Conform! Winner of Berlin Short Film Festival 2015
How can you make good flat maps of the round earth?' Our story begins with Mercator's world map of 1569, the first angle-preserving (or 'conformal') world map. His idea fell on fruitful soil, from which a new branch of mathematics has developed. The movie shows some of the highlights of this development, yielding a series of elegant visual forms which arise as 'conformal maps' on a variety of surfaces in 2- and 3-D. Featuring non-technical language, a simple aesthetic, compelling animation, and an original score, the movie builds an accessible bridge from everyday experience to a beautiful but little-known mathematical theory that continues to bear technological fruit today in fields such as computer graphics and architecture.
- Date: 10.07.2015, 09:53
About Conform!
Mathematics is often considered a dry and abstract subject. Mathematicians, however, know better. This movie arose out of an impulse of Prof. Alexander Bobenko to present the results of his research group at the Technical University Berlin in a form suitable for understanding by interested laymen as well as professional mathematicians. That content bears the general name of conformal maps, and had its start in the cartography of the Age of Exploration. The project began in 2012, when Prof. Bobenko recruited visualization expert Charles Gunn to be in charge of the technical implementation of the movie. They were assisted by a team of experts including Prof. Boris Springborn (theory of conformal maps, script), Stefan Sechelmann (conformal software), Luis Vera (music), and Helene Seidl (sound editor).
Click here for more information about the conform film project.