MATEMARTIAMO:MATHS&ARTS COMPETITION

The authors are engaged in interdisciplinary research initiatives of the FDS Laboratory (Formation, Didactics, and Science Communication) of the Mathematics Department of the Politecnico di Milano. The most important aim of the FDS laboratory has always been to contribute at the revaluation of the role which mathematics naturally play in the liberal arts. Historically mathematics always constituted an integral part of the liberal arts, in all meaning, which this term has had through the centuries. Nowadays in the Italian secondary schools, the students still believe that there are two different learning population which have alternative interests and goal: the scientific and the humanistic studies and careers. The connection between Mathematics and Figurative Arts is an argument that only recently had investigated by Italian mathematical researcher and populariser as Bruno D’Amore, Michele Emmer, Mauro Francaviglia, Piergiorgio Odifreddi. However, high school’s teachers, who generally do not exhibit any bias towards the other teaching arguments, develop each of the cultural trails in a separate way, nor do they feel the lack of connections. For many years, as FDS active members, we did many interdisciplinary projects with high school students of different orientations and we are convinced more and more that these experiences contributes significantly to increase the wealth of skills of the students. A chance to experience their creativity by producing an artwork in which they express mathematical laws is the first step towards the enjoyment of mathematics that we want students to feel. Among all the projects we did, the authors realised many educational projects oriented to connect learning experiences of Maths to other educational experiences in Humanities and in Art world. The aim of these interdisciplinary projects is mostly to reach students that are not otherwise be reached and we try to transform their opinions or prejudices about the role of Maths and Arts in the real world. Some of the projects we did provide new challenges for those students already considered successful. The idea to hold a contest on the theme of Art and Mathematics was born in one of our FDS meetings and strengthened through the exchange of experiences had in Tortona during the event of award ceremony of the Competition “Adotta Scienza e Arte nella tua classe”. In 2015-2016, FDS Laboratory published the competition MatemArtiAmo (Math&Arts) for pupils of secondary schools and freshmen of Politecnico di Milano in order to let them experience mathematical concepts by way of artworks’ creation. The contest provided six sections: Painting, Graphics, Photography, Literature, Sculpture and Video. We received one hundred or so artworks, especially in the section of Painting and Graphics. Most of all artworks’ authors went to secondary schools of almost all Italian regions and, in our opinion, some of their artworks are very interesting. The artworks were exhibited at the Politecnico di Milano and many of them were awarded during the ceremony that concluded the exhibition. In this paper, we describe production and operating methods of the contest and we describe the content and the meaning of some prize winning artworks.