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Escher and the Droste effect
Colloquium| Speaker: | Professor Hendrik Lenstra, Jr., University of California, Berkeley and Universiteit Leiden |
| Location: | 2205 Haring |
| Start time: | Mon, May 19 2003, 2:10PM |
Description
In 1956, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher made an unusual
lithograph with the title `Print Gallery'. It shows a young man
viewing a print in an exhibition gallery. Amongst the buildings
depicted on the print, he sees paradoxically the very same gallery
that he is standing in. A lot is known about the way in which
Escher made his lithograph. It is not nearly as well known that it
contains a hidden `Droste effect', or infinite repetition; but
this is brought to light by a mathematical analysis of the studies
used by Escher.
On the basis of this discovery, a team of
mathematicians at Leiden produced a series of hallucinating
computer animations. These show, among others, what happens
inside the mysterious spot in the middle of the lithograph that
Escher left blank.
Mathematical background of this talk can be found in
an article by the speaker and his collaborators,
"Artful Mathematics: The Heritage of M. C. Escher,"
appeared in the Notices of AMS
http://www.ams.org/notices/200304/200304-toc.html .
Special Public Lecture sponsored by the Department of Mathematics.