Dedicated to the artistic application of Complexity Theory.
One day I finally thought to put dates on my sketch pages, and this is one of the images on the page dated December 1st. It's one of a large series of sketches in which the design is determined by a genetic code based on the letters of a word. In this case, this pattern is based on the short version of my first name. It was done with pencil on Engineering graph paper.
The Theory of Emergent Complexity: Simple elements strictly following a few simple rules can give rise to emergent, complex patterns. This basis of my artwork is a shade of the greater truth of the intelligent design of creation by a Creator who is simultaneously interested in both details and beauty, both form and function.
There are those who put paint to canvas with their muse in full control, putting the lines and colors where it moves them to with good result. There are others who program their computers to mechanically pump out fractals and other patterns which have their own sort of unique mathematical beauty. I believe i have succeeded in marrying these two seemingly polar opposites. I use my God-given creativity to pick the rules by which the patterns are made and colored, and my God-given rationality to consistently pursue any given pattern to see where it will lead, getting to know each pattern "personally". By God's grace, I think that i am well on the path of capturing the geometry of nature and the nature of geometry in a most rare fashion.
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But I have looked on pictures made by men,
Wherein, at first, appeared but chaos wild:
So high the art transcended, it beguiled
The eye as formless, and without a plan;
Until the spirit, brooding o'er, began
To see a purpose rise, like mountains piled,
When God said: Let the dry earth, undefiled,
Rise from the waves: it rose in twilight wan.
And so I fear thy pictures were too strange
For us to pierce beyond their outmost look;
A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book;
An atmosphere too high for wings to range:
At God's designs our spirits pale and change,
Trembling as at a void, thought cannot brook.
--- Second of "Three Sonnets",
by George MacDonald.
