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French artist-juggler Adrien Mondot will be presenting, today 5pm at the Villa Villa Hall in CCR, his acclaimed performances “reTime/kronoscop” and “Fausses Notes & Chutes de Balles”, which blend his talent for juggling with technology. Both shows can be enjoyed again on Saturday at 3pm. Following the performance Mondot will give a brief talk on how a simple use of mathematics and physics can be a tool for visual poetry.

“Digital art is a wonderful tool for exploration. It enables you to do certain things that would be impossible to do otherwise. I make use of digital juggling in order to explore new ways to juggle”, the artist told newspaper Página/12 in 2008, on the occasion of his appearance with the show “Convergence 1.0” at the Festival Internacional del Mercosur in the Argentine city of Córdoba

MATbaires 09’s admission-free permanent exhibition will be running Friday, Saturday and Sunday between 2pm and 10pm, featuring the Murals (LINE A: applications of mathematical tools, LINE C: curiosities, LINE G: geometry, LINE H: history, LINE V: visualisations); an art gallery exhibiting works by Alexander Holroyd, “Matrimonios” and “Epidemia”; and the video screening of two works by Mariano Sardon: the interactive installations “Libros de Arena” and “Cultivos Estocásticos”.

Likewise, artist Mariana Arroupe will display her work “Instrucciones para Encontrar el Tiempo”, which makes use of different techniques and media. Additionally, the group of artists Obras en Papel will present “Caja Sellada”, with the pieces entirely made of paper “El Libro de los Sellos”, “Los Pliegos” and “Relieves de Golem”.

The first edition of the Mathematics Festival MATbaires 09, organised by the Ministry of Culture of the government of the city in the different areas of Centro Cultural Recoleta, opened yesterday night at the Cronopios hall of the CCR.

Minister of Culture Hernán Lombardi was in charge of the presentation. Before an attentive audience, Lombardi stressed the fact that this festival was born out of the charm and utility of mathematics in our everyday lives and wished “to be celebrating in ten years time the tenth edition of the festival”. The minister manifested his pride in having this event added to the city’s festival calendar, broadening its already active cultural offer for locals and visitors.

Prestigious Argentine-American mathematician Gregory Chaitin, a graduate from the University of Buenos Aires, addressed the first conference of the festival, entitled “Paradoxes of Chance”, which lasted little more than 40 minutes. Chaitin, visibly pleased to be attending the event, welcomed his audience and set about discussing the evolution of the conception of mathematics, from the idea of the “perfect science”, able to solve any problem, even without the participation of human beings, to the milestone marked in 1931 by Gödel’s paradox and its statement that “everything I say is a lie, it is not provable”.

The opening ceremony of the first Mathematics Festival MATBaires 09 will take place today at 7pm with the conference entitled “Paradojas del Azar” (Paradoxes of Chance), addressed by prestigious Argentine-American mathematician Gregory Chaitin.

Chaitin, one of the world’s most distinguished scholars in the field, was born in New York of Argentine parents and then moved to Buenos Aires and studied at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), where in 2002 he earned the title of Honorary Professor.

Ever since the sixties his research work has contributed to important discoveries and advances in the science of mathematics, such as the algorithmic information theory and metamathematics.

Today begins the first edition of the Mathematics Festival, to be running until Sunday 10 in the different areas of Centro Cultural Recoleta. The aim of the event, the only one of the sort, is to celebrate the vitality of “the queen of sciences, the queen of arts”, with a programme that combines leisure and learning with a view to further understanding the way mathematics affects, improves and speeds up our daily life.

There will be conferences, workshops, shows, exhibitions, guided tours, games and challenges, as well as prestigious mathematicians from Argentina and the world who were specially invited for the occasion.

The contents of the Festival were devised by the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Natural and Exact Sciences and the Mathematics Section of the Department of Exact Sciences of the Common Basic Cycle of the University of Buenos Aires and are backed by the Unión Matemática Argentina (Argentine Mathematical Union). Shows and activities are free of charge, admission subject to capacity.

