Participant Testimonials
The BIRS workshop last week was indeed useful and stimulating. It is wonderful that BIRS is able to sponsor this sort of interdisciplinary research that spans art and math. There was a great mix of folks with varying backgrounds and we all gained enormously from the interactions. I made a number of new contacts, learned of many references to follow up on, and came back with interesting new ideas to pursue. So I expect the workshop will have a significant impact on my work both as a mathematical artist and as a designer of The Museum of Mathematics, which will open next year in New York City. I should mention that the workshop organizers were fantastic. They invited a great set of researchers and kept things moving very well. Everyone had opportunities to present and interact. In addition, the facilities at BIRS are just ideal for this kind of work. The meeting rooms, the Corbett Hall lounge and hotel rooms, the cafeteria, and the wider Banff Center facilities leave no room for complaint. Finally, I must give the highest praise to Brenda Williams, who went beyond the call of duty again and again to arrange for our special needs. It is such a pleasure to work with her. Her energy and good will are outstanding. Thank you BIRS!
Our BIRS workshop was incredibly useful to me. Example outcomes include: - Initiated a joint paper with two of my colleagues from the workshop - Am currently writing a proposal with another colleague from the workshop (Although we have collaborated before, we had not thought to write this proposal before talking at the workshop.) - Got new data to work on from another colleague at the workshop - Have proposed collaborating on an educational project to try to teach math to high school students using the ideas of stylometry of art with yet another colleague from the workshop - Am leaving feeling more inspired than I have in a long time Thanks for your support for our wonderful workshop!
Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder
The impact for my research will probably be very important: meetings with people I had not met previously, who will potentially be new collaborators, and also new ideas for research that popped up after discussions. The very unusual mixture in this meeting (mixing people from maths and from arts) was also very enriching. BIRS is an unique place for this type of meetings: I have not seen such experiments elsewhere, and I hope that the experience will be renewed, and the idea will be picked by other conference centers! My warmest thanks for this very special and exciting meeting!
Mathematics, Université Paris est Créteil
The BIRS workshop will be very important to my current research. It offers fresh insights in the intersection between math and art, an area that not many people are working on but has high societal significance. By looking at what others in this interdisciplinary field are doing, I will be able to better determine future directions. I have got new contacts that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University and NSF
This workshop was a huge success, and every participant has come to us and said it. It was easily the best workshop I had gone to, mainly because of the diverse participants. The workshop has focused on arts and mathematics, as the title has suggested. In the end we have gathered a number of mathematicians whose research areas are in art stylometry, and a few others whose research focuses on art generation. There are also three participants whose work focuses on music and mathematics. In all, all the talks showed a good balance of mathematics and arts. The interaction was unbelievable, and it was so much better by the beautiful surrounding and great food!
