The soap film problem is to minimize area, and its
dual is to maximize the flux of a divergenceless bounded vector field.
This paper discretizes the continuous problem and solves it numerically. This gives upper and lower bounds on the area of the globally
minimizing film. In favorable cases, the method can be used to
discover previously unknown films. No initial assumptions about
the topology of the film are needed.
The paired calibration or covering space model of soap films is
used to enable representation of films with singularities.