Update: The exhibition was Highly Commended in Oxford’s The Vice-Chancellor’s Public Engagement with Research Awards 2019! [Link]
As part of outreach efforts, I have been involved with the exhibition “Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space” at the Ashmolean Museum. This exhibition is a great opportunity to explore a selection of the Ashmolean’s impressive collection from a mathematical (but very accessible) point of view.
In this exhibition, the visitors investigate objects with different spatial dimensions. We start from a zero-dimensional point and illustrate why a line is a one-dimensional object.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is a selection of beautiful medieval Islamic tiles, which can be seen as two-dimensional objects and we describe the different symmetry groups in two dimensions (appropriately also known as `wallpaper group‘.) While we do not go into mathematical detail, the tiles serve as great illustrations of the relevant transformations in two dimensions: translation, rotation, reflection, and combinations thereof.
We discuss that the objects of different dimension can be related to each other. Albrecht Dürer, for example, investigated how an artist can use projections and shadows to represent three-dimensional objects in two-dimensional drawings.
The part I was involved in was the creation of a Virtual Reality (VR) experience. You can get a glimpse of the experience in the video below. The VR consists of three different scenes:
- Flatland, in which we describe how a three-dimensional object would behave in a two-dimensional world.
- Menger Sponge, which explains the concept of the topological dimension and fractals (objects with non-integer dimensions), and
- Hypercube, which introduces the visitors to a four-dimensional cube, and allows them to interact with it.
The exhibition has free admission, so check it until the 9th of June! It is part of the Oxford-wide Thinking 3D project. The exhibition was curated by Federica Gigante & Jim Harris and the VR experience was designed by Joshua Bull, Liam Brown, Tom Lewin, and myself. Tim Wonnacott, the presenter of Bargain Hunt, has lent his voice for the fabulous voice-over for the VR experience. Thanks also to the VR and AR Oxford Hub and the Ashmolean Team, who greatly supported this endeavor.
