2021 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Yoshiaki Araki
Artists
Statement
Tessellation is one of the best ways to express the mathematical nature of shapes and spaces. I have pursued tessellation design of shapes and spaces, using familiar shapes like animals to be seen by a wide range of people. More recently, I have been focusing on applying tessellation to reveal the hidden properties of the objects around us, such as puzzles and games.
Artworks
This is a special tessellation work created for an official event celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube by Embassy of Hungary Tokyo in 2020 (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNCz335F_4&t=8m45s).
Each panel of the cube puzzle is placed with a lizard. A total of 54 lizards of the same shape are laid out on the surface of the 3×3×3 cube puzzle, with no gaps or overlaps between them.
The mathematics behind the lizards is based on square versatile. A square
versatile is a shape that can be deformed from a square while admitting for an infinity of
distinct tiling on the plane. The details can be
found in the article, Yoshiaki ARAKI, SQUARE VERSATILE TESSELLATIONS,
Symmetry: Art and Science, 2019.