Toán có thể đẹp mà không cần ứng dụng. Toán có thể vui mà không cần ứng dụng. Niềm vui khi giải được một bài toán khó, cặm cụi suốt ngày suốt đêm, cũng là cái sướng có một không hai, cái sướng đơn thuần, không vì điều gì khác, cũng chả phải vì điểm số.

Tín hiệu nhìn số 1 sẽ nhằm thiết kế ra một bài toán tại Cung Thiếu nhi, bên cạnh các không gian khác như sân bóng rổ, vườn cây, với mong muốn mang đến niềm vui hồn nhiên trong toán học thông qua việc vận động cơ thể, hào hứng với chuyện giải toán. Người xem sẽ cần đi lên trên tầng để có thể nhìn được tổng thể bài toán, sau đó sử dụng giấy hoặc chụp ảnh lại bài toán để giải bài toán đó. Tác phẩm cũng muốn đưa người xem trải dài tầm mắt nhìn về vị trí của Cung Thiếu nhi với cảnh quan xung quanh.

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Have you ever wondered:

How long has it been since we last gazed across vast fields just to eat a simple bowl of porridge? ("Crossing three fields just to eat a bowl of porridge.")

How long has it been since we looked up at the endless blue sky?

In the heart of the bustling city, our eyes have become accustomed to moving with hundreds, or even thousands, of things around us at the same time—not just from the high-rise buildings surrounding us, but also from the phone screen in our hand.

Starting with the concept of "looking afar" through the "Observation Device" (a component of the work Fieldwork, created in collaboration with Nguyen Kieu Anh as part of the Visayas Biennial Art Event, Philippines VIVA ExCon2023), the work Visual Signal No. 1 at the grand exhibition Nostalgia for the Future at the Hanoi Children's Palace invites the audience to step into the experience of looking deeply:

(1) Looking at the symbolic dimension through oblique projection;

(2) Exploring the historical dimension of Vietnam's electricity industry through the working figures of power transmission engineers;

(3) Examining a slice of Hanoi's history post-liberation through a lecture visit by Professor Alexander Grothendieck to North Vietnam in 1967;

(4) Looking into a space of imagination where people seek to conquer nature and light up the moon without relying on sunlight.

As a former math student—though not particularly good at it—my encounter with Signal View No. 1 at the Hanoi Children's Palace inspired me to revisit mathematics and reconnect with my high school math classmates. It rekindled the joy and pure beauty of math, and I still remember a few moments that continue to make me reflect and feel deeply happy.

Once, I realized that the beauty of derivatives is the beauty of time, after my math friend excitedly shared this insight during a 2 AM phone call. Instead of simply looking at the value of an equation at a single point, derivatives provide a way to understand the value of a process (Δt). I value the process itself, and focusing on the value of that process has always felt meaningful to me.

There were many times when I stayed up all night solving math problems from the book Advanced and Developmental Math by Mr. Vu Huu Binh, even taking my scratch paper with me to the bathroom to work on them. Math can be beautiful without any practical application. Math can be fun without any application. The joy of solving a difficult problem -working hard all day and night - is a unique, pure joy, not for any reward or grade, but for the sake of the challenge itself.

A colleague once asked, “People go to the Children’s Palace to avoid math, but you want to make them do math?” I hope that math will no longer be a nightmare for generations of students, as it was for me.

Through this work, I want to design a math problem connected to the experience of looking deeply through a window at the exit of the Hanoi Children’s Palace. The unique installation Visual Signal No. 1 includes an observation device that projects an oblique angle towards the iconic EVN tower; a window with a labor landscape (human landscape), a manmade natural landscape, and a fantasy world—all simultaneously present; as well as an area for reading and solving a science fiction problem about humanity's future.

The work could not have been created without the collaboration of Nguyen Long Bien in construction and technique, Vu Nhat Minh and Mai Quang Huy in math theory, Pham Minh Hieu in curation, and the help of Nguyen Van Bam, Linh Meo, Studio Pham Minh Hieu, Xuong Ga Moc, ba-bau AIR, Ms. Kim Duc and many friends around.

In the journey of creating this work, I want to thank my mother (a person who my primary school math teacher said was always better at math than me) and Vu Nhat Minh (for always loving math and passing on the beauty of math to me) and the teachers who always love their profession in the classroom.