Bridges has a long tradition of “Informal Music Night”, which is more or less a talent show in which participants can share their skills. In some lucky years, Douglas Norton has performed at Informal Music Night. He typically prepares some piano music, substituting his own superb lyrics related to that year’s conference. He has kindly transcribed his lyrics for us, and we offer them here for posterity.
2024 Bridges Richmond
(Tune: (You’re a) Rich Girl by Daryl Hall & John Oates)
Bridges Richmond, we’ve all come so far,
So before you all scatter far away:
Let’s verbify what was fun or funny,
’Cause goodness knows it was quite fun, honey!
Not a hitch, y’all, nothing too bizarre,
There was tons of cool chatter ev’ry day.
’T’sbeen fun, but now before you go too far,
Here’s a memoir.
A domino curve, a gourd
Orchestra, kirigami and metaphor,
Zonohedra, gyroid,
Polyhedral cage, danceability braid,
Even snakes on a plane.
Bridges Richmond, you’re a Hershey bar:
Rich and tasty and sweet in ev’ry way.
Matt Parker’s three titles were quite funny,
Then he appeared on the runway runny.
** [by which I mean smooth and fluid
– I’m quickly running out of substitution
rhymes for “money”…
Then a stitch Hitomezashi style,
Hinterreiter fields and Naiki braids,
One, two, three, tricurves, invertible scarf,
Knot data art.
Ti-links, tiles, “I contain
Multitudes”, rosettes in octagon-shaped frames.
And don’t you know making objects grow,
A machinist that sculpts, art that makes you gulp,
There’s a thrill to it all! Oh
Bridges Richmond, not on NPR
But an all-star outfit anyway.
Almost “goodbye,” we are almost done, we
All gotta fly, seems we’ve just begun! We
Heard the pitch for Bridges volgend jaar
** [“next year” in Dutch]
Because Eindhoven’s not that far away.
Well done, VCU, you’ve set a high bar,
Well done, VCU, you’ve been no clown car,
Well done, VCU, you get a gold star,
You’re a rock star.
And we say, even with rain, still the mood was sunny.
Even that bear was both sad and funny.
Bridges Richmond, it’s Richmond,
Ahh, it’s been rich Richmond, yeah.
’T’sbeen fun, but now we go near and go far,
’T’sbeen fun, but now we go here and go thar,
’T’sbeen fun, but now we all say au revoir;
Say au revoir.
2023 Bridges Halifax
Song 1: Halifax
(Tune: Camelot)
Sierpiński, symmetry, and origami,
“A Hard Day’s Math” (Not really! Just relax!).
We’ve squiggles, whirling tiles, and and Kolakoski
In Halifax.
We’ve stick hyperboloids, rolloids, and oloids;
There’s metaphor, sestina, and syntax;
Embroidery and hyperbolic trochoids
In Halifax.
Halifax! Halifax!
Mosaics, knots, and tiles Truchet.
Plus in Halifax, Halifax,
There’s Calculus crochet.
Art on display and poetry to be read,
Informal music for you to Bronx cheer.
Hear plenaries and tracks,
Workshop or just chillax:
Soak up the Math-Art night and day
Right here in Halifax.
Halifax! Halifax!
Dalhousie University
Here in Halifax, Halifax
Showed no perversity.
Now Bridges ’23 is on the homestretch.
We’ll soon anticipate the one next year.
Here simply are the facts:
Dal U has been the max
For Math-Art-ever-after-ing
Right here in Halifax.
Song 2: Farewell to Bridges Nova Scotia
(Tune: Farewell to Nova Scotia)
The sun is setting in the west.
The music’s flowing informally.
So much math-art has been processed,
And yet we hesitate to flee!
[CHORUS:]
Farewell to Nova Scotia, our Bridges host.
Thanks for days of math-art revelry!
So when we have o’er the land and the briny sea been tossed,
We will ever heave a sigh of sweet memory.
We saw Craig’s aperiodic tiles,
Saw Erik and Marty’s art unfold.
Colin’s math came alive and, of course, delivered smiles;
Sarah’s literary journey was to behold!
[CHORUS]
Lisa’s quill box showed us some Mi’kmaw math;
John’s talk and show had helicones;
Jason took us with the lads through a hard day’s math:
All the plenaries took us to our math-art zones!
[CHORUS]
For four full days, no time to rest:
Technocraft and fashion show and poetry,
Sessions parallel with all sorts of math addressed;
Then Informal Music Night with its strange emcee!
