Frank A Farris

Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
Santa Clara University
San Jose, California, USA
http://math.scu.edu/~ffarris
My artistic impulse is to let the beauty of the real world shine into the realm of mathematical patterns. My method combines photographs with complex-valued functions in the plane to create images with all possible types of symmetry: Euclidean, hyperbolic, and spherical symmetries (as these act on the plane). For some works, I then transfer plane images back to the sphere. All these methods are explained in detail in my book Creating Symmetry: The Artful Mathematics of Wallpaper Patterns, published in 2015 by Princeton University Press. Wallpaper patterns created from wave functions have natural ways to vibrate into the future. Recently I have explored these vibrating wallpaper patterns and connected them to musical sounds.
In a State of Patterns
In a State of Patterns
0:04:40
Video by Frank A. Farris, music by William Susman. Commissioned by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Barbara Day Turner, founding conductor.
2018
Back in 1997, I visited the Geometry Center and was helped to create my first primitive movies of vibrating wallpaper. In 2011, I realized the dream of using photographs as color wheels for wallpaper images and this led to my book about wallpaper. Only in 2017 was I able to create my own movies of vibrating wallpaper. Barbara Day Turner, founding conductor of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, saw my movies in 2017 and proposed a collaboration. She commissioned composer William Susman to write "In a State of Patterns" to accompany my animations, which are based on five photographs of California scenes. Susman's post-minimalist minimalism is a perfect marriage to the mesmerizing images of wallpaper that changes dreamily as we watch.