Robert Bosch

Artist/Professor of Mathematics
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio, USA

The mathematician in me is fascinated by the various roles that constraints play in optimization problems: sometimes they make them much harder to solve; other times, much easier. And the artist in me is fascinated by the roles that constraints play in art. All artists deal with constraints, and many choose to impose their own constraints. The benefit of this was well expressed by Joseph Heller (while paraphrasing T.S. Eliot): "If one is forced to write within a certain framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas."

Knight's Tour with Hidden Hilbert
Knight's Tour with Hidden Hilbert
43 x 43 cm
Digital
2020

An open knight's tour of a 64-by-64 chessboard. The knight starts in the lower left corner, finishes near the lower right corner, and visits each of the 8-by-8 squares in the same order that they'd be visited by a third-stage Hilbert curve.

Knight's Tour with Hidden Hilbert
Knight's Tour with Hidden Hilbert
43 x 43 cm
Digital
2020

An open knight's tour of a 64-by-64 chessboard. The knight starts in the lower left corner, finishes near the lower right corner, and visits each of the 8-by-8 squares (that look like a U or a rotated U) in the same order that they'd be visited by a third-stage Hilbert curve.