CCWM X SMRI: Maths at the Museum

Saturday March 15 from 12 – 4pm
Sunday March 16 from 12 – 4 pm

The official theme of the International Day of Mathematics in 2025 is “Mathematics, Art, and Creativity”. The Sydney Mathematics Research Institute and the Chau Chak Wing Museum will collaborate to mark the occasion with a special fun-filled family weekend. We will explore creativity in mathematics with talks, panels, children’s activities and performances across the weekend in the Chau Chak Wing Museum.
An integrated program of activities will run across the weekend, with participating artists and activities confirmed below.

ARIA-Nominated Ensemble Offspring are an innovative 8-part band known for performing at MONA FOMA, Sydney Festival and Melbourne Festival over their 23-year history. This will be a combined lecture-recital, with commentary from mathematician Artem Pulemotov and musicologist Denis Collins, who work at the interface of mathematics and music.

As this event will be popular, there is a small charge ($5) to reserve your spot

The performance will run both afternoons 12.30 – 2 pm (doors open 12.15 pm). Suitable for anyone 15 years and older.

Over the weekend, visitors will contribute to a collaborative artwork by Brisbane-based artist Briony Barr using paper and washi tape. This body of work, ‘Drawing on Complexity’ uses rule-based drawing and social dynamics to model complex adaptive systems, and has been designed in collaboration with physicist Andrew Melatos.

Saturday 15th March

12:30 Henry Segerman & Rizal Muslimin, Shape-finding and Shape-solving in Architecture and Maths.

13:15 Sabetta Matsumoto, Purls of wisdom: geometry & topology in weavables, wearables and wallpaper

14:15 Briony Barr, Explainer: Drawing on Complexity

15:00 Katherine Seaton, Hitomezashi Mathematics
Hitomezashi is a form of stitching that originated in Edo period Japan. It is also now recognised as a form of mathematical fibre art or generative drawing. How can we stitch mathematics? The answer is using patterns, randomness or codes. But then we look at our stitching, and we find even more mathematical questions to consider.

Sunday 16th March

12:30 Katherine Seaton, Hitomezashi Mathematics
Hitomezashi is a form of stitching that originated in Edo period Japan. It is also now recognised as a form of mathematical fibre art or generative drawing. How can we stitch mathematics? The answer is using patterns, randomness or codes. But then we look at our stitching, and we find even more mathematical questions to consider.

13:15 Sabetta Matsumoto, Purls of wisdom: geometry & topology in weavables, wearables and wallpaper

14:15 Jared Field and Sabetta Matsumoto, A conversation about weaving, maths, and fibre engineering (Moderated by Catherine Meister)

15:00 Briony Barr, Explainer: Drawing on Complexity

Get creative with a variety of maths craft activities – from making ‘origami fidget spinners’ to beautiful line art and much more, these activities use mathematical concepts to make interesting and beautiful works, many of which you can take home!

Make your own flexagon

Flexagons are like the fidget spinners of the origami world; constructed of folded paper, they reveal hidden faces when the paper is flexed.

Line art

Follow simple patterns to create colourful artwork using yarn or pen. This activity explores how you can use straight lines to form curves resulting in beautiful intricate designs.

3D Fractals

Fractals are mathematical objects built from repeated copies of themselves. Visitors will construct units that will then be combined to build two large-scale objects: a Menger Sponge and a 3D Sierpinski triangle.

Weird tiling

We see tiling everywhere – there’s almost certainly some in your bathroom. All the pieces fit neatly together to cover the surface. In this tiling activity we’ll use a special shape to create some very weird tiling – it covers a surface, but without a repeating pattern.

Sashiko

Sashiko hand-stitching creates different types of lines that form geometric patterns. Visitors will be able to draw their own sashiko patterns using grid paper.