MATHEMATICS

The Cartier Foundation for contemporary art, is one I love. About 40 minutes walk from where I live across the Luxembourg gardens. The walk is a little risky on a Saturday morning as the joggers take no notice at all of those strolling across the park. Before leaving I say hello to the  bees  buzzing around in their hives above and walk up the Bd. Raspail to the Foundation. 


I was excited about the exhibition I was  to see with Laurent. Images had been buzzing around my head since I had downloaded the App on my Ipad and studied it with a great deal of attention. "Mathématiques Un Dépaysement Soudain" or "Mathematics A Beautiful Elsewhere". I love the English transaltion. 


Mathematics have always been hermetic for me.  I have often been reprimanded for my lack of understanding, miscalculations or interpretations which had nothing to do with reality. Yet, I love to look at figures. They seem to have an obscure form  which enter into some kind of abstract image. What I had seen on the Ipad App,  fascinated me. Some concepts seemed clear. Most did not. 

When I saw the exhibition my head became even fuzzier and yet a lot began to fall into place. Circles, squares, triangles...all those geometric equations which were so obscure became images for me when I saw the translation of an equation into a pictorial  form (Hiroshi Sugimoto ""Five Elements: Boden Sea")

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The brain is an equationless structure and yet chance, hazard, chaos and so much that the brain creates can be turned into an equation and measures of probabilty made.

 Infinity marks the difference between our physical world and that of mathematics.....

A bird flying. Tiger's stripes....I said to Laurent as we came out of the exhibition...."just imagine, if there was a lizard crawling across the path, I could measure its speed, if he was to get to the otherside of the path, where it would end up and so forth and so on". Laurent looked dubious. 

I think of the chaos on my desk which seems to occur with the horrific amount of paper which mounts up.....


Chaos = Pr(A) = probabilty of the event A
Sn = position after the n-th throw of a dice, a coin, or papers.....


Since Saturday I have looked at those swallows sweeping around my balcony wondering what the equation would be to evaluate the speed of their flight and the probability of where they were going. I've looked at the tiles in my bathroom and thought about turning them upside down, on the side and there would be different shapes and of course a different equation. 


I doubt if I will understand calculations any better. Let alone equations. But if I had been taught geometry or even how to calculate a simple percentage in pictorial form, who knows, I may have been an ace in mathematics. There are artists who were or are mathematicians and artists. Sugimoto, David Lynch, Alberola, ...how I wish I could meet a Mathematician who could speak a language I understand. I've always wanted that...

There are over 200 pages to read in this catalogue - and I am going to read them.