Programming-Art-Math

Programming is an art, a creative solution written in the language of math and computers.

Art is about the beauty in logical, mathematical and structured forms. It is creative expression.

What about the intersection of the different worlds of computer programming, art and math?

Math + Art

The connections between Math and Art have been well established and accepted. There are many college courses that introduce Geometry through art or discuss the mathematics behind art.

Example - http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/math-art-arch.shtml#Objectives.

Artists like Escher have shown us the beauty of mathematical structures like tessellations.

Math + Programming

The connection between Math and Computer programming is obvious to any computer scientist. Computer science is built on foundations of mathematics and logic. The language of computers is the language of math.

Programming + Art

The connection between computer programming and art may be less obvious, unless one wonders why the definitive books on Computer Science from Donald Knuth are titled 'The Art of Computer Programming'. Programming is an art form, and much like a poet writing a poem or an author writing a story, programmers are creating something tangible from lines in a computer language. There is no one correct answer, there are many different creative approaches to writing a program and the end result is creating something original (and beautiful!).

Art for many is a systematic programmatic method of creating something beautiful, it can and has been done by

computers. Computer generated art ( perhaps mathematical patterns, but even abstract non symmetrical art) is an established field. An artist creates an internal algorithm to create an artwork, sometimes inspired by random abstract forms, and sometimes by very structured mathematical forms.

'We have seen that computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty.'

- Knuth, Computer programming as an art, CACM, 1974. http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html

See http://media.pragprog.com/articles/other-published-articles/ArtInProgramming.pdf

Math + Programming + Art

What lies in the intersection of all three? Something beautiful, something that inspires creation, and something that is worth exploring.