Abstract: For the German Year of Mathematics 2008 the MFO developed the interactive traveling exhibition IMAGINARY. Its intention is to communicate mathematics to a broad public by displaying visualizations, interactive installations, 3D objects and their theoretical background in algebraic geometry and in singularity theory in an understandable manner. In this talk we introduce the philosophy and program structure of the MFO and the concept and software of IMAGINARY, which is followed by a demonstration of the program SURFER, a real-time ray-tracer for algebraic visualizations.

I will mainly talk about how Mathematics can be communicated and how we did it for our traveling exhibition, giving many samples of for example algebraic surfaces or showing our software programs. By experience this is very interesting for mathematicians. It is important though, that the audience does not expect a talk on research topics.

Coffee will be served at 12:00 before the lecture
at Schreiber building 006