Algorithms Meet Art, Puzzles, and Magic
Speaker: Erik Demaine , CSAIL, MIT
Date: September 2 2009
Time: 4:00PM to 5:30PM
Location: Microsoft Research New Eng| 1st Flr Conf rm, 1 Mem
Contact: Be, 3-6098, imbe@mit.edu
When I was six years old, my father Martin Demaine and I designed and made
puzzles as the Erik and Dad Puzzle Company, which distributed to toy stores
across Canada. So began our journey into the interactions between algorithms
and the arts (here, puzzle design). More and more, we find that our
mathematical research and artistic projects converge, with the artistic side
inspiring the mathematical side and vice versa. Mathematics itself is an art
form, and through other media such as sculpture, puzzles, and magic, the
beauty of mathematics can be brought to a wider audience. These artistic
endeavors also provide us with deeper insights into the underlying
mathematics, by providing physical realizations of objects under
consideration, by pointing to interesting special cases and directions to
explore, and by suggesting new problems to solve (such as the metapuzzle of
how to solve a puzzle). This talk will give several examples in each
category, from how our first font design led to a universality result in
hinged dissections, to how studying curved creases in origami led to
sculptures at MoMA. The audience will be expected to participate in some live
magic demonstrations.
BIO:
Erik Demaine is Associate Professor in computer science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Demaine's research interests range throughout
algorithms, from data structures for improving web searches to the geometry of
understanding how proteins fold to the computational difficulty of playing
games. He received a MacArthur Fellowship (2003) as a "computational geometer
tackling and solving difficult problems related to folding and bending--moving
readily between the theoretical and the playful, with a keen eye to revealing
the former in the latter". He cowrote a book about the theory of folding,
together with Joseph O'Rourke, called Geometric Folding Algorithms: Linkages,
Origami, Polyhedra (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and a book about the
computational complexity of games, together with Robert Hearn, called Games,
Puzzles, and Computation (A K Peters, 2009). His interests span the
connections between mathematics and art, particularly sculpture and
performance, including curved origami sculptures in the permanent collection
of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
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*ARRIVAL GUIDANCE:
Upon arrival at One Memorial Drive, kindly approach the Lobby Floor Security
Desk and alert them that you are attending either the "MSR Seminar" or "MSR
Colloquium" and ask them to direct you to the appropriate floor. Be prepared
to show a picture ID and sign the Building Visitor Log.
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