Hi all,

This Fall, I've been teaching artists and designers at the Rhode Island School of Design how to use Mathematica for creative coding and fine art making. I'll be presenting what I've seen from my students at WTC in a couple weeks and put some questions together to learn more about the arts community here and perhaps include some of your responses in my presentation. If you're willing, share your thoughts below. Thanks in advance!

1. Mathematica has a small but active visual arts community. How have you seen the usage of Mathematica as an art medium grow over time? What changes have you seen from your perspective?

2. Whether it's showing off a beautiful pattern or an attempt to capture a more complicated feeling from a unique perspective, we call both results “art”. How do you distinguish art being made in Mathematica between craft art and fine art? What does each share with the greater public?

3. What has surprised you about the ways Mathematica is being used in creative fields like art and design?

4. It doesn’t take long in the Mathematica visual arts community to learn the names of Clayton Shonkwiler, Henry Segerman, Erik Mahieu, and Silvia Hao. What other names or projects come to mind when you think of "Mathematica + Art”?

5. Do you think the practice of art and visual creativity by scientists and mathematicians improves the visual communication standards of the STEM fields as a whole, making us all better at understanding and sharing information visually?

6. [For the Wolfram staff] There is a clear appreciation at Wolfram for aesthetics and design. You can see it in the elegance of powerful functions, in-line equation typesetting, the “Neat Examples” section in documentation, and even the promotion of Mathematica through tweetable code emphasizes patterns and visually interesting graphics. What does art or a more emotive relationship with math and science mean to Wolfram?

7. What other thoughts have these questions brought to the surface for you?