A Celebration of Mind: Mathematics, Art, and Magic

Martin Gardner was considered one of the preeminent magicians of the 20th century, an expert on Lewis Carroll, a magician, and the creator of recreational mathematics. Every year, mathematicians, magicians, and artists gather from around the country for Celebration of Mind to play, perform, and provoke the pleasures of mathematics, perception, and illusion‚all in the spirit of Gardner. The Celebration of Mind at Stanford includes an artist, a magician, and a mathematician, who will lead an aesthetically and delightfully entertaining evening of performances in a lively and lightly mathematical setting. Alexa Meade, Artist Alexa Meade is unlike any other artist; she paints on people, turning them into living, breathing portraits. Meade creates the illusion of a world where 2D and 3D become one. She has many examples of mathematically inspired work building on ideas of illusion, patterns, and self-reference. Mark Mitton, Magician Mark Mitton is a professional magician who is fascinated by the way magic can help us understand how we see the world. In addition to creating magic for film, TV, and theater, he has extensively explored themes of perception and misdirection from an interdisciplinary standpoint. Mitton’s work finds provocative connections between magic and mathematics. Tadashi Tokieda, Mathematician Tadashi Tokieda is a professor of mathematics at Stanford who explores how ordinary objects can exhibit extraordinarily puzzling behavior. These objects, Tokieda’s toys, reveal surprises of mathematics and physics in ways that cultivate our curiosity and captivate our imagination.