2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine
Artists
Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine
Professor and Artist-in-Residence
MIT
Cambridge, MA
Statement
We explore many mediums, from sculpture (particularly paper folding and glass blowing) to performance art, video, and magic. Our artwork explores connections to mathematics, with the goal of inspiring, understanding, and ideally solving mathematical open problems.
Artworks
Science/Art
22" (tall) x 28" (wide)
framed poster, elephant hide paper
2011
The crease pattern (top) folds into both SCIENCE and ART (bottom, not to scale). More precisely, the rectangular paper sheet folds into the 3D structure of the word SCIENCE, while the gray inking in the sheet (top) forms the inked ART in the background (bottom). The message is that science and art can exist on a common plane, as two different perspectives of the same object.
The crease pattern was designed using an algorithm by Demaine, Demaine, and Ku (2010), which describes how to efficiently fold any orthogonal "maze" (including word outlines like SCIENCE) from a rectangle of paper. Red lines fold one way and blue lines fold the other way. To experiment with other designs, visit http://erikdemaine.org/fonts/maze/