GEOMETRY
A literary evening of ‘real-world’ mathematics scenarios with Billy Mullaney
A spoken-word performance that draws from an unexpected source: the geometry textbook from which he used to teach. Taking the language of mathematical problems as both script and score, Mullaney transforms a pedagogical tool into a theatrical event. Unfolding across a succession of exercises and chapters, the performance traces the peculiar scenarios through which geometry attempts to model the world.
Delivered in a deadpan style, ‘GEOMETRY’ treats the language governing quadrilaterals, transversals and combinatorics as a form of found poetry. Instructions, calculations and hypothetical situations accumulate into a strange portrait of reality, one in which people continually have absurd problems that need solving, their lives governed by the promise that every one of these problems has a solution and every solution can be demonstrated. As the exercises unfold, the work exposes the gap between mathematical problem-solving and the more unruly conditions of lived experience, asking what it means to seek congruence between abstract systems and the world they claim to describe.
A literary evening of ‘real-world’ mathematics scenarios with Billy Mullaney
A spoken-word performance that draws from an unexpected source: the geometry textbook from which he used to teach. Taking the language of mathematical problems as both script and score, Mullaney transforms a pedagogical tool into a theatrical event. Unfolding across a succession of exercises and chapters, the performance traces the peculiar scenarios through which geometry attempts to model the world.
Delivered in a deadpan style, ‘GEOMETRY’ treats the language governing quadrilaterals, transversals and combinatorics as a form of found poetry. Instructions, calculations and hypothetical situations accumulate into a strange portrait of reality, one in which people continually have absurd problems that need solving, their lives governed by the promise that every one of these problems has a solution and every solution can be demonstrated. As the exercises unfold, the work exposes the gap between mathematical problem-solving and the more unruly conditions of lived experience, asking what it means to seek congruence between abstract systems and the world they claim to describe.
GEOMETRY is a collection of poetry generated by appropriating the "real world" exposition from geometry word problems.
The first volume takes material from Glencoe McGraw-Hill 2010 edition of Geometry without permission.
The first volume takes material from Glencoe McGraw-Hill 2010 edition of Geometry without permission.