Art + Math make a GROVI connection

Creative ingenuity at the faculty level and across Franklin units provides the spark for an innovative new partnership – and the NSF support to expand the collaboration:

Designer and artist Moon Jung Jang met mathematician David Gay through the UGA Arts Collaborative, a research incubator that encourages collaboration across the arts and sciences, and between the university and the Athens community. Since 2017, the two professors have engaged in design workshops, co-taught an interdisciplinary course, and curated a student exhibition weaving mathematics and design. 

In 2020, UGA awarded Gay and Jang with the Creative Teaching Award, recognizing their “excellence in developing and implementing creative teaching methods to improve student learning.” Their innovative pedagogy culminated most recently in GROVI (Geometry, Research, Outreach and Visualization Initiative). GROVI (pronounced “groovy”), an umbrella for a variety of creative projects that will involve students and faculty in math and design, is funded by a recently-awarded five-year National Science Foundation grant for the Geometry and Topology group.

Jang’s research in parsing visual languages for multiple and transforming narratives fits closely with the knotted diagrams of Gay’s research in the field of topology. 

“I have been interested in the simultaneous, multiple existences of something, contradictory ideas about unseen things, and their information in everyday life,” said Jang, associate professor of graphic design at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. “Finding patterns of objects and anticipating their behaviors are the keys to building visual narrative systems. Dave is a storyteller who discovers narratives of objects, imagining their potential transformations in topology. Our collaborations aim to uncover memorable expressions to reach more audiences.”

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Image: Professor Dave Gay (right) discusses the Spacing Out exhibition during the opening. Photo courtesy of Sidney Chansamone.