John Sharp
February 12, 2011
Presenter
John Sharp is Visiting Fellow at London Knowledge Lab. His careers have included analytical chemistry and technical authoring software and hardware manuals. He also taught geometry and art in adult education around London. He has written widely on mathematics and art and spoken at conferences on the subject. He is well known for his Sliceform paper sculptures and his books on the subject have been taken up by many other people as a Google search on the web shows. He was also the illustrator of the
Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry by David Wells.
With Dr Phillip Kent, John coordinates LKL's monthly Maths-Art seminar. He was a local organiser in 2006 for the international conference, Bridges London 2006: Mathematical connections in art, music and science, which took place at the Institute of Education.
John is the editor of Infinity, Tarquin Publications recreational mathematics magazine, and an associate editor of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts. He published numerous teaching articles in Mathematics Teaching, Micromath, Mathematical Gazette, Mathematics in School, International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology,and For the Learning of Mathematics.
Books:
Mathematical Form: John Pickering and the Architecture of the Inversion Principle
Sliceforms: Mathematical models from paper sections
Surfaces: Explorations with Sliceforms
About the project
Sliceforms are mathematical models made from paper sections.
From the book: "Pictures of sliceforms do not show their full beauty. Only by making and physically handling the models can their true dynamic qualities be fully appreciated." There is a
Sliceforms group on Flickr. Also see
John's Sliceform Blog.
D-Forms are made by connecting simple shapes with equal perimeters, or parts of the same shape to itself.
Anamorphosis is different from perspective transformation. It is good practice for understanding coordinate systems and exploring spatial awareness.
John Sharp and James Hunt set up
a discussion group for anamorphic art. John also has a web page summarizing
his work on anamorphic art. Here is a video with an example:
Bridges Conference on mathematics and art began in Kansas in 1998. Since then it has traveled to cities in North America and Europe, and has attracted participants from over 25 countries. The conference features invited speakers, full and short paper presentations, educational workshops, and a juried art exhibition. John organised the conference in London in 2006 with Phillip Kent and they now run a
a monthly seminar in London.