[CHORUS]
[CHORUS]
2022 Bridges Aalto
Song 1: We Are Going Back to Finland
(Tune: Birdland)
Bridges Math and Art is back,
and we are going back
to Finland.
Math and Art will be spectac-
ular as we go back
to Finland.
Art-and-math-o-phile on track
To be insomniac
In Finland.
Math and art will piggyback:
Delight is back on track
In Finland.
Aalto U-
niversity,
Espoo, too,
and Helsinki.
They come through
To wish you
A hearty “Tervetu-
loa!”
Tessellation origami,
Seeing music as geometry,
Magic squares and their symmetry,
Using comics in topology.
Ammann-Beeker tiled ceiling,
Auxetic 3-d weaving,
Polyhedra himmeli-ing;
Vector fields visualizing,
And some game-sonifying.
Synesthesia.
Drill jigs and Escher fishes!
Zellij and polystix-es!
Abelian sandpile quilting blocks,
Drip-painting swarms of robots;
Rubik’s cubes, nice knots,
Chain maille, and a PhoTOP.
Mittens you’d love to flaunt,
Julia vase, rep-tile font;
Brownian-bridged polygons,
Dodocahedron.
Closed surface envelopes,
Deltoidal kaleidoscopes.
Tuning a stiff sawtooth,
Pythagorean lute.
Bridges Math and Art is back,
and we are going back to Finland.
Math and Art will be spectacular
As we go back to Finland.
Art-and-math-o-phile on track
To be insomniac in Finland.
Math and art will piggyback:
Delight is back on track in Finland.
Aalto University,
Espoo, too, and Helsinki.
They come through
To wish you
A hearty “Tervetuloa!”
Song 2: We’re Going to Finland
(Tune: Graceland)
Intermittent cloud breaks sneak
Glimmers of the Bothnian Sea.
The Vantaanjoki ripples like
Bark peeling on a
Silver birch tree.
I’m going to Finland, Finland,
Espoo and Helsinki,
I’m going to Finland,
Art folks and math folks and families,
And we are going to Finland.
My traveling companions are young and old,
Children of the whole wide world.
And I’ve reason to believe
New math-art will be conceived
In Finland.
They tell us they missed ’20 and ’21.
As if I didn’t know that,
As if I didn’t know what we missed.
Online was a nice twist
But the allure of Finland does persist.
And they say together math and art
Are like a window in your heart,
They and we have much to impart.
I’m going to Finland,
Espoo and Helsinki,
I’m going to Finland,
Art folks and math folks and families,
And we are going to Finland.
And my traveling companions
Do Stand Up and Sci Fi.
I’m seeing folding and crochet!
And I’ve reason to believe
This will all be well-received
In Finland.
There’s a woman in New York City
Who wrote a book called Do Not Erase,
And sometimes I think that about
Memory and legacy and say,
Man, don’t make it a null space!
Memories are made in Finland.
I say you take a speck of Schjerfbeck
And add a little Lindelöf.
And that really oughta be enough
For a still life of analysis stuff.
Oooo, in Finland, in Finland
I’m going to Finland.
For reasons I cannot explain
There’s some part of me wants to see
Finland.
And there’s no need to defend;
It’s all reached a lovely end.
Or maybe it just goes on and on.
Maybe I’ve a reason to believe
We all have much received
In Finland.
Ooooo, Finland, Finland,
Thank you to Finland.
2021 Bridges Online: Bridges Math-Art Streamin’
(Tune: medley of California Dreamin’ (CD) and Monday Monday (MM))
(CD)
Start in GatherTown
On the warm-up day.
Then take in some talks,
See art on display.
Stretch outside your norm
Without going away:
Bridges Math-Art streamin’
On two sweet August days!
(MM1)
(Ba da, ba da da da)
(Ba da, ba da da da)
Monday-Tuesday,
Bridges you will see:
Monday-Tuesday has all the math-art
For any devotee!
From Monday morning
Polygon exploring,
Curved-crease origami,
Through Tuesday evening’s
Quite informal musical spree.
(MM2)
Jordan Ellenberg’s (Jordan Ellenberg’s)
Plenary geome-poe-try is fine, yeah!
For Bathsheba Grossman’s Klein
Bottle Opener I pine:
I gotta have one, and make it mine!
(MM1)
Cornerless baskets;
Creative bead crochet;
Tablet weaving, orange peels,
Hinged squares animé.
Miura-ori,
Zonohedra story,
Knots and tilings and seams,
Frieze bracelets, LEGOs,
The Great 96
(Whatever than means!). (It’s just a lyric, Craig.)
