Felicia Tabing

Statement

For the past few years I've been creating work to show how I experience grapheme-color synesthesia to represent mathematical ideas in how I experience them in my mind. For example, each numeral has a color I associate to them, such as 3, which I imagine as a light pink color. I use the associated coloring to create work that represents special mathematical numbers as accurately as possibly to how I view them in my mind. I am experimenting with different media, such as watercolor pencil, acrylic paint, gouache, marker, and pen and pencil to get the right color effect and personality that a number has to me. I also use the idea of proofs without words to represent convergent series as a way to represent special numbers.

Artworks

This represents the geometric series that converges to $\frac{2}{3}$. The larger rectangle framing the image represents area of unit 1. The construction lines are a technique I learned from perspective drawing in dividing a rectangle into n pieces, and are kept in the image to demonstrate the infinite sum, although only a partial sum is represented. As the series starts as "1–1/2+1/4", the rectangle was divided into two, and half subtracted with a fourth added, continuing through the sum. The negative white space what subtracted out of the sum in total, while the colored-in rectangles are what remain in the infinite sum. The colors used represent "two-thirds", with two represented by the yellow, and three represented by pink.

This represents the series, $\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n!}$ that converges to $e$. The two largest rectangles represent 1 unit. The construction lines are a technique I learned from perspective drawing in dividing a rectangle into n pieces. The colored space is the area whose sum is $e$ in the series, starting with $1+1+\frac{1}{2}+\frac{1}{6}\cdots$. The colors used represent $e$ as a letter, which is blue-hued, and the other colors represented by the numbers in $e\approx2.71828...$, which range from yellow, white, chartreuse, and purple.