Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

• Define and historically situate key mathematical concepts in the arts: perspective and proportion, ratios (the golden ratio), planar symmetries, polyhedra, fractal dimensions, periodicity, and harmony.
• Use mathematical concepts common in generative and computational art for creative purposes including integers, floats, functions, arrays, tables, and algorithms.
• Use computer-automated data analysis to develop visuals and/or sounds for contemporary datasets of historically unprecedented scope: datasets with hundreds or thousands of variables and millions or billions of cases.
• Recount historical instances of people effecting significant policy and/or culture change with mathematical tools.
• Critically evaluate the cultural, ethical, and economic implications of mathematics in the contemporary world and identify the critical roles of artists in the advancement of socially responsible mathematics.

• Assignments
• Class participation
• Group work
• Exams

• History of mathematics in the arts--perspectives and influential concepts.
• Mathematics in the visual arts: perspective, proportion, ratios, fractals etc.
• Mathematics in music: acoustics, waves, tempi, rhythm, meter, polymeter, periodicity, tuning systems, harmonics etc.
• Mathematics in computational arts: including but not limited to integers, floats, fractions, percents, functions, arrays, tables, algorithms, probabilities, exponents, square roots, radicals
• Converting, scaling and mapping (including but limited to beats per minute to milliseconds, MIDI notes to frequencies, OSC datagrams to frequency cutoffs)
• Data visualization and sonification (manual and automated)
• Critical evaluation of the social, cultural and economic influence of mathematics and the role of artists in the exercise of socially responsible math.