Javier Barrallo

Artists

Javier Barrallo

Professor of Mathematics

The University of the Basque Country

San Sebastián, Spain

Statement

I studied Computer Engineering at the University of Deusto, Bilbao (Spain) and made my PhD on Applied Mathematics. I am currently working in the University of the Basque Country at the School of Architecture in San Sebastián. The union of Computer Graphics, Applied Mathematics and Architecture in my work soon stimulated my love for digital art. I have experimented with interactive video, geometric computer models, architectural simulations but I feel specially comfortable creating innovative fractal images. During the last five years I have been working with Benoit Mandelbrot in the arrangement of Fractal Art contests and exhibits, as well as courses on Art & Mathematics all over the world.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Cthulhu Mythos' — Cthulhu Mythos
400x400 mm.
Digital Print
2009

The name Cthulhu Mythos is taken from a fantastic universe created in the 1920s by American horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft. This image is inspired in the gothic terror and science fiction aesthetic that flood his novels. From a technical point of view, the image is an attempt to create a Mandelbrot Set fractal by expanding its formula into 3D. After proved to be impossible to make that expansion, several programmers developed some tweaks in a non-strictly mathematical way. This is a variation of the Mandelbrot set formula raised to the eighth degree instead of being quadratic (z->z^8+c). The final geometry and coloring techniques were carefully shaped to keep the gloomy and scary atmosphere described in Lovecraft's books.