Thursday, March 20, 2008

Wood work by Hans de Koning

Today I received a postage with wood work by Hans de Koning (see above). The shapes of the most of his works are based on impossible figures. His works are flat, but he uses different kinds of wood to make three-dimensional effect. Wood planks with different hues imitate sides slope and opacity of the impossible figure.

You can see more his work in his Picasa album and at the site Impossible World.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Fractal trees

Some time ago we have talked about Pythagoras tree, which represents simple fractal structure consisting of squares. Also, there are many variations of fractal trees, which are consist of lines and curves.


The three-dimensional fractal tree above is constructed from lines. It belongs to L-system class of fractals. Associated as trunk and branches brown lines of the tree are elements of low generations of the fractal. Green lines are elements of higher generations of the fractal. They remind us leafs. So, the whole fractal structure resembles real tree.

The rainbow fractal Julius tree below was crated with help of the computer program Fractal Imaginator. The tree reminds rounded Pythagoras tree, where squares were replaced to thin rectangles. The tree fractal can be created not only with help of straight lines or rectangles, but also with help of curves and spirals. Below, you can see a title for the High School Course "Gödel, Escher, Bach: A Mental Space Odyssey" by Justin Curry and Curran Kelleher, where curved fractal tree is used. The spiral was chosen as base element for this fractal, which gives many elegant curls.