Joshua Wilburt

Statement

I am a high school junior currently taking Calculus III at UMGC. Ever since I was a kid, I loved watching everything to understand how it worked. When I washed the dishes I would let pans sit in the sink to watch the water swirl in them. That curiosity has stuck with me. So has my love for math and how its beauty touches all of life, especially nature. When I first saw visual representations of math concepts, especially fractals, I became fascinated with developing my own. I started coding and playing with ideas on my computer, and I liked focusing on different aspects of the fractals to make my final image. Now some of my fractals have been published or are forthcoming in Contemporary Haibun Journal and Daily Haiga.

Artworks

All In Order of Symmetry creates a fractal-like visual image using order ten polynomials. It represents all the zeroes for every order ten polynomial that has coefficients of 1 or -1. I enjoyed developing the coding for this image. It helped me to see the mathematical expression in 2D, and I find it interesting that the zeroes actually take on a circular form like a zero. While I could have added color, I like the simplicity and contrast of black and white.