I was flipping through an old Scientific American (yes, I am a tool)…and came across an article which had piqued my interest. It described work done by Richard Taylor at the University of South Wales regarding the underlying order of Jackson Pollack’s paintings.
Taylor and colleagues determined that the randomness of Pollack’s paintings indeed displayed order in the form of fractal patterns. They even went as far as to describe the level of complexity of his paintings over the course of his career.
It makes me think that somehow we are drawn to these patterns regardless of intent. In other words, we are incapable of randomness. There is an underlying pattern to all of our actions…certain natural rhythms if you will. It may also explain why we are drawn to Pollack’s work even though we don’t “see” anything.
Perhaps Pollack is tapping into something more fundamental. Something that we can’t explain but nonetheless are drawn to.
Whether or not this is true is clearly up for debate…but you certainly can’t deny the fact that these patterns are found across a wide array of natural phenomena. And as such, their importance cannot be denied. Check out any scientfic field these days…everyone is reexamining their data sets to look for more fundamental patterns. The age of the linear relationship is gone…or being refined at the very least.