Artists
Timothy Sun
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science, San Francisco State University
San Francisco, California, USA
Statement
I am currently an assistant professor in Computer Science at San Francisco State University. I work on topological graph theory, which is the study of drawing graphs on different kinds of surfaces, such as the plane, torus, or Klein bottle. My artistic work aims to illustrate results in my area of research through 3D printed sculptures.
Artworks
The Earth-Moon problem is an open problem in topological graph theory which asks about the fewest number of colors needed to properly color the union of two planar graphs. In the language of maps, given two maps on the same set of countries, how many colors are needed, under the restriction that one must assign each country the same color on both maps? In 1973, Thom Sulanke found an Earth-Moon map that requires nine colors, and at present, this is still the best-known lower bound. I chose to render Sulanke's maps as two globes attached to the same frame. In my labeling scheme, the lettered countries (A-E) form a 5-cycle, and each numbered country (1-6) borders every other country -- thus, nine colors are necessary.