (mostly mathematicians) who had come. Elaine, who is a retired professor, makes mathematical quilts. Honestly speaking, they are wonderful. You must have a look at her site. She told that she took 382 hours to make one of the quilts. It had Leonardo's claws in it.
Umphh.. there is so much to write. I would suggest you guys should go to the sites of the respective mathematical artists and check out their works. Some time I'll try to put up all the links of the artists.

Benj, Edmund and his girl friend and David Bailey had come from UK on a car. It was evening and I had met most of the people by now. I was feeling hungry. Benj and others were going out. I accompanied them. We went to Dutch restaurant SPINOZA (It seems that Spinoza was some famous person of the Renaissance period). I, being vegetarian had to bear a lot in the foreign country. :-(
So, I had the Italian Lasagna. We tried the Rosa Beer.

We headed for the boat hotel. On the boat, we met Robert McDermott and Nate. And also not to forget, Erik Kurvenbau. Robert is quite old but a lovable personality. He is the head of the Visualization Department at the University of Utah. Robert shared a lot of his experiences with us through out our stay on the boat hotel for 5 days. Nate is an undergraduate student at the UCB.
Erik - I would like to mention the style of his introduction. "My name is Erik with a K not C." Erik is a Scottish who is the owner of a company which owns the Tess3D software. He has a fantastic sense of humor and his Scottish accent of English speaking is clumsy but nice.

Soon, Eva Knoll and Simon Morgan arrived. Both are mathematicians and teach at universities in US.

We sat on the dining and started chatting after an informal introduction.

Contd..
I'll try to finish in next post. :D

BTW, I met Matt in Amsterdam who just forwarded me a link. I strongly recommend to see the link. It is just marvelous.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Experience of a lifetime - Arrival

I would like to share my experience at Bridges 2008. Oh! I must say it was an experience of a lifetime. So here it goes...

I reached at Stenden University on the morning of 23rd July. I was just wondering how would it feel to be with people from so many countries. How would they behave? Would they appreciate what I have done? Lots of questions hovering my mind.
Nevertheless, I was there. The first persons I met were Eliane and Robert Fathauer. They saw my work and appreciated the use of pencil. I was the only person with a mathematical art done in pencil out there. Robert said, "There are lots of computer works." Good to know that I brought something different with me. I never felt that I was in a different country with different people (I mean non Indians). Then I met Nathan Selikoff and his wife Amy. Nathan has done enough work as an artist which you can make out from his site.

Now more and more people were coming. Hans Dehlinger is a German Artist who seemed to be a fantastic person. It was really nice talking to him.

Then we started to put up all our works on the panels. We started to arrange the panels so that they were in the proper order. So, people kept coming and the round of introductions never ended. :)

Soon, most of the artworks were on their right places.

I was awaiting a guy named Benjamin Storch with whom I had  done lots of correspondence recently. We were to stay in the same boat hotel which we booked ourself. Then, I met Benj(as I use to call him). A very light hearted and phenomenal person. His work "Manifold" was an exquisite piece of art which was built on Lorentz equation. Most of the people loved it.

What more?
There are so many things to write. Through the whole next week, I'll try to write all I can and share my experiences with you all.

Monday, August 04, 2008

My experience at Bridges 2008

AWESOME!!

I'll write about my experience sometime later.
For now, you guys can take a look at the pics from the conference.
They are here. Also pics of Amsterdam and Leeuwarden.
:-)