A new visual order for prime numbers

Abstract

Months ago I was willing to start a new artistic project with a new thematic. But, affected by the digital era, I foundmyself suspicious about everything. The media we consume, our relationships with others or ourselves . . . It seems like fiction has surpassed reality. Thus, I had to get down to the basics: our planet is real, and so the physics and the time within it. And we humans have created a language in order to understand all of it. That is how looking for something authentic I immersed myself in the world of mathematics. One day, after a conversation about prime numbers with my parents (both mathematicians), I felt an impulse, the need of making a drawing. What would be the result of studying these numbers from an artistic perspective? I drew the numbers doing a spiral form, remarking the prime numbers in a different color. The structure was incredible, the patterns seemed to appear and disappear. It looked like order was fighting against chaos. I started to search for new studies about prime numbers. Within that investigation, I found connections and different points of view. And also that the amazing structure I drew was no original. A famous mathematician Stanislaw Ulam had already drawn the same spiral in 1963 (Weisstein). The discovery upset me for a while, but I kept working and experimenting. From the artistic field I happily broke again into Esther Ferrer’s work. Years ago I had been amazed by the similarity of Perfiles (Ferrer, 1982) and my previous project (Un)conscious Moments (Ontiveros Robles). It was an amazing feeling to now meeting her Prime Number Poems. It was like walking a path that she had already walked.