Monday, April 10
10:00 p.m.
Islamic Arts Biennale
Western Hajj Terminal, King Abdulaziz International Airport
Location
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Though specialisation separates them today, science and art spring from the same creative root. Pythagoras, the earliest identifiable mathematician, is also the earliest music theorist. Da Vinci worked out perspective as much to portray his numerous inventions as to paint the Mona Lisa. The father of modern science, Galileo, left us poems as well as new moons. Khayyam, Euler, Lomonosov, Goethe, Davy, Herschel, and Morse are among those revered at least as much for their art as for their science in their day.
Verse is presented as a crossroads of analytical and free-associative thought. Verse often begins with a “right-brain” flash but is not delivered without a (usually much longer) passage through a “left-brain” analytical process similar to constrained optimization, in which one attempts to find the best “solution” subject to certain bounds. An Extreme Computing and Applied Mathematician, Professor Keyes claims that this interplay between the two hemispheres is not unique to the arts, but that science, too, is a dual-hemisphere activity and that this helps explain the proclivities of scientists to artistic endeavours and vice versa.
Join this fascinating lecture by Professor David Keyes at the Islamic Arts Biennale, exploring the intersection of mathematics and poetry through an expository presentation on right/left brain theories.
About David Keyes
The child of a librarian mother and inheritor of his grandmother’s piano, David Keyes immersed himself in literature and music at a young age. He studied piano, music theory and composition while participating in orchestra, chorus and musical theatre, wrote short stories, poetry and features for scholastic presses. However, his artistic activities slowed during his engineering studies at college, and halted during the development of his career and family.
In 2005, New York composer Mavis Pan encouraged David, then a professor at Columbia, to return to songwriting and commissioned some lyrics from him, and their collaboration led to the recording of various songs featured globally. Besides two albums of jazz originals, they have written many art songs and choral works, and they work (very occasionally!) on a pair of Broadway-style musicals.
David Keyes is Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science and Director of the Extreme Computing Research Center at KAUST.
About the Islamic Arts Biennale
Curated by a world class team of experts across the fields of architecture, archaeology and anthropology, the Islamic Arts Biennale is a first-of-its kind exhibition that conveys a holistic perspective of the Islamic arts as a living tradition that connects past, present, and future.
About the Office of the Arts
Under the umbrella of The Office of the Provost, the Office of the Arts consists of a visual and performing arts team with a mission to promote art, science and culture in KAUST, the Kingdom, and in the wider global context.
For further information, contact officeofthearts@kaust.edu.sa and follow @KAUST_Arts on social media.