(CD)
Gather for John Sharp,
Short films or fashion runway,
Poetry or dance,
Or just a social foray.
Catch the talks you missed
Before they go away.
Bridges Math-Art streamin’
Two fleeting August days!
Bridges Math-Art streamin’
Was Monday and today.
Bridges Math-Art streamin’
Is wrapping up today.
2020: Bridges Nowhere
(Tune: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer)
We’ve had Bridges Linz, Waterloo, Banff, and Alhambra,
Towson, Jyväskylä, London, and Coimbra.
But what will Fate decree for bizarro year twenty-twenty?
Welcome to Bridges Nowhere! There’s no need to rent a room.
No need to book that airfare: sign up for your space in Zoom.
They’ve wrapped up the Proceedings (though we didn’t quite proceed):
Lots of great math/art reading; entertainment guaranteed!
Knotty knits and trefoil knots, steganography,
Virtual reality, fractal cohomology,
Fashion-fold origami, labyrinths and spiroplots,
Lampshade Miura-ori, Morton’s tritangentless knots.
Orbifolds and gyrations, tiles dendritic and Truchet,
Girih and pied-de-poule ones, hyperbolic plane crochet.
Coptic bananas, heptagons, perhaps the plaintive numbers flow;
Hallå STEAM, platonicons, derivision, sgraffito.
Aalto, Espoo, Helsinki, Otaniemi.
Plans wrecked by COVID-19;
Unforeseen, quarantine, more hygiene, please, vaccine!
Very keen to reconvene, back on routine,
Back to the live math-art scene:
Beauty beyond perfection, augmented reality,
Math and art intersection, unveiling infinity!
2019 Bridges Linz: Locus Iste Linz Bridges
“Locus iste” is a sacred motet for four unaccompanied voices, composed by Anton Bruckner in 1869 for the dedication of the Votivkapelle at the New Cathedral in Linz, where he had been a cathedral organist.
Linz and Bridges are Linzertorte sweet.
Math and Art find the perfect place to meet:
(Johannes) Kepler (U) and Ars Electronica.
GeoGebra, geared jitterbugs, and a discrete gyroid;
A fisheye gyrograph and hyperbolic fish to embroid;
Font and weave and Miura fold,
Math + Fashion stunning and bold;
Quest for egg shape that is pure gold;
Mindful, Max, Matisse, and Mandel-maypole.
Puzzling, walkable, fret, and seductive curves;
Hairy Klein bottle you know you all deserve!
Crop circles, florautomata, Cantor cheese.
Linz Bridges: thanks for all of these.
2018 Bridges Stockholm: ABBA Medley
“Waterloo”
Last year at Waterloo I used this tune from ABBA.
Had I known we’d be next in Sweden, I’d have probably delayed. So uncertain what I should do,
I went with a medley for you:
“Dancing Queen”
You can dance or derive,
Having the time of your life.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, div grad curl, golden mean,
Bridges: the Math Art Scene.
Friday night and the lights were low:
Mathrix and Håkan Lidbo.
Gaming? Playing music? What has he done
With Jernberg and Eriksson?
Next Varieté Velociped
Turned the music on its head.
With a night of cool music, everything is fine
It’s time to take a stance:
So when you get the chance …
Join in the Math Art Scene, cool and clean, never byzantine;
Math Art Scene, harmonies and harmonic means, oh yeah! You can dance or derive,
Having the time of your life.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, div grad curl, golden mean,
Bridges: the Math Art Scene.
“Fernando”
Thank you Eve and Bruce and Carlo.
I remember long ago when the Proceedings weren’t so long.
That was Kansas, Eve, Bruce, Carlo.
Reza said the humble off’ring was the work of many hands
One green leaf from a poor dervish
Who may be a prophet in the wilderness.
There are more now, Eve, Bruce, Carlo:
Tiles pentagonal, Truchet, with rhombille knots or rosette kites.
Those creative fields aren’t fallow.
Weaving polyhedra, spirographs, and spiraled sequences,
And I’m not ashamed they’re fun:
Those computationally quite intensive puns.
You’ve more papers than I can conceive!
You’ve read them, Eve, Bruce, Carlo!
Short and regular ones you received
And read them, Eve, Bruce, Carlo!
How’d you ever find the referees
To read them all?
If I’m asked again, I might vamoose –
Not sure, Eve, Bruce, and Carlo.
Probably can’t find a good excuse:
I’m in, Eve, Bruce, and Carlo.
“Mamma Mia”
I’ve been doing just Math since I don’t know when,
So I made up my mind to do Math Art again.
