2022 Bridges Conference

Felicia Tabing

Artists

Felicia Tabing

Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Mathematics

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California, USA

tabing@usc.edu

https://dornsife.usc.edu/feliciatabing/

Statement

For the past few years I've been creating work to show how I experience grapheme-color synesthesia to represent mathematical ideas in how I experience them in my mind. For example, each numeral has a color I associate to them, such as 3, which I imagine as a light pink color. I use the associated coloring to create work that represents special mathematical numbers as accurately as possibly to how I view them in my mind. I am experimenting with different media, such as watercolor pencil, acrylic paint, gouache, marker, and pen and pencil to get the right color effect and personality that a number has to me. I also use the idea of proofs without words to represent convergent series as a way to represent special numbers.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Synesthesia Series: ln(2)'

Synesthesia Series: ln(2)

28 x 38 cm

Gouache and pencil on watercolor paper

2020

This represents the series for ln(2). The larger rectangle framing the image represents area of unit 1. The construction lines are a technique I learned from perspective drawing in dividing a rectangle into n pieces, and are kept in the image to demonstrate the infinite sum. As the series for ln(2) starts as "1–1/2+1/3", the rectangle was divided into two, and half subtracted with a third added, continuing through the sum. The negative white space what subtracted out of the sum in total, while the colored-in rectangles are what remain in the infinite sum. The colors chosen represent the colors of the letters and numerals in ln(2), which are white and ochre-chartreuse for the "2", and peach and white flecks for the letter "l" and letter "n".