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Edmund Harriss will be at IMéRA from May 2020 to June 2020 for the research project entitled "Learning behind the Maths : Art, education, communication", of which he gives a description below. He explores creating art through mathematics and teaching and researching  mathematics through art and visualisation, as well as developing the  institutional connections between art and mathematics in Marseille. Edmund Harriss is Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Arkansas.  Edmund Harriss is a mathematician and mathematical  artist, driven by a passion to communicate the beauty and utility of  mathematical thinking beyond the discipline. Last year he published  "Patterns of the Universe" a bestselling coloring book of images drawn  from across mathematics.  His mathematical research is in discrete geometry studying the structure  of tilings and patterns, themes that also influence his artwork.  He was resident from the August 21st 2017 to the January 16th 2018 with the research project : Making Mathematics and the Mathematics of Making. All his biography and his IMéRA 2017 project here. Learning behind the Maths : Art, education, communication - By Edmund HarrissThis work is a direct development of my work as an IMéRA fellow, and the conference "The Mathematical Feeling of Space" held during that time, both in collaboration with Pierre Arnoux (Institut de Mathématiques de Marseille, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, France).The central idea is to consider the intuitions and understanding that mathematicians (and others) process in order to both use and create technical mathematics. This intuition comes from many sources, but we focus on the possibilities of visual and spatial models and animations to illustrate a wide variety of mathematical ideas from students in University courses through mathematics graduates and mathematical research. This work has lead to artworks at CIRM, been shown at events like the International Congress of Mathematics, and received 1000s of views on Youtube In the autumn of 2019 we will both be part of a semester on Illustrating Mathematics that will take place at ICERM, a research institute that is part of Brown University in Rhode Island.List of Youtube videos :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJflV_GUpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsGUEj4w9Cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aFcgATW9Mwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLrliPt4Uc0&#160;also in French:&#160;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZTUlTiVp_8Wewill discuss below several of the projects that would be developed during afurther month in Marseille.Videos Illustrating the behaviour of lattices deformations(grids)This summer we released the first of a series of videos that shows the behaviours possible when a grid is smoothly deformed, so that it remains a grid. As you can possibly work out from this description this is not something that can be shown easily with words alone, yet it is a central example that relates to many areas of advanced mathematics. The best description is perhaps the video itself, available both in French and English.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLrliPt4Uc0&#160;also in French:&#160;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZTUlTiVp_8https://youtu.be/vLrliPt4Uc0Thisvideo was the result of work begun during my IMéRA fellowship, and we alreadyhave a lot of content and ideas for further videos that we will be able tocreate during a further stay.Thisconcept can be illustrated through animations, and lies at the heart of manyareas of mathematics, such as Harmonic analysis, the study of how the powerfulsystem of waves given by trig functions can be generalised to different spaces.It is also a key example in Dynamical systems, and links to questions in Numbertheory and Geometry.Theultimate goal is to show concretely an abstract space known for more than acentury, the modular surface, with its own geometry, which parametrises theshapes of lattices; this has been widely generalised, and the notion of a spaceof modules is now pervasive in many areas of mathematics; a deep understandingof this first non trivial example, which can be obtained in an intuitive way,is thus an important step in understanding what mathematicians try to do.Thegoal for the videos is two-fold; firstly to help the small audience of studentsstudying this material to more easily grasp the key understandings thetechnical material that controls the behaviour. Secondly to reveal to a farlarger audience the beauty and power of mathematical ideas, and how they canlink up seemingly very different ideas. This is in much the same way that aperformance of a symphony can inspire both music students interested inperforming the work themselves and a wider group who can appreciate the beautybut would need significant work to create the performance themselves.The shape of bent ribbonsInthe 17th century Bernoulli asked the question of the shape created by a bentelastic rod. In other words if I take any bar that can bend elastically (sothat it reverts to its original shape on release) such as a metal rod and putforce on the ends, what shape will it take.This problem was solved by Euler, who in the process created the powerful mathematical technique of Variational Methods (a version of Calculus which can look at how whole curves move and change shape, rather than just points).Arelated question asks about the shape formed by a thin strip, for example astrip of paper. As this bends and twists it gives a surface moving along acurve. Again this is a far easier concept to visualise than to explain, andrelates to the important concept of a "frame" on a curve or surface,a coordinate system that works well with the geometry of the curve or surfaceat that point. This concept is central to much of multivariate calculus anddifferential geometry two notoriously hard subjects that are at the foundationof modern physics.Usingmodels (both physical and on the computer) we can ask the question of whatshape these ribbons take when the end points are held fixed, but the ribbon isotherwise relaxed.Mental Representation ofmathematics in an Undergraduate course.Thefirst courses in mathematics are, in most countries, a major stumbling block atthe beginning of science studies. The rate of failure for these courses is veryhigh, and even students who succeed do not really get the meaning of thesecourses. One probable cause for these failures is that, for most students,mathematics reduces to pure formalism, without any connection to concretereality, and in fact without real meaning.Yet, it is possible to give very concrete problems, apparently devoid ofmathematics, which lead in a rather easy way to concepts as Pythagorean triplesor commensurable numbers, and to a sequence of questions and problems ofincreasing difficulties.We have set up a sequenceof courses using this idea; we intend to develop this sequence (this will neednew ideas), and also, which is more difficult, to measure the efficiency ofthis method, compared to traditional lectures, for the teaching of some basicconcepts (such as classical algebraic identities) to first year students.Mathematical ArtThegreat strength of art is the ability to communicate beyond the ability of text.This provides a great opportunity for mathematical ideas. A goal ofmathematical art is therefore to create the possibility not just to demonstratea mathematical idea but invite the viewer into discovering the deeper ideas forthemselves. We have already begun work to consider this challenge of creatingart objects that welcome investigation and through that mathematical discovery.Examples of such objects are shown below.