Look at me now, will I ever learn?
I don’t know how but I suddenly lose control:
There’s a fire within my soul.
Just one look and all the formulas ring.
Style and pattern now infuse everything, wo-o-o-oh.
Mamma mia, Math and Art again!
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, you topologist, you.
Yes, I have been Descartes-ed.
Can’t wait to be George Hart-ed.
Why, why did I let van Gogh go?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, life’s more than a Ricci flow.
I’ve tried just intonation and Fibonacci,
Multiplicative groups and some origami.
Mondrian, fractals, and pied-de-poule,
Kaleidoscopes, weaving, beading, and then crochet:
It’s a Math and Art holiday.
Just one look and all the formulas ring.
Style and pattern now infuse everything, wo-o-o-oh.
Mamma mia, Math and Art again!
My my, how can I resist you?
Mamma mia, does it show again?
My my, no apologist, you.
Yes, I have been Descartes-ed.
Can’t wait to be George Hart-ed.
Why, why did I let da Vinci go?
Mamma mia, now I really know,
My my, life’s more than a Ricci flow.
Mamma mia, there’s so much to know,
My my, change your aspect ratio.
“Take A Chance On Me”
If you change your mind and want two combined,
Don’t do Math alone:
Join the Math Art zone.
If you do Art, let me know, spread some Math around.
If you’ve got no place to go with an upper bound,
Math or Art alone feeling monotone?
Do as we condone:
Join the Math Art zone.
Gonna do our very best and it ain’t no lie;
Gotta do as we suggest: try some e and pi.
Take a chance and see
Math and Artistry.
Modular toroids and bisymmetric hendecahedra,
Vibrating wallpaper, windmills and compound parallelohedra.
You know we’ve got
Cheesegraters and the Parthenon, projections with a gnomon:
It’s magic!
Anamorphosis and Möbius, integers that are mysterious:
But by now you know
It’s a dynamo!
Ba ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa
Don’t do Math alone:
Join the Math Art zone!
Ba ba ba ba baa ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa
Don’t do STEM, do STEAM;
Join the Math Art team!
Take a chance and see …
“Knowing Me Knowing You”
No more Bridges laughter;
Just excursion after.
Empty auditorium, tears in my eyes.
Here is where the conf’rence ends, this is goodbye.
Knowing me, knowing you (ah-haa)
Bridges 2018 is through
Knowing me, knowing you (ah-haa)
It’s as intricate as a Smale horseshoe
The exit set is never easy, I know, but it’s time to go:
Flowing free from this crew
’Til our next rendezvous.
Thanks again all of you
’Til our next rendezvous.
2017 Bridges Waterloo
(Tune: Waterloo by ABBA)
My my!
To Waterloo Craig Kaplan did invite us.
Oh yeah!
Exhibits, talks, and workshops did delight us every day.
And with the Proceedings in hand,
We read what we missed on demand!
Waterloo! Fun with some math and typography. Waterloo! Dynamic mapping with saliency. Waterloo! Color and bobbin lace symmetry. Waterloo! Numbers that have personality. Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Waterloo! We’ve met so much at our Waterloo.
My my!
From dichromatic dance to rings a-kissing.
Oh yeah!
The mayor a math major reminiscing, with pink tie.
We weave and meander and walk
With dissonant triskelion blocks.
Waterloo! Pied-de-poule, pegs, and some poetry.
Waterloo! Fractals, inverting infinity.
Waterloo! Islamic patterns and basketry.
Waterloo! Sculpted kinetic geometry.
Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Waterloo! We’ve met so much at our Waterloo.
Temari and Kepler-Poinsots,
A flowsnake and tilings Penrose.
Waterloo! Chords, polychora, and chorus, too.
Waterloo! So much to see; so much still to do.
Yeah, so much still to do, like maybe a video with dogs symmetrically playing vertical pianos using violin bows with lights on them, next to a big glass-blown origami Rube Goldberg device and stuff exploding all over the place, all in zero gravity in a Russian airplane, with precarious quasi-periodic architecture stuff billowing all around, with ordinal linguistic personification by the Morton Salt girl as moon goddess in color-coordinated goggles and tights proving theorems with dance, and an appearance by a small State Farm Insurance truck. Can I get some audio on that? Oh yeah, and a lot of paint flying around. And a squirrel and a rabbit. And an uncheckerable virtual recursive spirograph with an artichoke spinning on a rotograph telephone. And a butter tart and some Smarties for CanCon. Et puis alors quelques mots en français.
Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Wa-, Waterloo! We’ve met so much at our Waterloo.
