Simone Zaza Rietmeijer, Irina Bianca Şerban (students) and Loe Feijs , Jun Hu, Mathias Funk (teachers)

Statement

The art works proposed are examples of results of a yearly course offered to industrial design master students at TU/e. The workshop serves to teach mathematical principles to design students. The students define tessellations in turtle graphics using the Oogway library for Processing and the classical theory of Heesch and Kienzle. Oogway is a happy marriage of turtle graphics and splines. But we do not stop at a digital representation of their tessellation design, we continue to cut their tessellations in perspex, wood, felt, adhesive plastic, felt and so on. It moves the abstract concepts of math into the real world. Two students made classical tessellations embodying very contemporary messages.

Artworks

Eden by Irina Bianca Şerban is a modern day interpretation of a renaissance painting theme, the Garden of Eden. The work points at subtle questions. Why are every Adam and Eve represented as white in the renaissance paintings? Were the first people God ever created white or black? Why should Adam and Eve have a belly button, if they were the first people to have lived? The intention with respect to the artwork, its circularity and symmetry was to subtly hint at the loopholes and imperfection of creationist theory. Two classical tessellation types are combined, the types C3C3C6C6 and CC3C3 in the system of Heesch and Kienzle.

The Dreamers by Simone Zaza Rietmeijer are arranged in a tessellation of type C3C3C3C3C3C3. The art work explores the tension between equality and diversity in Dutch society. The individuals that shape our society are extraverts, they approach each other and the world. They are dreamers, but with their eyes opened. They believe in a diverse society in which individuals are treated equally. Together, these people form a tessellation that has the shape of the Netherlands.