2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings

Fabrizio Augusto Poltronieri

Artists

Fabrizio Augusto Poltronieri

Artist

[+zero]

fabriziopoltronieri@gmail.com

http://www.maiszero.org/

Statement

As a mathematician and artist I explore the concept of mathematical chance through a philosophical approach based on the ideas of Charles S. Peirce. My images are created by series of coded mathematical operations under the rulership of mathematical chance. The mathematical chance, in turn, is ruled by absolute chance. The most important about my oeuvre is to know that it remains open and continuous, being a non-hierarchical dialogue that reflects on the contradiction and on the experiences of alterity. My oeuvre should not, therefore, be limited by the discourse of method as an aesthetic guideline towards the truth. Instead, it should take the flusserian* doubt as an example that makes mirroring and contemplation possible, taking it as a model for contemporary categorial thought and considering doubt in opposition to modern methodologies of certainty, maintaining this doubt as fundamental for intellectual and artistic investigation. * Vilém Flusser, philosopher, 1920-1991

Artworks

Image for entry 'Mnemosyne'

Mnemosyne

24" x 36"

C++ code, Metallic C-type Print

2012

'Mnemosyne' is part of the series called “Visual Theogonies”, created by algorithms exploring the concept of mathematical chance, conceived by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. These images have no external index, i.e., are the result of pure mathematical manipulation at random of a given set of data. This group of software is named after the term “Theogony”, from a poem written by the Greek Hesiod in the late eighth century BC. The poem deals with the process of the birth of the Greek gods, and therefore the set of software receives the subtitle of “images of the computational god” as in this case the gods are transmuted in the will of the computational algorithms. Theogony is a poem that represents a phase of Greek thought in which there were no links between cause and effect, where the gods existed by and for themselves and time was not calculated chronologically.