Kerry Mitchell

Statement

My work is composed primarily of computer generated, mathematically-inspired, abstract images. I draw from the areas of geometry, fractals and numerical analysis, and combine them with image processing technology. The resulting images powerfully reflect the beauty of mathematics that is often obscured by dry formulae and analyses. An overriding theme that encompasses all of my work is the wondrous beauty and complexity that flows from a few, relatively simple, rules. Inherent in this process are feedback and connectivity; these are the elements that generate the patterns. They also demonstrate to me that mathematics is, in many cases, a metaphor for the beauty and complexity in life. This is what I try to capture.

Artworks

"DCG" stands for "Dynamic Chaos Game." The Chaos Game is a simple algorithm used to illustrate chaos and fractals. Typically, there are three static anchor points, which become the corners of a Sierpinski triangle. In this implementation, there are two anchor points. The move around a Lissajous curve with incomensurate irrational frequencies, guaranteeing that they will not have periodic paths. The pixels are shaded according to the frequency with which that point is visited.

Underlying this image is a non-periodic Penrose tiling, using the kite and dart tiles. Each tile is rendered using pursuit curves. To accommodate the concave dart tile, it was split into two triangular halves. Each half was filled with three pursuit curves, while the kite tiles have four.

This is a combination of Pickover's chaotic "Popcorn" algorithm, rendered using the closest approach to a triangular variation of the Hilbert space-filling curve. The result resembles something (a truck?) out of the world of Dr. Seuss (Theordor Geisel).