Fragments
I am seeking funds to develop a new creative project that brings mathematical concepts into dialogue with the world we live in - socio-political, environmental, emotional. The project will take the form of a year-long cycle, with fragments created with each of the seasons. Each piece will be a fragment - a scratch or experimentation, which will take a maximum of 3 minutes to experience. The works themselves might take the form of short games, memes, flash fiction, diagrams.
The central conversation in each piece will be a dialogue between mathematics & some element of our sociopolitical, ecological & emotional realities.
The similarities between my experiences of anxiety & mathematical proof
How the maths of online algorithms shape our experiences of truth & falsehood
Mathematical models of ecosystem collapse.
Each piece will explore either a mathematical concept or will investigate a mathematical form. The concepts I hope to investigate include: infinity, multi-dimensionality, randomness, logic, probability, paradox.
The forms I want to experiment with include: proofs, algorithms, graphs, formulas, equations, networks.
Concept based works will likely take the form of short narratives, poems or games. In form based works I will use the mathematical forms to represent themes, e.g. a proof of an anxious thought, an algorithm of manipulation.
I want each piece to be a brief, light-touch engagement with the subject matter, exploring the material in a playful, accessible, sometimes humorous way. The themes are dense & serious, and I believe that mathematics can offer new ways of relating to them. These works are not for mathematical experts, & I am keenly aware of the negative relationship so many people have to mathematics. I worked for five years as a maths tutor with high school students, mainly tutoring young people who believed that maths was not for them. There is a broad cultural hatred of maths, yet we are all in dialogue with mathematics every day of our lives. I want to use creativity & play to open up opportunities for new ways to relate to the maths around us.
Long term, I want audiences that engage with the project to experience a kind of illumination - seeing something that has always been there, but that you haven’t been looking at. For some works, I think that illumination is a process of wonder & awe, seeing the incredible patterns & networks across our world. In other contexts, illumination is about seeing systems of manipulation, power & control, & in understanding them gaining a new perspective, & a position of increased agency. I think maths can often used to keep people out of conversations, I'm interested in how I can use maths to invite people in.