Hiroshi Sugimoto

[Chuck M]

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer who sets up a van de Graaf generator to send 400,000 volt electrical sparks through photo film to a metal table. Then he develops the film and sees what he got.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/pl_arts_sugimoto/all/1

[systemtree]

funny, it reminds me of sumi-e paintings, which are frequently made in "random" ways . . .

~cj

[jmuelver]

Oh! Good connection, CJ!
Love it!

[HairyBuddah]

Natural fractals. Beautiful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractals

Hairy

[systemtree]

That is a great fractal page, but i don't think the Sugimoto image is technically a fractal. I would say it is "fractal-like," exhibiting one of the following five features (#2) noted on that page:

A fractal often has the following features:

1) It has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales.
2) It is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.
3) It is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically).
4) It has a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its topological dimension (although this requirement is not met by space-filling curves such as the Hilbert curve).
5) It has a simple and recursive definition.

The dictionary definition might help you in this regard:

fractal
n : a geometric pattern that is repeated at every scale...

~cj

[systemtree]

Check this, y'all:



Bert Hickman creates stunning sculptures by blasting an acrylic block with a 2.5 million volt particle accelerator



Bert and physicist friend Todd Johnson have managed to create works in shapes such as the Yin Yang symbol...

~cj