Mathematics and Culture VI

Dreaming Some years ago, in a corridor, in a small space, o? to the side, as in a hidden ravine, they were there. Tey couldn’t be anywhere else. Hidden and mysterious, with faces that were dreamy and abstracted, or distracted, or pensive. Caught up in their thoughts, caught up in their space, a space that was distant and that only they could understand. Elusive and yet there, in front of me. Certainly, it was them, the six mathematicians of the Mathematica series by Mimmo Paladino. Tinkers of numbers and shapes. For ten years we have been searching for the mathematicians there. In Venice, the favourite place. An aura of mystery surrounds them, otherwise what kind of mathematicians would they be! Mysterious, dreamy, absent, absorbed are the faces of Paladino’s mathemat- V icians. Te voices of ?ve Sardinian shepherds intone the Kyrie,the Libera Me Domine, the Sanctus. Insistent, profound, archaic voices. Te soundtrack of a journey, of a journey towards nothingness. A journey towards Te Wild Blue Yonder ,the last ?lm by Werner Herzog, winner of the international Critic’s prize at the Venice f- tival in ????. Te heroes were astronauts, even if by now no one cares about their adventures;astronautswhotakeo?,whotravel,butdon’tknowwheretheyaregoing. And then there are the true heroes, the real gurus of the ?lm, the characters who some years ago burst onto the scene in cinema: the mathematicians.

The new volume in the series Mathematics and Culture continues a journey that began in 1998, a quest to describe the interplay of influences between the world of mathematics and the worlds of art, cinema, theatre and history, medicine, biology and aeronautics. The series editor, Michele Emmer, has chosen a new collection of essays that cast light on these connections in new, surprising and fascinating ways.

Mathematics and Culture VI includes:

An homage to the artist Mario Merz, some of whose work depicted numbers derived from the Fibonacci in curving neon arrays

Essays probing the relationships of mathematics with the moving images of video and cinema; the complex connections between mathematics and psychoanalysis and new frontiers of applied mathematics

Chapters entitled Mathematics and Cartoon; Mathematics and Art; Mathematics and Cinema, and Mathematics and wine, offering the observations of an international group of thinkers, writers and researchers across a broad spectrum of disciplines

A stimulating section following the journeys of Marco Polo, and exploring the Venice that both set him on his travels and welcomed him back, traverses not just miles but culture and science.

Written for both mathematicians, for teachers, students and researchers, and a broad audience of readers with an interest in the history of ideas, this book offers an excellent starting point for research into the tightly woven bonds between scientific and cultural endeavour.