Sunday, June 22, 2008

Fractal waves

On the image above we see artwork "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" by Japanese artist Hokusai, which was published in 1832 as the first in Hokusai's series 36 Views of Mount Fuji. It depicts an enormous wave threatening boats near the Japanese prefecture of Kanagawa; Mount Fuji can be seen in the background. The main reason of publishing this artwork here is highly detailed painted wave. As we know, some artworks, which are close to fractal images by detailed elaboration, were created long before the inventing fractals by BenoƮt Mandelbrot. Sea waves can be represented by many types of fractals, as you can see below.
Fractal artworks with waves are created by modern artists too. For example, Robert Fathauer depicted a wave fractal with Escher-like fish tiling in his artwork "Fractal Fish - Grouped Groupers" (2001).
Also, a wave with horses figures are depicted on the cover of English rock group Keane "Under The Iron Sea" (2006).