22 Sep 2012

The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking

Exhibition and publication: The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot:
Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York City, 18 West 86th Street
Opening: September 20, 2012; 6 - 8 ppm.
On view September 21, 2012 – January 27, 2013

Exhibition Explores the Role of Images in Scientific Thinking

Featuring never before exhibited works on paper and objects including dynamic black and white drawings, computer print-outs, photographs, and computer-generated films

Focusing primarily on the work of one of the most notable mathematicians of the twentieth century, 'The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking' explores the role of images in the development of what has become known as fractal geometry and chaos theory. Nina Samuel, visiting professor from Das Technisches Bild in Berlin, is the curator of this exhibition, which will be on view at the Bard Graduate Center from September 21, 2012 to January 27, 2013.

For thousands of years, Western thought assumed that fundamental geometry consisted of regular, ideal forms, such as cubes, spheres, and cones, with straight or evenly curved faces and edges. Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010), however, explored mathematics as he saw it— in all its untidiness and irregularity, devoting himself to the study, for example, of the forms of the coastlines of real islands, with all their unpredictable inlets, creeks, and furrows. Mandelbrot, in other words, looked at the world. In so doing, he flouted what was in effect a prohibition pervading much of mathematical thinking against the use of visual representation. To reintroduce the visual, Mandelbrot took the groundbreaking step of harnessing the potential of computers, thereby transforming mathematics into an experimental science. The result was his invention of fractal geometry, a geometry of actuality rather than of abstraction, as exemplified in his classic work, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982).

The notion of islands is central to Mandelbrot's work, associated in his thinking with both the inspiring and the seductive role of images. They challenge his own dictum that 'seeing is believing' and point to the interaction between the hand and computer visualizations to generate new ideas. Frequently, the computer alone is unable to give an insight, and hand drawing becomes necessary for transforming a confusing computer image into a new idea or theory.

At his death in 2010, Mandelbrot left a mass of idiosyncratically organized drawings, computer print-outs, films, manuscript scribbles, objects, and polaroids in his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts— an extraordinary trove to which Mandelbrot's wife, Aliette, generously allowed Professor Samuel access. 'To explore it was like wandering through the mathematician's brain,' said Samuel. 'It was like witnessing the ephemeral traces of his very thought processes.' Selections from these materials form the core of the exhibition.

Along with this rare look into Mandelbrot's working process, sketches from his contemporaries — the French mathematician Adrien Douady and the German biochemist Otto E. Rössler — will also be publicly exhibited for the first time. The work of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz, a pioneer of chaos theory, will be represented by loans from the Library of Congress. The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking allows the viewer to question the idea that the illustration of a work must always be secondary to the work itself. On the contrary, substantive images often play generative roles in the scientific process, constituting a kind of material thinking conducted by producing and interpreting visual traces, such as computer-generated images. These images are often aesthetically compelling even if they are initially scientifically impenetrable. This constitutes another revelation of the exhibition: the beauty of material thinking that can be found in the visual detritus of scientific investigation.

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery is located in New York City at 18 West 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The admission fee is $7 general, $5 senior and students (valid ID); admission is free Thursday evenings after 5 p.m. For more information about the Bard Graduate Center and upcoming exhibitions, please visit bgc.bard.edu.