Conic The Dots
"The focus of this project is to give students an opportunity to create art from different conic sections. They will create a beautiful representation and display the underlying mathematics within the image." - Carlee Hollenbeck
Artist Statement
For my Conic The Dots art piece, I’ve created an Ellipsephant! “What’s that?” you ask. Why, it’s an elephant created out of ellipses! To create my ellipsephant, I started with an original image of an elephant. Then I located the center and foci. From there, I was able to recreate each ellipse on a separate piece of graph paper by following my recorded coordinates. Next, I cut out each individual ellipse, painted them using water color paints, and glued them together to create a free-form ellipsephant!
I. First Ideas
II. First Draft & Process
I first drew the elephant onto a piece of graph paper.
I then found the coordinates for each ellipse and their centers.
Next, I recreated each ellipse separately on graph paper.
Finally, I cut, painted, and pasted!
III. Critique Reflection
During the in-class critique, I asked my peers for advice on whether or not I should add anything to my “ellipsiphant.” I spent a lot of time creating the draft that I presented, so I was hesitant to change anything, but open to the possibility of adding more detail, maybe even a background. My thoughts were backed up by advice given by Elina, Gabi and a few other students who suggested that I add a background, perhaps of a zoo. Evan also suggested that I add some shading to the edges of the elephant, or maybe outline all of the ellipses in black. After some pondering, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to add a background, simply because I like that the elephant is it’s own, “object”, if you will. However, Ms. Hollenbeck suggested that I insert pins in the elphants trunk, allowing it to move. I found this to be the most helpful and inspiring piece of critique given, as it would be somewhat easy to accomplish, and would result in a much more radical final product. I am excited to see how the move-able trunk turns out! All in all, the class critique was very helpful.
V. Final Product
After presenting my first draft, I was given critique suggesting that I make the trunk moveable. I was excited about this idea and got to it right away! What I found was that removing the glued ellipses from one another was causing more damage than I could repair. Sadly, I was not able to adjust my ellipsephant as I had hoped.
IV. Project Reflection
We can create art using mathematics in various ways. For example, instead of simply drawing a circle, you can find the variables needed to create an exact circle. This circle can then be altered and replicated in ways that produce a mathematically accurate circle for, say, the snowman that you are creating. The formulas behind creating an accurate circle, ellipse, hyperbola, or parabola may seem very intimidating. However, by marking the points on any conic, and placing it on an x and y axis, you are visually representing what exactly these formulas are made to produce. This simplifies and clarifies the concept of conics. Personally, I would feel most comfortable reteaching/explaining the mathematics behind the creation of an ellipse. This is simply due to the fact that I spent a full day creating nearly 30 different, mathematically accurate ellipses to assemble my "Ellipsiphant." It's simple for me to understand the idea of manipulating the variables on the x and y axis' to change the proportion of an ellipse. Overall, this project was very enjoyable. I really liked how much artistic freedom we were given. Not only that, but I also am glad that I was able to use math to create a piece of art that I am proud of.