3D Fractals Stranger than Fiction

Mon, Feb 23, 2009

Science/Tech

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borgcube
All images by Jock Cooper, via Dark Roasted Blend

From clouds to coastlines, snowflakes to seashells, fractals are everywhere in our environments. They’re also prevalent in the way humans have instinctively designed their habitats. In African architecture, circular houses appear in circles of circles, and rectangular houses in rectangles of rectangles. Yet despite having always been there before our eyes – often too close or too far to see – fractals are a modern scientific discovery. As these stunning images from Dark Roasted Blend demonstrate, it is only with the advent of computers that our collective consciousness has been fully awakened to their cosmic dimensions.

paisley

The maths behind fractals began to crystallise in the 1600s through the work of philosopher and mathematician Leibniz, inventor of the binary system, the basis for virtually all modern computing. It’s therefore ironic that when fractal graphs appeared in the work of later mathematicians some 200 years later, it still needed the help of today’s computer graphics to bring the wonder of what had been discovered to life.

deathstar

Now fractal generating software can create all kinds of fractal images, some more traditional, though no less strange, others of an industrial or post-industrial imagining like these ”Mechanical Fractals” by Jock Cooper. Coming across like Borg cubes from Star Trek or the surface of the Star Wars Death Star, these are images of a world in which computers and space technology dominate.

aliens

But Cooper’s more familiar-shaped images of fractals also have an intensely space meets cyberspace age quality about them. The guys at Dark Roasted Blend even saw an “interstellar war between alien energy beings” emerging from the contours of this last picture. Mathematics may have drawn our attention to the infinitely repeated patterns of fractals, but psychedelic substances seem to have played their part in opening some eyes wider.

For a mind-blowing extended tour through more fractal images, click over to Dark Roasted Blend.

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This post was written by:

Karl Fabricius - who has written 212 posts on Environmental Graffiti.

Karl was raised in Wales and currently lives in Bristol, though his family tree branches to both sides of the Atlantic. Besides holding an English MA, he’s made a documentary on grassroots boxing, played drums in punk rock bands, and traveled some lush parts of the globe. Back from copywriting in Dubai’s desert, he’s thirsty to get scribbling about things worth scribbling about – especially the environment.

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2 Comments For This Post

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  1. r.tallbridge Says:

    A Swiss-born physicist by the name of Nassim Haramein has put together an incredibly unique unified field theory that is centered around a 64 part tetrahedron that has one of Bucky Fuller’s ‘vector equillibriums’ at its core. All in all his representation of the fabric of the vaccuum is a 3d fractal that is in perpetual equillibrium. Worth checking out:

    http://www.theresonanceproject.org

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6151699791256390335

  2. r.tallbridge Says:

    In addition, strange synchro occurred a couple weeks ago when one of Nassim’s “emissaries”, colorado-based musician jamie janover gave a talk in LA

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2TNVu6mtSY

    right when he mentioned what I said above…an earthquake shook the room :)

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