Acclaimed Argentine writer (and mathematician) Guillermo Martínez will be presenting, alongside his co-author Gustavo Piñeyro, the book “Gödel para Todos”, this Friday 7pm at the Cronopios Hall in Centro Cultural Recoleta.

Martínez is at present one of the most renowned Argentine writers in the world, thanks to his novels “Acerca de Roderer”, “La Mujer del Maestro” and “Crímenes Imperceptibles” (awarded the Planeta Argentina Award in 2003, later brought to the screen by Alex de la Iglesia under the title “Los Crímenes de Oxford” in 2008).

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is one of the deepest, most paradoxical results of mathematical logic. It is also, perhaps, the theorem that has aroused the greatest amount of fascination in fields unrelated to exact sciences: it has been quoted by such diverse disciplines as semiotics and psychoanalysis, philosophy and political science”, reads the introduction to “Gödel para Todos”, recently published by Seix Barral.

The films “A Beautiful Mind” and “Moebius”, to be screened as stated in the catalogue at the Microcine room of Centro Cultural Recoleta on 8 May at 5pm and 9 May at 6.30 respectively, have been rescheduled thus: “A Beautiful Mind” is to screen at the same venue on Friday 8 at 6.30pm (to be followed by a debate-talk) and “Moebius” is brought forward to the same Friday at 5pm.

These talks, aimed at an audience with some level of scientific knowledge, will be carried out at the Microcine room on Saturday 9 May from 2pm.

Times, topics and speakers will be as follows: at 2.30pm, Luis Caffarelli will be presenting “Fully Nonlinear Equations for Nonlocal Diffusions”, setting out the main steps of the theory and an outline of the demonstration of Evans-Krylov theorem. At 3.30pm will be the turn of Gregory Chaitin (also responsible for the Festival’s Opening Conference) with “What is a Scientific Theory? From Leibniz to Gödel”. By the end of the activity, at 4.30pm, Jorge Lauret will address his “Geometry in Four Dimensions and Poincaré Conjecture”, seeking to make sense of the statement of the conjecture word by word. The talk will be geared towards scientists not necessarily in the field of mathematics.

The first edition of Matbaires has taken up the challenge to bridge the gap between science and everyday life by means of a Festival with a programme of first-rate academic level in which mathematics will express itself through the most varied disciplines, so that everyone can appreciate the beauty of this science, regardless of their personal interests.

Matbaires09 is due to be launched on Thursday 7 May with an Opening Conference by Gregorio Chaitin, later to offer three days of entertainments, games, conferences, films, performances, magic shows and plenty more, all of which to take place in eight different areas of Recoleta Cultural Centre.

The Festival hours will be from 2pm to 10pm on 8, 9 and 10 May and visitors can take part in all activities and shows through our guided visits, to be coordinated daily at the Meeting Point. There will be games and challenges for all kinds of audiences, board games and open-air Giantgames that represent an opportunity to learn new mathematical theories by putting them into practice in an enjoyable way. Matbaires 09 will also offer a permanent exhibition of murals where art and image will open the door to reflection on different aspects of the history, applications and curious facts of mathematics.

In addition, the Festival will boast the presence of internationally renowned scientists who will be addressing conferences on their particular fields geared towards the general public, and there will also be talks aimed at the scientifically learned. Among them are Gregorio Chaitin, Luis Caffarelli, Marco Avellaneda and John Allen Paulos, who will shed light on astonishing connections between this science and other disciplines.

Also within the framework of the Festival, on Saturday 9 we will experience the May Olympiad, organised by the Ibero-American Federation of Mathematics Competitions and the Argentinian Mathematical Olympiad. The Closing Conference will be addressed by prestigious scientist John Allen Paulos and will deal with the significant relationship existing between maths and the news in the press.