Many have been wondering about this semester’s art installation featured on the walls of the Conservatory lounge. The seven pictures show a new and unique way of recreating familiar images, only these works are, surprisingly, based in mathematics. 

Last Thursday their creator, Oberlin Professor of Mathematics Robert Bosch, formally introduced the exhibit with an evening presentation well attended by both professors and students.

The pictures are genuinely fascinating to look at and strike observers with a distinct and original flavor. Up close, they appear to contain thousands of line segments and seemingly random shapes, but with enough distance they look like an artist’s distorted view of reality. One student at the event explained how refreshing it was to experience not only a very real connection between the College and the Conservatory, but between art and mathematics.

Bosch, also the Robert and Eleanor Biggs Professor of Natural Science, specializes in a branch of mathematics known as optimization, or the technique of generating optimal performances in problem solving. Known as TSP Art, his work is fundamentally rooted in one of the most well known optimization problems, the “Traveling Salesman Problem,” which finds the most efficient route a salesman can take in order to visit all of his desired locations and then return home.

When creating these works, Bosch takes the image he wishes to use and plots points resembling the image. He next runs this image through high-powered software that connects all the points with a single curve. The result is a beautiful picture that, when looked at from far enough away, clearly resembles the original.

Two distinct features of these works are that each curve starts where it ends and never crosses itself; in other words, each picture is made from a single line that has an inside and an outside, similar to a circle. 

The software that Bosch uses to create this curve includes extremely complicated math. Even with a top-of-the-line computer, generating a single image can take up to a day, so it was no easy task when it took Bosch fifty tries to attain the satisfactory portrait of Marilyn Monroe for which he was looking.

The Marilyn picture is one of three portraits by Bosch that are based on work by Andy Warhol, the other two being Mao Zedong and Warhol. 

Bosch received an invitation to a mathematics convention in Pittsburgh this coming November, and he jumped on their suggestion of recreating works by Warhol, a native of the city and the original artist of the Monroe and Zedong images. Bosch was excited about displaying his own interpretation of these popular images, which is what Warhol had done originally.

Bosch also created his own Campbell’s Soup Can piece, titled “Question: What’s Inside?” which refers to the space inside the continuous curve, seen in its complimentary image “Answer: This Is!”

Finding meaning in his work is important to Bosch, who described the other two pieces with great detail. “I tried to pick subject matter that made sense to turn into continuous line drawings,” he explained.

The picture of God’s and Adam’s hands (from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting) is also made from a single curve, so while one stands back and sees two hands not quite touching, one can step closer to see that the hands are in some sense infinitely close, having been made from the same, single line.

“It can be interpreted as saying that man is connected with God,” said Bosch.

The last piece, which consists of a series of Celtic-looking knots, has similar meaning; when one is far away, one sees the intertwining cords, but when looked at closer there are no knots or overlaps to be found.

The works by Bosch in the exhibit are all relatively new, most of them having been created this past summer. But Bosch’s interest in proving mathematics to be an applicable and widespread field is not so new.

Five or six years ago he found himself creating mathematical puzzles and games for the newsletter Optima, published by the Mathematical Programming Society. It was there that Bosch authored a visual art problem, which led to working with children in creating images with dominoes, one in particular being the face of Martin Luther King, Jr.

He enjoyed not only bringing into light the many applications and possibilities of math, but actually bridging the gap between math and art.

“Almost everyone likes problem solving,” Bosch explained, referencing the recent Sudoku craze. “Mathematicians just have a stronger case of it.”

Future problem solving and TSP Art for Bosch may include sculpture, such as etching three-dimensional images in glass cubes or creating pieces with wire. Bosch also mentioned looking into adding the four colors found in modern printers to his artwork, and somehow incorporating those technological concepts.

Bosch’s exhibit will be on display through the end of October.