In 2008, Germany celebrated a National Year of Mathematics to promote math education and awareness across the country. 

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As part of the celebration, Janzen was invited to come to Germany and speak to school groups on how in his job a visual effects artist, he used math as the foundation for all his work. 

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Additionally, a mathematical film festival "VisMath" was planned which would tour the country, and Janzen was asked to submit an entry. 

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With little time to write and animate, Janzen leveraged the material in his school presentation and in less than two weeks created Quantus, an exploration of how computer graphics actually exemplifies the ancient Pythagorean ideal of "all is number". 

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With numbers being the only language a computer an understand, visual effects artists must translate everything from objects, movement, light and color into the language of math. 

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The goal of Quantus is to show the harmonies in math as a powerful creative tool for not only creating art, but also for understanding the world around us. The topics covered include Cartesian coordinates, function graphs, color theory, and dynamic simulation.

 

Quantus was awarded the Best Educational Film at the "VisMath" festival and Janzen was asked to represent the city of Berlin as a speaker at the closing gala of Germany's National Year of Mathematics.

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Quantus is currently published by Springer Verlag.

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