A very accessible application of fractals can be found in Richard Taylor's "Order in Pollock's chaos" (an article in the November 2002 issue of Scientific American), which is based on the Richard Taylor, Adam Micolich, and David Jonas's "Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings" (a paper in a June 1999 issue of Nature). The Nature paper has the following abstract:

Scientific objectivity proves to be an essential tool for determining the fundamental content of the abstract paintings produced by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s. Pollock dripped paint from a can onto vast canvases rolled out across the floor of his barn. Although this unorthodox technique has been recognized as a crucial advancement in the evolution of modern art, the precise quality and significance of the patterns created are controversial. Here we describe an analysis of Pollock's patterns which shows, first, that they are fractal, reflecting the fingerprint of nature, and, second, that the fractal dimensions increased during Pollock's career.

From the Scientific American article:

The painting is scanned into a computer. It is separated into its different colored patterns, then covered with a computer-generated mesh of identical squares. The computer analyzes which squares are occupied and which are empty. This is done for different mesh sizes. The patterns were found to be fractal over the entire size range.

alt text http://joelreyesnoche.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/step1.png alt text http://joelreyesnoche.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/step2.png

A very accessible application of fractals can be found in Richard Taylor's "Order in Pollock's chaos" (an article in the November 2002 issue of Scientific American), which is based on the Richard Taylor, Adam Micolich, and David Jonas's "Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings" (a paper in a June 1999 issue of Nature). The Nature paper has the following abstract:

Scientific objectivity proves to be an essential tool for determining the fundamental content of the abstract paintings produced by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s. Pollock dripped paint from a can onto vast canvases rolled out across the floor of his barn. Although this unorthodox technique has been recognized as a crucial advancement in the evolution of modern art, the precise quality and significance of the patterns created are controversial. Here we describe an analysis of Pollock's patterns which shows, first, that they are fractal, reflecting the fingerprint of nature, and, second, that the fractal dimensions increased during Pollock's career.

From the Scientific American article:

The painting is scanned into a computer. It is separated into its different colored patterns, then covered with a computer-generated mesh of identical squares. The computer analyzes which squares are occupied and which are empty. This is done for different mesh sizes. The patterns were found to be fractal over the entire size range.

A very accessible application of fractals can be found in Richard Taylor's "Order in Pollock's chaos" (an article in the November 2002 issue of Scientific American), which is based on the Richard Taylor, Adam Micolich, and David Jonas's "Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings" (a paper in a June 1999 issue of Nature). The Nature paper has the following abstract:

Scientific objectivity proves to be an essential tool for determining the fundamental content of the abstract paintings produced by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s. Pollock dripped paint from a can onto vast canvases rolled out across the floor of his barn. Although this unorthodox technique has been recognized as a crucial advancement in the evolution of modern art, the precise quality and significance of the patterns created are controversial. Here we describe an analysis of Pollock's patterns which shows, first, that they are fractal, reflecting the fingerprint of nature, and, second, that the fractal dimensions increased during Pollock's career.

A very accessible application of fractals can be found in Richard Taylor's "Order in Pollock's chaos" (an article in the November 2002 issue of Scientific American), which is based on the Richard Taylor, Adam Micolich, and David Jonas's "Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings" (a paper in a June 1999 issue of Nature). The Nature paper has the following abstract:

Scientific objectivity proves to be an essential tool for determining the fundamental content of the abstract paintings produced by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s. Pollock dripped paint from a can onto vast canvases rolled out across the floor of his barn. Although this unorthodox technique has been recognized as a crucial advancement in the evolution of modern art, the precise quality and significance of the patterns created are controversial. Here we describe an analysis of Pollock's patterns which shows, first, that they are fractal, reflecting the fingerprint of nature, and, second, that the fractal dimensions increased during Pollock's career.

From the Scientific American article:

The painting is scanned into a computer. It is separated into its different colored patterns, then covered with a computer-generated mesh of identical squares. The computer analyzes which squares are occupied and which are empty. This is done for different mesh sizes. The patterns were found to be fractal over the entire size range.

alt text http://joelreyesnoche.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/step1.png alt text http://joelreyesnoche.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/step2.png