In a strange twist of events after beginning research on fractal geometry and in the middle of reading The Fractal Geometry of Nature, I found out today that the person who is responsible for giving me so much clarity in the exploration of my inclination toward art making has died. Tonight I am about to start a new project that was inspired by Mandelbrot’s thoughts on coastlines and I thought it only appropriate to quote him and the New York Times article on his death.
“Dr. Mandelbrot traced his work on fractals to a question he first encountered as a young researcher: how long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he was surprised to discover, depends on how closely one looks. On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline.
“Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible,†Dr. Mandelbrot told The New York Times earlier this year in an interview. “The length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite.†”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html
To me, Mandelbrot was a mathematical poet and came closer than anyone to blurring the hard drawn line between nature and technology.