Event 2: "Infinity Structures: Paradoxical Spaces" by Robert Gero

Styrofoam structures look to be expanding.

Robert Gero's "Infinity Structures: Paradoxical Spaces" was a pleasent and interesting look into the imagination of an artist who grapples with mathematical questions. His exhibit was a small room with highly angular styrofoam structures folding and protruding from all the walls. Projections of similar angular shapes flashed across the structures, walls, and people. An erie yet calming soundtrack played in the background consisting of white noise, long sustained tones, and odd clicks and bleeps. Pillows rested on the styrofoam structures and Gero stood in the middle of the room and explained his ideas. The room was supposed to feel like one of his mysterious infinity structures. As an art exhibit I thought it was interesting but mathematically, although raising interesting questions, I felt it was laking in structure.



His idea is an interesting one; he believes there exists the infinity structures which are paradoxical in that they have solid non-expanding walls while the insides have some sort of infinity expanding material. I'm not quite sure where he got this idea from, he seems to have drawn from something Libinez said, although he admits there is no proof or even tractable suggestion that these structures exist, besides apparently his own imagination. To me it seems to not be thought out very well; what are these structures made from? Where will we find them? But there are really two big problems I have with his idea, and maybe he has a response for these but I did not have a chance to ask him.

Gero (middle) explains his exhibit.

Pillows that are supposed to bring a sense of reality.

Firstly I don't believe it's wise to start with a mathematical idea and then extrapolate it to a physical reality. Mathematics and Physics work the opposite way, you start with an observation and then develop the Math to describe it. Math on it's own is not science, it's just a language, and those who study Math usually deal with abstract ideas for purely the purpose of developing abstract ideas, or describing some physical phenomena, not for discovering a new unobserved physical phenomena. The one exception I can think of is String Theory which is a mathematical theory (that the universe is made of super tiny objects that can be described by wave equations) which predicts the fundamental laws of physics. String Theory is far from being accepted by everyone and may never be confirmed because of it abstraction. Second, if this object does exist, then it's not a paradox. I suppose that's rather subjective, but I believe that calling something a paradox implies that the situation cannot exist in real life, other wise you would be breaking some physical or logical law (or our physical/logical laws are flawed, which would be a big stretch for him to imply based on the fact that we don't know if this structure exists). Besides all these gripes it was still an interesting exhibit and I would recommend it to a friend.