2016 Bridges Finland: We Honor Here Our Friend Reza Sarhangi
(Tune: Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia”)
We honor here our friend Reza Sarhangi:
Builder of Bridges between Math and Arts.
Providing all a sense that we belong, he
Also built bridges binding all our hearts.
And so the charge to all this gathered throng: we
Create and foster his bridge counterparts.
2015 Bridges Baltimore: Baltimore Blues
(Music by Doug Norton, with some standard blues chords)
Oh I hopped a train in Philly, down the Northeast Corridor.
My brain and my heart need some math and some art, so I’m headin’ to Baltimore.
I’ll see Kelly and Carlo and George and Vi, with Reza and Gwen try to schmooze.
Solo Math is not the path for me; guess I’ve got the Bridges Math and Art Blues.
Gonna tune me an ocarina; write some poems with zombies and tweets;
See some dance and a play, and there just ain’t no way my senses can handle the treats!
Just when I thought I would understand Life (the Game), instead Melancholia ensues.
Solo Art is just one part for me; guess I’ve got the Bridges Math and Art Blues.
We’ve got highly unlikely triangles, tessellations, and Möbius twists,
Polyhedra and planes, paradigms and quatrains; this exists and persists and insists.
Is this our form of synesthesia – not to confuse but to infuse?
I’ve got the
Seven plus or minus two –
Or is that four plus or minus three?
Or one plus or minus two?? –
I’ve got the
Curious creativity that shapes our souls
In the Arts of the Hidden
Being human in an ocean of ashes
Into the shadows of the flaming genie bottle
Mapping the infinite onto an emergent orange poem
Of double strip pattern nonplanar curved Islamic Monte Carlo Art,
All on a soccer ball or a platypus in a cradle,
With old friends Escher and origami and fractals
Rendering the Moot Court moot and the Wright Theater just right,
Like Mrs. Flexer at her surprise party, moving from fear to delight,
And I just can’t wait for Bridges Finland
Blues.
2012 Bridges Towson: You Are the Very Models of the Bridges between Math and Art
(Tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” by Gilbert and Sullivan)
You are the very models of the Bridges between Math and Art.
You’ve expertise to share that we absorb in threads or à la carte.
You play with the Platonics, tori, and minimal surfaces,
The odd hyperboloid and probably some Markov processes.
You work with pixels, stone, and words: things discrete and continuous.
You make meander patterns that are sensual and sinuous.
You’ve patterned polyhedra periodic with a count of three,
And thirteen-pointed polygons found in the scroll called Topkapi.
Picasso, Space, Time, Guernica, Klein-knottles are all known to you;
Sequential art and harmonic perspective are both in your view.
You’ve world premieres of videos by one Hart and another Hart.
You are the very models of the Bridges between Math and Art.
You build and play with Poly-Universe® and Zometool® and JOVO®,
Make digital sangaku, explore weavings that are Navajo;
You try Tazhib, Kolam, and art from many more societies.
Your logo’s from symplectic versions of toric varieties.
No matter where you look, you see some patterns if not symmetry:
In Moorish fretwork, Celtic knots, and many paintings of Juan Gris;
There’s chiral tessellations and Islamic star geometry,
Balanço, rhyme, and combinatorial choreography.
There’s colors of the solstices in sandals that are ritual;
Exploring ways of representing music that are visual.
You’ve world premieres of videos by one Hart and another Hart.
You are the very models of the Bridges between Math and Art.
There’s Kaplan, Bosch, Sarhangi, Hart, McKenna, and Paulsen first off;
With Mather, Ferguson, Fathauer, Ingrid, Carlo, and Kristóf;
Steve Abbott, Sarah Glaz, Vi Hart, Nathan and Amy Selikoff,
The other Kaplan, Tootoonchi, and Alexei Kolesnikov.
You’ve tilings that are fractal or the style of Penrose or Conway;
You’ve bobbin lace and pied-de-poule and beaded bracelets you crochet.
There’s weaving, anamorphic art, and juggling, braids, and poetry,
Temari, metafiction, and Depression glass, and stiggmetry.
You invoke Maccheroni, Möbius, Mohr, and Mazzocchio,
The “Waves of Tory,” ballet barre, and probably a do-si-do.
But still, I liked those videos by one Hart and another Hart.
You are the very models of the Bridges between Math and Art.
I must confess, there were additions – like the cows – I had to make,
And how they can use wavelets to see if a Van Gogh is a fake.
And if I didn’t use your name or mention what you talked about:
I’m sorry, but my time for writing and presenting just ran out.