Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:00:00 +0000
<p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Our guest this week is </span><a href="http://www.hamilton.edu/academics/departments/Faculty?dept=Physics" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Hamilton physics professor Kate Jones-Smith</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> who joins us to discuss the evidence for the claim that drip paintings of Jackson Pollock contain fractal patterns. This hypothesis originates in a paper by Taylor, Micolich, and Jonas titled </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6735/full/399422a0.html" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> which appeared in Nature. </span><br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Kate and co-author </span><a href="http://www.phys.cwru.edu/faculty/?mathur" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Harsh Mathur</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> wrote a paper titled </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7119/full/nature05398.html" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Revisiting Pollock's Drip Paintings</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> which also appeared in Nature. A full text PDF can be found </span><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.0084v1.pdf" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">here</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">, but lacks the helpful figures which can be found </span><a href="http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nature05398" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">here</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">, although two images are blurred behind a paywall. </span><br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Their paper was covered in the </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/books/02frac.html?_r=0" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">New York Times</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> as well as in USA Today (albeit with with a much more delightful headline: </span><a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2006-12-03-pollock-fractals_x.htm" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Never mind the Pollock's</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> [sic]). </span><br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">While discussing the intersection of science and art, the conversation also touched briefly on a few other intersting topics. For example, </span><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-islamic-penrose-tiles-0" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Penrose Tiles appearing in islamic art</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> (pre-dating Roger Penrose's investigation of the interesting properties of these tiling processes), </span><a href="http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/quasicrystals.html" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Quasicrystal designs in art</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">, </span><a href="http://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/tp/2012/06/ttp2012061159-abs.html" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Automated brushstroke analysis of the works of Vincent van Gogh</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">, and attempts to </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/12/the-mark-of-a-masterpiece" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">authenticate a possible work of Leonardo Da Vinci</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> of uncertain provenance. Last but not least, the conversation touches on the particularly compelling</span><a href="http://fp.optics.arizona.edu/SSD/art-optics/index.html" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Hockney-Falco Thesis</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> which is also covered in David Hockney's book </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Expanded-Edition-Rediscovering/dp/0142005126/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=Hockney" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Secret Knowledge</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">. </span><br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <br style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;" /> <span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">For those interested in reading some of Kate's other publications, many </span><a href="http://arxiv.org/a/jonessmith_k_1" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;">Katherine Jones-Smith articles</a><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"> can be found at the given link, all of which have downloadable PDFs.</span></p>
