Assignment 1: Reflection

 The process of creating a piece of mathematical art was an informative exercise in using my creative abilities in ways I had not tried before. The art by Heiner included many pieces of mathematics including a 'space-filling' Hilbert Curve and the digits of pi inscribed as hidden information along the curve. The goal of the extension was to both add to Heiner's work artistically and mathematically so to me that meant we needed to physically transform his work by changing it's shape in some way. The idea that came to me was to express some kind of function which would add mathematically and artistically. Our group decided on basing the extension on Euler's constant 'e' and the concept of growth. This allowed us to produce a piece of art embedded with numerous mathematical concepts and tracing the curve of an exponential function with the 'space-filling' Hilbert curve provided strong anchoring to the original artwork.

This project has helped me to understand the importance of interdisciplinary assignments and how they can engage students and promote learning. During our brainstorming process for this assignment, we had to investigate several mathematical concepts and think about how they could be expressed visually and creatively. This process prescribed a deeper level of consideration of the math we were using and how it could be used to create art. I would use this type of assignment in my own classroom as a way for students to investigate further with topics we have learned in-class to inspire curiosity for other topics they may discover while researching for their project. Furthermore, it is an excellent way of assessing students in a non-standard way that may help students who are not inclined towards mathematics to better grasp the curriculum and to be assessed authentically according to what they truly understand and have learned.