2017 Bridges Conference Short Film Festival
Alexander Bobenko and Charles Gunn
Filmmakers
Alexander Bobenko
Professor of Mathematics
Mathematics Department, TU Berlin
Berlin, Germany
Statement
Alexander Bobenko: Short film about conformal geometry. Charles Gunn: I have a great love and respect for the formal depictions of mathematics. These in fact make it at all possible to produce movies of this sort. But in my movies I try to give a taste what I imagine the creative mathematician experiences before he writes up his discoveries. I found the topic of conformal maps to be especially sympathetic, combining many of my previous interests in a single film -- an early viewer of the film rightfully observed, ti could be expanded to a semester course in higher mathematics.
Films
How can you make good flat maps of the round earth?' Our story begins with Mercator's world map of 1569, the first angle-preserving (or 'conformal') world map. His idea fell on fruitful soil, from which a new branch of mathematics has developed. The movie shows some of the highlights of this development, yielding a series of elegant visual forms which arise as 'conformal maps' on a variety of surfaces in 2- and 3-D. Featuring non-technical language, a simple aesthetic, compelling animation, and an original score, the movie builds an accessible bridge from everyday experience to a beautiful but little-known mathematical theory that continues to bear technological fruit today in fields such as computer graphics and architecture.
This is a short trailer version of the film. More information on the full version (15 minutes long) is available at conformmovie.de.