Last year we provided a submission to the Smith Review into post-16 mathematics, based on our experience running Fine Art Maths Centre for over 3 years. The five-page document is available here – it starts with some background on FAMC and then addresses the specific review questions. Extracts: If more students are to engage with […]
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Profile: Lauren Maxey

Lauren Maxey is a graduate of the BA Fine Art programme who studied FAMC’s introductory programming course. In this post she introduces the work she exhibited for the degree show, ‘Murmuration’. This work explores the alternate familiarities of natural existences both abstract and scientific, exploiting how science has codified our existence to make it comprehensible, […]
Profile: Neus Torres Tamarit
Biomorpha (Evolving Structures) is a digital interactive installation created by Neus Torres Tamarit in collaboration with computer scientist Ben Murray as her final project for the MA Art and Science. It explores evolutionary interactions between an organism and its environment. A digital lifeform resides within a landscape of evolutionary pressure to which it is well […]
Profile: Nicolas Strappini
This is a guest post by graduating MA Art & Science student Nicolas Strappini — see more of his work at nicolasstrappini.com. I have recently completed the MA Art and Science course at Central Saint Martins. For my degree show, I wanted to present work that mapped and visually traced a variety of processes including […]
Parameterized Video
This term, for the first time, we used some video in our introductory Processing class. This came from requests from students; I admit I hadn’t really played much with this part of Processing. I was actually pretty impressed by how fast it is. It even works, up to a point, for carrying out real-time transformations […]
Three Pillars of the Digital
In the autumn, Fine Art Maths Centre will be running a series of talks and workshops designed to demystify some key aspects of the digital world. In the process, we hope to provoke discussion about what might count as “digital literacy” in the present. It’s a cliché to point out that the present generation has […]
Moiré Patterns
Moiré patterns occur when two images — usually simple geometric ones — are overlaid and “interfere” with each other. The result is a ghostly third image that can be surprisingly complex. In many graphical processes moiré is an undesirable phenomenon that technicians work hard to avoid, but it’s also been produced deliberately, as in so-called […]
The Secret Life of Equations
In the first edition of A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking famously averred that “Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales”. This seems to be a common view among publishers of maths books for a general audience: too many symbols will frighten people off. Equations make […]
Isometry at the Qingming Festival
“Along the River During the Qingming Festival” (清明上河圖) is a 12th-century painting by Zhang Zeduan. It is often cited as an example of isometric perspective, although the painting in fact skillfully mixes different perspective techniques to produce an overall effect that could never be seen by a single person. The word “isometry” is made of […]
Two Public Courses
This year we’re offering two courses to the public, based on the Fine Art Maths Centre’s work with Central Saint Martins students. Geometry Through Drawing is a week-long intensive course starting 5 September, and Coding for Creatives is a practical introduction to programming for complete beginners that will run through the autumn on Monday evenings. […]