An Invitation to Category Theory for Designers
Introducing category theory as a practical tool for designers and artists.
BibTeX
@article{category-theory-for-designers,
title = {An Invitation to Category Theory for Designers},
author = {E. O. Harriss and R. Gayle},
journal = {antiAtlas Journal},
year = {2019},
number = {3},
}Abstract systems are not new to art and design. A drawing, a piece of musical notation, a weaving pattern: each is a way of stepping back from a particular object to a structure that can be manipulated on its own terms and then realised again in material. With computers the range of available abstractions, and the relationships between them, has grown enormously. This essay, written with Rhett Gayle, argues that category theory, the mathematical study of objects and the structure-preserving mappings (arrows) between them, gives a practical language for designers to map these systems and the systems of systems built on top of them.
The essay is the published companion to ongoing work treating manufacturing itself categorically, continued in Wiring Euclid for Manufacturing and in the CAMel software.
Read it at antiatlas-journal.net (above) or download the full article as a PDF in a more standard format.
