Electronic String Art: Rhythmic Mathematics

String art is a well-known and popular activity that uses string, a board, and nails to produce artistic images (although there are variations that use different modalities). This activity is beloved because simple counting rules are used to create beautiful images that can both adorn walls and excite young minds. The downside of this highly tactile activity is that it is quite time-consuming and rigid. By contrast, electronic string art offers much more flexibility to set up or change nail locations and counting rules, and the images created from those changes change instantaneously.

Electronic String Art: Rhythmic Mathematics invites readers to use the author’s digital resources available on the ESA website to play with the parameters inherent in string art models while offering concise, accessible explanations of the underlying mathematical principles regarding how the images were created and how they change. Readers will have the opportunity to create visually beautiful works of art while learning concepts from geometry, number theory, and modular arithmetic from approximately 200 short-interdependent sections.