Bridges 2026 Short Film Festival

Amenda Chow, Andrew Beltaos

Filmmakers

Amenda Chow

Associate Professor, Teaching Stream

Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto

Toronto, Canada

amenda.chow@utoronto.ca

amchow.mathematics.utoronto.ca

View exhibition history

Andrew Beltaos

Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Faculty of Mathematics

University of Waterloo

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

abeltaos@uwaterloo.ca

ca.linkedin.com

fiascous.bandcamp.com

View exhibition history

Statement

Amenda Chow is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. Her interests are in mathematics education and applied mathematics. She often teaches calculus and likes to show students in her class about the appearance of mathematics in everyday life. She has also been studying hysteresis for many years and continues to do so, exploring alternative approaches to learning it. Andrew Beltaos is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. Outside of his passion for teaching in his work life, he is very active in a variety of musical projects, including Fiascous, his electronic music project created with hardware synthesizers, singing, playing guitar, and writing for alternative rock band The Martingales, playing in the University of Waterloo's Balinese gamelan ensemble, and lately playing drums in a number of bands.

Films

The Sound of Hysteresis

00:05:05

Created by Amenda Chow and Andrew Beltaos; Music: "Magneresis" (excerpt), by Fiascous. A full version can be heard here: https://fiascous.bandcamp.com/track/magneresis

2026

Watch

This short film incorporates sound into understanding graphs of two-dimensional curves, by assigning sonic characteristics to the variables: amplitude and frequency. The film begins by listening to the sound of graphs of some common curves and then introduces the concept of a hysteresis loop. The second part of the film explores characteristics of hysteresis and some examples, including a musical interpretation of hysteresis. The film ends suggesting that this way of interacting with sound and space can lead to new artistic mediums.