2024 Bridges Conference Short Film Festival

Laird Robert Hocking

Filmmakers

Laird Robert Hocking

Mathematician and Artist

Taiwan

rob.l.hocking@gmail.com

https://robhockingmath.github.io/

Statement

As a kid, I grew up exploring coastal British Columbia, sometimes bringing home treasure that I found. I would sometimes feel an intense need to find out, for example, what the view is like from a lighthouse in the distance. Similarly, as an adult I find myself intensely curious about, for example, "What would it look like to watch a black hole form in my living room?". In both cases, an answer exists - I just have to go out and find it (either by scrambling over boulders to get to the lighthouse, or by doing the math / writing the code). In this spirit, I see mathematical art less as a creative process and more one of exploration and discovery. Just like when I was a kid, I rarely find anything interesting. However, I occasionally stumble up a treasure which I want to take home (with a 3D printer, or perhaps just a raytracer, depending on the context).

Films

Image for entry 'Digital Holograms as an Artistic Medium for Mathematical Art'

Digital Holograms as an Artistic Medium for Mathematical Art

00:05:00

2024

Watch

As a mathematical artist, my main goal is to make abstract ideas tangible, ideally as physical objects that you can see and touch. While 3D printing is typically my medium of choice, it is not always feasible. In this video, I discuss the different mediums I tried for the 3D Apollonian gasket - a relatively well known fractal, the 2D variant of which is discussed in the book "Indra's Pearls". This beautiful object is especially poorly suited to 3D printing, and I came to conclude that digital holography is perhaps the best choice of medium in this case. Digital holography is a relatively unknown technology that I only became aware of in summer 2023. It is my belief that many other mathematical artists would be interested in using this medium if they knew that it exists. Therefore, this video also serves as a tutorial of sorts for other artists who might want to try their hand at digital holography, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.