#42 - Abstraction, Art, Essence, Usefulness, and Meaning

About abstraction, mathematics, problem—solving and ambiguity, definitions, computer science, essence and the removal of superficiality, zooming out, art and creativity, the difference between simplicity and universality, Aleksandar Krajinović and Mark Rothko (and the problem of painting a square), language, distillation and precision versus vagueness and simplification, art and relatability, modernism and ornamentation, religion, meaning, rooting oneself in one’s world, music and beauty, creativity and self—expression, usefulness, Learning Sciences, teaching math, and the meaningfulness in meaninglessness.  Maja Malmcrona (@majamalmcrona) is a contemporary artist from Sweden, based in Switzerland. Her work is of a highly visceral nature, characterised by an open—ended process of experimentation and mistake. Julia Chatain (@thediverter_) is a doctoral student in Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. She is fascinated by the role of concreteness in mathematics education and, in particular, she explores how our bodies can help develop intuition about abstract concepts. Recorded in Zürich on December 11, 2021. http://majamalmcrona.com http://instagram.com/majamalmcrona https://juliachatain.com/  https://twitter.com/JuliaChatain https://thediverter.online/ https://twitter.com/TheDiverter https://www.instagram.com/thediverter_/