Fractals
Hello Universe 243
While I use words to express myself each week here on Hello Universe, my deepest passion is not language, it is mathematics. To me, mathematics is the language of the universe itself. With language we can describe the universe; with mathematics we can play with the universe.
Over the years, I have experimented with different ways of creating art. The poems here on Hello Universe are one of those experiments. The digital art I’ve made in the Belgian Ligne Claire style is another one. My videos on Hello Universe are yet another. Now that it’s been more than 4.5 years of practicing my art online, I’ve often found that people in my life easily open up to me about the kind of art that they make or want to make - be it music, painting, dance, writing, or any of the millions of ways art can be made. People from all walks of life. People who don’t look or sound like they have an artistic bone in their body. People who are loud and people who are silent. People who are young and people who are old. All of them seem to have something in common: art is a means to express themselves, either privately or publicly.
These conversations about art with people are some of the most stimulating ones. They show me that wanting to make art is often not the limiting factor. The medium on which to make the art is often the limiting factor.
I’ve meditated on this for long and thought about what unlocked my inner artist. As far back as I can remember, I never thought of myself as an artist. As a child I was more a reader than a writer, and my visual art teacher used to be super underwhelmed by the drawings I was creating in class using pencils and crayons. But there was a moment which made me realize that art was more than what I was taught in class, or what the great masters had painted. That moment was when at age 12 I saw my first fractal image at the Community Science Centre where my father would send me to conduct science experiments. The fractal was a simple visual representation of the “Mandelbrot set” that plots the set of complex numbers that emerge from solving an equation.
Back then I was so young that I didn’t even know what complex numbers meant, and so for me the beauty of this set was intuitive in nature. The more you zoomed in, the more you saw beautiful patterns, and they emerged just from the mathematics of the equation, not from a human hand painting them.
It was like an infinite painting made by the universe itself.
Watching this beauty emerging from mathematics a huge unlock for the artist within me and I started seeing maths as my first art project. I would spend long hours solving mathematical equations for fun, for nothing more than to discover the beauty of the universe within those numbers. The practice of that art gave me the confidence later in life to make other art projects come to life - like Hello Universe itself.
Fractonaut
Last week, I found myself experiment with a new coding tool. I was learning how to use it, and was looking for a fun project to make using it. I took a break from learning it, and opened Youtube to watch something. I saw a video by my favorite math channel Numberphile, and then the next suggestion was their amazing video on the Mandelbrot set which I saw again after many years.
Watching this video gave me a sudden realization: I could code a fractal exploration tool, one where anyone can zoom into a fractal as long as they want and can discover the art hidden inside the mathematics.
So, I decide my new project should be one where anyone can create and discover art. A project where anyone can travel to the infinities of fractals. Where anyone could be a Fractal Astronaut.
So, I made fractonaut.com, a place where anyone can play with fractals.
I also created an Instagram page where I post beautiful journeys through this fractal universe - please follow @fractonaut on Instagram and take these journeys yourself!
The biggest reward of making this art project has been the expressions on people’s faces when they see this infinitely zooming fractal for the first time, and they can’t believe their eyes. Friends have described the feeling as “tickling the brain” and I agree, a thing of beauty like this tickles and stimulates your brain in ways you could never have imagined. Friends have also enjoyed finding beautiful places and then sharing them as journeys that others can take - a feature that I’ve built into the app. You can explore one such journey on this link: The Mystic Vortex on Fractonaut
One of the ways in which I’ve been using this app is to think of a certain future aspiration that I possess, keep it at the top of my mind, open Fractonaut, and zoom in to the fractal at one point. By zooming in, I can almost visualize that future evolving, its many outcomes taking shape, and I can see it through to its limits. If at any point I feel that future is not fun, I can zoom out, and pan to the side and start visualizing it again in a newer pattern with newer depths.
As abstract as it is, this meditation has given me a lot of peace and helped me see the world in a whole new way.
Now you can do it to, simply go to fractonaut.com, and support my new art project. by also following @fractonaut on Instagram. It is completely free, and it is lots of fun.
Today’s poem is inspired by this concept of Fractals, and it is honestly one of my favorites I’ve written so far. I hope you like it too, dear reader.
Alright, poem starts in 3… 2… 1!
A seeker searched the spinning world for true beauty to be observed. She wandered weary, wild, and wide, a wondering child, unsatisfied. “Where does the beauty truly live?” she asked each creature she could give a moment’s pause. The snail replied: “Come closer, child and look inside.” She peered into the spiral shell and found another, deep as well, and in that spiral, one more still. And so it went. It always will. “What sorcery is this?” she cried. “No sorcery,” the snail replied, “a simple rule that loops and grows: The fractal form that nature knows. The part contains the whole, you see, and every whole holds what will be. Zoom in forever, never done, the many living in the one.” She turned to ask the branching tree, who whispered down in filigree: “My limbs split two, then two, then two the same small shape, forever new. From seed to trunk to bough to twig, the pattern holds, both small and big. I am the proof that simple things become the vast, and life begins.” The lightning cracked, the rivers wound, the ferns unfurled without a sound. Each edge and arc and spiral proved: one rule, repeated, deeply grooved. And then the seeker understood: The world was neither bad nor good, but infinite in every way new depth revealed with each new day. She sat beneath the branching tree: “But what of me? What’s mine to be? What simple rule, what deep design makes up this fractal life of mine?” The wind replied with rustling leaves: “Your kindness is the thread that weaves. Each loving act becomes a tree with branches reaching endlessly. Your gentle word’s a spiral shell that carries worlds you cannot tell. Your heart-felt love’s a lightning’s arc that fractures through and lights the dark. And when life’s chaos seems too vast, zoom in, and let the moment last. And when you’re stuck in one dark frame pan wide, no two views are the same.” The seeker rose and bowed her head. “I’ve found the beauty now,” she said. “It’s not out there beyond the blue, it’s in the simple things I do. A rule that loops, a seed that grows, where kindness starts, the whole world shows its infinite recursive grace, I am the pattern. I’m the space.” Yes this is how the cosmos sings, through simple rules grow complex things. So zoom in close or pan out wide, the beauty’s there, on every side.
That’s it! Thanks for reading edition 243 of Hello Universe.
What did you think of Fractonaut? Have you a story of your experiences with mathematics that you want to share? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the Hello Universe community.
It was super fulfilling to make an art project that is so meaningful to me. Now that it is out in the world, I can’t wait to see what it becomes.
That’s it for this week, see you next Tuesday!
Fibonacci excellence!
Brilliant!