Crossing the art/math "canyon" (literally!)

**Those familiar with the UNCSA campus might know that the campus is split down the middle by a kudzu-filled creek bed, "Kudzu Canyon." One one side, the home of the Undergraduate Academic Program offices and classrooms, on the other the various arts schools and the high school academic program. This is just a little story about how ARTStem helped two UNCSA teachers, both ARTStem participants, cross two canyons . . . the kudzu one AND the one that sometimes exists between the worlds of art and mathematics. . .

This winter term, Dean Wilcox is introducing a new academic elective he created called "Chaos Theory and the Arts." His syllabus reads:"It has been well over a decade since James Gleick's book Chaos: Making a New Science made the mathematically dense world of chaos accessible to lay-people producing everything from Jurassic Park to fractal art to Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. This course is designed to explore the basic ideas behind chaos theory and how they have generated artistic criticism and expression. . . " [Download Dean Wilcox's "Chaos Theory and the Arts" syllabus here!]

A few weeks ago, Wilcox wrote of seeking out some help from fellow ARTStemmer, Jill Lane (Dean of the High School Academic Program, and math faculty member):

"I'm moving toward the "iteration and phase space" section of my Chaos class – and I wanted to spend some time looking at a few of the notable equations with my students. So – not having had a math class since the Reagan administration I had a number of questions about how such things work. What I find most fascinating about these sort of higher math problems is that folks discovered certain things about how the world operates by basically playing with the equations. A kind of what-happens-if-I-do-this? scenario. . . . which is not too far off from how I think about the arts. This is totally different from my high school math experiences where there seemed to be an acceptable answer for every problem. What is the fun in that? In any case, Jill Lane made a number of these questions and issues regarding these ideas much clearer. For further info, we actually discussed these two specific problems: the Lorenz attractor and logistic map. I have no idea what to expect in dealing with these in a “humanities” class, but I do feel that I understand them better now."

Dean Wilcox is a faculty member and Assistant Dean of the Undergraduate Academic Program at UNCSA, and an ARTStem participant.