Over a year ago, I posted about the beautiful video, “Nature By Numbers” by Cristobal Vila. Ever since I discovered that video, I have shown it to my students when we study mathematical masterpieces. Recently, I found out that Vila had created another amazing video, “Inspirations”, that explores his admiration for the artist, Escher. According to Vila, “So I looked into that enormous and inexhaustible source of inspiration that is Escher and tried to imagine how it could be his workplace, what things would surround an artist like him, so deeply interested in science in general and mathematics in particular.”
Again, the students studying mathematical masterpieces would love this video. I love the idea, too, of thinking about what inspired the person who inspires you. It would be an interesting project to assign your students to design the room of someone from history, and to scatter carefully chosen artifacts throughout that would speculate on that person’s particular muses.
