Dalibraic topology

Abstract

One of my homework problems as a graduate student included the task of finding all the path-connected covers of a certain topological space X. During a lecture by Thomas Banchoff, my friend and I discovered that the universal cover of our space X was front and centre in a painting by Salvador Dalí! The painting, ‘Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)’, features a 4D object unfolded in 3D. This inspired me to create my own mathematical artwork. Using ideas from catastrophe theory, I turned Dalí's last painting into a truly 4D object which provides a new and beautiful interpretation of that artwork. The new interpretation reveals hidden rotational/reflectional symmetries and highlights the implied 3- and 4-dimensional worlds that the painted curves naturally live in. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT