Cutting and Sewing Riemann Surfaces in Mathematics, Physics and Clay

TL;DR

This paper presents ceramic artworks inspired by the mathematical theory of Riemann surfaces, illustrating the connection between art, mathematics, and physics through visual representations of complex geometric structures.

Contribution

It uniquely combines artistic ceramic representations with mathematical and physical concepts of Riemann surfaces, highlighting their classification via 'pairs of pants' decompositions.

Findings

Ceramic artworks visually depict Riemann surface structures.

The paper links artistic process with mathematical classification.

Brief mention of related physics problem.

Abstract

A series of ceramic artworks are presented, inspired by the author's research connecting theoretical physics to the beautiful theory of Riemann surfaces. More specifically the research is related to the classification of curves on the surfaces based on a description of them as built from basic building blocks known as "pairs of pants". The relevant background on this mathematics of these two dimensional spaces is outlined, some of the artistic process is explained: Both the conceptual ideas and their implementation. Many photos of the ceramics are included to illustrate this and the connected physics problem is briefly mentioned.