More Math Humor

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It seems I have found myself in a sexist corner again … I was feeling a bit guilty for posting "girls = evil" so I had to post the cartoon above to give equal voice to our lady friends.

smile! its not that bad :)

Fabulous Finnish Fractal Flooring

Nokturno.org has a new fractal poem titled Palasista!
by Saara Lehto. The piece is written in Finnish and is in the form of a Sierpinski Carpet. The words are all anagrams of each other as well as the title.

Thanks to Marko Niemi for bringing this to us!

Rescuing Metaphor

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has sent me a math poem that I would like to share with you.

to + to = too

This is a nice little poem that has three Important elements that strike me right off the bat:
1.) it plays on the words to and too … in other words we have too many to's
2.) is the clever addition of o's … o + o = oo
3.) the most important element of any mathematical poem is the equal sign.**

I really like the feeling in this piece … metaphor is so hard to describe without using another metaphor and if we do then we miss the point.

By the way … eratio seven is now available! Check it out!


** It is the equal sign that creates the metaphor in mathematical poetry. It is the fact that a poem of the latter form says a + b = c and we know that a + b IS NOT c

There exists a mathematical form that is the logical crux of all metaphors in all poetry mathematical or otherwise:
A = B
Given: We know for a fact that ‘A’ does not equal ‘B’

There is also one more key ingredient for metaphor to exist. That ingredient is connotative intention. In other words, the physics equation d = vt is not metaphorical because the intention of the equation is denotative.

‘A’ is similar to ‘B’ is not a metaphor
‘A’ is proportional to ‘B’ is not a metaphor
‘A’ looks like ‘B’ is not a metaphor
‘A’ is compared to ‘B’ is not a metaphor
Simile is not metaphor that is why they are different words

Marius de Zayas

Marius de Zayas and Francis Picabia, FEMME!

Karl Kempton shares some links with us:

Marius de Zayas, Agnes Meyer. Eye Contact: Modern American Portrait Drawings from the National Gallery, Nov 2005

Picabia. Between Music and the Machine: Francis Picabia and the End of Abstraction, fig 28 mathematical formulas. Nov 2005.



I really am not able to tell whether Zayas was trying to express something mathematically or not. I have seen an abundance of artists decorating their work with equations in order to express a math feeling or maybe add a cryptic quality to their works and that may be what Zayas is trying to do as well …These days the latter idea is a bit trivial however, the case with Zayas is probably one of the first times that equations are inscribed within visual work … (I wouldn’t put it past Hieronymus Bosch … but I don’t think he did it)

Thanks Karl for passing this on!

Three Different Kinds Of Mathematical Poetry

There are many who claim the endeavor of ‘mathematical poetry’ and we can see as many forms as there are claims. I personally see three different forms however, the second category I describe may be broke into many other forms. I will list them in order of popularity at this time in 2006. I also want to mention that I am not one to engage in taxonomy for taxonomy’s sake but delineate things only if I feel there is confusion. There also can be works that incorporate all three categories.

1. ‘Mathematics poetry’ -- This poetry is traditional language poetry about or inspired by mathematics. I also would consider poetry that plays with numbers and words in this category. There are numerous examples all over the web but the most popular from my perspective is Marion Cohen:
Another source would be Katherine Stange:
2. ‘Mathematical Visual Poetry’ – This is more difficult to define because of the vast areas and the many competing definitions of visual poetry. However, I consider mathematical operations on text as well as mathematical textual information composed for aesthetic purposes to be ‘Mathematical Visual Poetry’ Also words, text or textual elements mixed with mathematical symbols or formulae that are not performing mathematical operations on the words. Although Karl Kempton has worked in all three categories, I feel the following is a good example of ‘Mathematical visual poetry’: Another good example is Marko Niemi’s fractal poem described in the following link: Midwinter nights dream
3. ‘Mathematical Poetry’ – This is literally performing mathematical operations on concepts whether they are words or images. A good example would be my page at the following link: Mathematical Poetry
Also the following link has an example of Scott Helmes: And Bob Grumman at the following link is a good example of a mixture of ‘Mathematical Poetry and Mathematical Visual Poetry’: