Predator-prey Model ရ အရရအတဲ့က် ဲ့ ရ ေါက်က ဲ့ခြင််း စနစ်’ (Burmese,
‘Population Dynamics of Predator-prey System’), Aung Zaw Myint, 2019, digital.

Intercultural Science-Art Project ‘Magritte Meet Science’

Danilo Gregorin Afonsoa, Mary Oluwabunmi Akinadeb, Đorđe Baralićc, Demian Nahuel Goos, Charles Graye, Abdulganiyu Jimohf, Lateef, Olakunle Jolaosog, Jie Lih, Sander Mack-Cranei, Aung Zaw Myintj, Kayode Oshinubik, Matheus Pires Cardosol, Dragana Radojičić

In this manuscript a joint project between young researchers from all around
the world, the Intercultural Science-Art Project, is presented, in which all
participants interpreted their own research with art. Art is meant in the most
inclusive way possible, including drawings and digital works, but also songs
and confectionary art. This project has two main goals. On the one hand it
creates tools for young scientists to communicate their research to society
by artistic means. On the other hand it tries to bring together different
cultures and to strengthen ties between them.
Keywords: scientific art; young researchers; intercultural; René Magritte
Subject classification codes: 00A66, 97M80

Introduction
We are a group of young scientists from all around the world who met in the Heidelberg
Laureate Forum (HLF) 2019, a networking event which brings together young
researchers in mathematics and computer science and laureates of these disciplines. As
attendees of this forum, we were invited by Demian Nahuel Goos, a former HLF Alumnus
who participated as blogger for the HLF 2019, to join his ‘Intercultural Science-Art
Project’ and create artworks inspirend by our own scientific research.
The main goal of this project is to create awareness in society about the work of earlycareer researchers in academia and to make their work more visible. It is an indisputable
fact that PhD theses—even though the peak of years of hard work and research—are
habitually not read by anyone but the candidates, their advisors, and the committee. For
enjoying such a read usually requires a basic comprehension of the theory that underlies
these results or working at least on close and similar fronts. Either way, it is a small circle
of scientists who have the privilege of fulfilling these requisites and people who do not
work on academia can barely get an introductory notion of the content of the theses. It
does not help this goal either that particularly in the presumably abstract fields of
Mathematics and Computer Science there are many prejudgments and misconceptions
about their understandability and applicability to the real world.
So to make these works more tangible, it seemed natural to create a visual version of the
theses and their main ideas, with which people could have a more concrete concept of
what young researchers actually are working on and what the motivation behind their
research is. This way the importance of their work would be easier to understand.
Innovation and creativity are the key character traits for this activity since we expressed
our research in an artistic fashion. Art is an interesting tool for the purpose of breaking
the gap between science and society since it gives space to emotions and feelings, which
again create a stronger bond between the scientific artist and the observer. The whole
internal process of developing an artwork helped us young researchers in our own work
as well, since we had to ask ourselves key questions about it, like “How can I explain my
research comprehensibly?“ We frequently do not ask these questions in everyday life,
since we usually discuss our work with peers only, but they certainly help us to better
understand what we are doing and what the goal of our work is.
A further element of the project was the intercultural focus. Keeping in mind that young
researchers from all around the world meet at the HLF, it was a unique opportunity to see
how people from different cultures interpret the task in their own way and how their
cultural background, their country and language influence their way of facing this task.
To highlight this, we wrote the titles of our artworks in our own language. This way all
participants would get in touch with different languages and cultures and would create
stronger bonds with people from all around the globe.
In this article we present the results of our project. After a brief presentation of the
Leitmotiv, ‘Magritte Meets Mathematics’, one chapter is dedicated to each artwork with
a brief explanation of the mathematical background. At the end, some final thoughts and
commentaries are displayed. After some discussions limited to the HLF community
(Goos, 2019), we hope to encourage futher debates and analysis with the mathematical
community.

Για τη συνέχεια και τα καλλιτεχνικά έργα δες εδώ.