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Special Track

António Bandeira Araújo

Bio:

António Bandeira Araújo is a mathematician and visual artist. He holds a BSc. in physics and a Ph.D. in mathematics. He is assistant professor at Univ. Aberta, Lisbon, and the coordinator of Aberta’s pole of the Research Center for Arts and Communication (CIAC-UAb). He is a vice-coordinator of Aberta’s Ph.D. programme in Digital Media Arts (DMAD). He works in the connections between mathematics and the visual arts, doing reseach on spherical perspective drawing methods and their connections with VR visualizations. He is a published illustrator, and currently both the cover illustrator for the Magazine of the European Mathematical Society, and the editor of its Art and Mathematics section. His work in illustration informs his research in applied geometry, which is aimed at technologies and theories that enhance rather than replace the traditional discipline of handmade drawing. He is the author of Eq A Sketch 360, a prototype for spherical perspective sketching whose algorithms were adopted by Microsoft’s Sketch 360 app. His homepage is http://www.univ-ab.pt/~aaraujo/

Dialogues Between Geometry, Computer Graphics and the Visual Arts:
 
Computers present us with new ways to both capture and represent visual information. Through their sheer power, they have revolutionized a longstanding dialogue between geometry, the scientific disciplines of visual representation, and the visual arts.
 
As we rush forward with technical innovations, it is important to realize the nature of this dialogue, how it has long preceded computers, what aspects of it have been changed by computers, and what aspects have remained the same, or follow in a direct line from older technologies. And much does so: Mixed Reality is the heir of Brunneleschi’s first demo of perspective, an optical illusion machine made with the renaissance hi-tech of painted panel, mirror, and peephole. Projection mapping explores the same anamorphic geometry of Niceron’s Curious Perspectives and Pozzo’s illusionistic church ceilings. 3D sculpting of the human figure faces the same conceptual problems as Durer did in his geometrical treatment of anatomical measurements – the geometric problem endures whether we draw with charcoal or digital pen, whether we sculpt with triangular meshes, NURBS, or chisel and scope. But truly new problems also arise: the topology requirements of a 3D model meant for animation are something quite new. To see what is new and what is constant, helps us focus on the fundamentals, and opens new avenues for both technical and artistic creation.
 
In this track we focus on work on which this dialogue between computers, art and geometry is an important factor, whether in architecture, animation, games, engineering or education. We are especially interested in the way in which geometrical consideration are used to stimulate new kinds of art or new ways of displaying and exploring data; in the ways in which geometrical consideration should inform the teaching of new subjects and the development of new technologies; or on how the needs of digital artistic expression could motivate new geometrical concepts and problems.