If only homework could be this soothing: A collaborative art project by Robert Valenza, the W.M. Keck Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, and Nancy Macko, chair of the art department at Scripps College, uses the sights and sounds of the beach to communicate the power of prime numbers. Called Prime Deserts, the project --- which includes four separate but related pieces --- is on exhibit through Saturday, April 12 at the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery on the Cal Poly Pomona campus.

“The work itself is successful on every level, whether or not you understand the mathematical concepts,” says Mary MacNaughton, director of the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, where she also serves as an associate professor of art history. “With this exhibit, you have this kind of transporting experience that takes you to another world.”

In math, a prime desert refers to the sometimes long sequence of whole numbers in which no primes occur. Says Macko, “We wanted to use the metaphor of nature to talk about highly sophisticated mathematical concepts.”

To view the collaboration, guests to the Kellogg gallery must pass through the curtained doorway of a large, dim room, and upon entering, have the immediate sensation they’ve stumbled onto the beach. The center wall, through the magic of a large-scale video projection, is a spread of sand and crashing ocean waves. Every now and then, parts of a classical formula that governs the large-scale distribution of primes emerge in sequence, out of the ocean, and then reappear as a full formula in a kind of grand finale.

To the east and west of the ocean wall rest two more extensions of Prime Deserts. One work, Prime Starfield, is a wall painted graphite gray, on which Valenza and Macko affixed a series of vinyl decals whose clustered positions symbolize math’s tendency toward aesthetic abstraction. On the opposite wall, painted white, Valenza and Macko affixed more clusters of colored reinforcements in a piece titled Prime Clusters, with each cluster equaling a prime number.

Valenza, who began working on Prime Deserts with Macko last summer, says the latter wall was the most creative and time-consuming to construct. “It was very much a non-verbal process,” he says. “We’d each put something up, then step back and look at it. What’s interesting is that we both started with such different styles, but by watching and understanding each other's methods, we were able to converge on a common approach.”

The fourth extension of Prime Deserts is more modest in scale: a computer monitor that loops through a series of images and backdrops and a final constellation of icons that equals a prime number.

Valenza says the entire collaboration was not unlike building a house. “First you have the preliminary design, then the prototypes and the revisions,” he says. “It was great fun and I learned so much just by working with Nancy.” Within their hundreds of hours worth of conversations, “we’d talk about what was possible in an engineering sense, and what was possible in an artistic sense. I certainly had no monopoly on the engineering side,” Valenza said.

“Understanding the mathematical ideas embedded in the piece make it even more meaningful,” MacNaughton says. “It is really a wonderful example of truly interdisciplinary work, which we often talk about but seldom see.”

Prime Clusters: About the wall of patterns sitauted left of the ocean, "This is the most creative of the three pieces," says Robert Valenza, the W.M. Keck Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at CMC. "Nancy (Macko) and I each spent about 16 hours on that particular wall. We came in without a template, and made it on-the-fly. It really was a non-verbal process."

Prime Starfield: Assembling this white-on-black wall was easier than setting up the clusters, because the patterns in this piece are based on natural data, Valenza says.

The aggregate formula for prime numbers travels up the wall, as ocean waves crash along the horizon.

Elsewhere in the room, a computer screen loops through a series of icons and colorful backdrops in rhythmic succession. The ending accumulations in each constellation always equal a prime number.