JF Ptak Science Books Rapid Post
Thinking about the “evolution” of music, I came to the 1940’s and 1950’s , and then to Jackson Pollock, and then to thinking about how his artwork evolved, and then, about how it might have truly evolved in a classic sense, like an evolutionary period. None of this made much sense to me until I started thinking about the representation of Pollock fractally–and then things started to get interesting. Could this work come about, again, as a result of the evolution of fractals?
Obviously the Pollock drips aren’t self-same, not easily observably, anyway–but what about statistically, especially under magnification?
It turns out that someone has taken a look at this: Richard P. Taylor, et al, in “The Construction of Jackson Pollock’s Fractal Drip Paintings”1This team concludes that–after analyzing paintings and films of Pollock painting them–“the painting process that…Pollock used a remarkably systematic method capable of generating intricate patterns that exhibit fractal scaling criteria”.
I’ve never been comfortable with mid-century modern, but I must say that this Ollock/fractal business is interesting to think about, though I’m not sure it has anything to do with art.
Notes:
1. Found in: Johnson, Colin G. Romero Cardalda, Juan Jesus. “Introduction: Genetic Algorithms in Visual Art and Music–a Supplement”, Leonardo, Volume 35, Number 2, April 2002, pp. 175-184 (Article)
Here’s another interesting book: The Art of Artificial Evolution: A Handbook on Evolutionary Art and Music by Juan Romero and Penousal Machado (Editors)bSpringer – Natural Computing Series Hardcover: 458 pag
The introduction to the Johnson ‘02 Leonardo article: “Leonardo has a long tradition of publishing work at the mutual frontier of art and science. We are pleased to present in the pages of Leonardo a special project that