Movie about Jason Padgett - I need your help in knowledge!

[Bauzi]

Hello Fractalforums,

My name is Bernd. I'm a 24 year old Digital Film and Animation student from Austria. I'm in my final college year and therefor I have to make some big practical project for my studies. Some days ago I stumbled upon an article about Jason Padgett on cracked.com (6 People Who Gained Amazing Skills from Brain Injuries). His story won't let me sleep at night. I can hardly think of anything else that motivated and inspired me more into making a short movie. This is the story that I want to tell in my final course project!

If you're not familiar with Jason, you can look at his amazing art here:
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jason-padgett.html

Now the big problem about my idea is: How do I recreate this form of fractals?
I'm totally new to this whole fractal universe. You can hardly make a movie about this subject if you have to draw every fractal frame by frame. There is no time to do so and the whole process probably won't include mathematical correct fractals at the end. That's where I need your help in knowledge. I need your help in finding a way to bring Jason's art into video. All I've found so far where 3D programs like Mundlebulber. Nothing that works with simple geometric forms like circles and triangles. I plan on mixing those fractals with real life video material. Better said: I would need to create fractals out of existing objects and forms (like a human hand).

The solution doesn't have to be a program. Maybe only some advices in creating fractals. We have the equipment, team members, software (After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Maya, Pftrack, Nuke... heck we could even write our on plugins!) and hardware to make this short movie become a reality.

Right now this project is in test phase. First we need to figure out a good, solid way to create fractals for video, then we will progress with this project (like actually speaking to Jason Padgett about this idea). I really hope you can help me out with this. Even if there is no good way to realize it with mathematical correct fractals, I would be happy to know some sort of techniques where I could at least get close to it.  Any ideas?

[taurus]

looks like some apophysis flames. there are several versions out there. the original (a bit mouldy) version can be found at:
http://apophysis.org/

one of the current advancements is http://sourceforge.net/projects/apophysis/
don't know, if some apopysis tweakers are still here at fforums, but on deviant art you find some for sure.

[bib]

Hi Bauzi,

I've been contacted a few months ago by a scientist who works directly with Jason. I had been recommended to her by Bryan Alvarez, the doctoral candidate for whom I did one of my best video that was show at his TEDx talk
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/RNXINb6hGJo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/RNXINb6hGJo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

She asked me if I could work on a video to illustrate Jason's visions. I made some tests using Mandelbulb3D, but couldn't get something similar to what we can see on Jason's website. After a second thought, I am not sure if Jason's visions are really fractals, they look more like complex spirographs. I advised her to register here on fractalforums to explain the concept and ask for opinions. Are we talking about the same project?

I'd be glad to collaborate, if time permits. Please feel free to send me a PM.

Best,

bib

[Bauzi]

Today I saw a 1 hour long documentation (Hunting The Hidden Dimension) that was mostly about Mandelbrot and what he has discovered. Now I understand Fractals way more. I mostly thought that I would need to find the right formula for the right object to make a fractal, but actually it is fine if I take an existing shape and make a fractal out of it. This seams to be a way easier task.

So it's time for me to make a test fractal of an object in a photograph. If I can make one, the next big question is: How does this object behave when it moves (ex: a hand)?


@bib:
We are not talking about the same project, but it also sounds interesting.

I also have to write a bachelor thesis next year. I would love to write it about the visualization about fractals. The main problem with that is: What is my hypothesis? What do I want to discover etc?
Writing about fractals would be great, because it seams like I will already put a lot of research and planing into this movie project. There is another problem: I can't take the research time of this practical project as the research time for my bachelor work (as far as my course coordinator told me). It would spare me a lot of time.

I'm interested on a collaboration! And I really hope that there is time to do it.

Maybe Jason doesn't see fractals all the time, but at least his skill is all about it. ex: He discovered that E equals mC² is a fractal.

[Syntopia]

He discovered that E equals mC² is a fractal.

After looking at his pictures and their descriptions, I don't think there is much sense to his various mathemathical and physical claims.

[bib]

He discovered that E equals mC² is a fractal.

After looking at his pictures and their descriptions, I don't think there is much sense to his various mathemathical and physical claims.

I think that's an issue indeed. I have not studied the details, but IMHO until there aren't strongest scientific evidences, these are still only visions. Interesting visions, but only visions.

Makes me think about the E8 theory diagrams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything but not about fractals.

[Syntopia]

Well, I found this press release from his website:
http://jason-padgett.artistwebsites.com/pressreleases/how-fractals-are-connected-to-and-arise-from-e-equals-mc2-discovered-by-mathematician-jason-d-padgett.html
and I can't help wonder why all the media discussing his story aren't just a little bit sceptical about his pretty wild claims.

"Mr. Padgett's work has shown that the structure of space time itself is a fractal that arises from limits (or more specifically, the Planck constant)"

Where has he shown this? (his name doesn't show up in a Google Scholar search, which is a bad sign). What does it even mean?

"At the bottom of the diagram is a simple equation that when fully developed may change all that we know about energy. The equation is simple hf=mc^2"

The equation relates the energy of a photon to its relativistic mass. This was hot news when Einstein introduced his theory of special relativity. In 1905.

"Jason D. Padgett is credited with being the first to discover how to hand draw fractals of anything and making the connection between E=MC^2 and fractals"

By whom? And what exactly is the connection?

"In a time when energy demands are skyrocketing this new discovery may lead to new and unique ways of making energy safe and green."

Sure.

I can understand why the media likes his story, but I have serious doubts about his insights. And as bib said, his paintings look more like spirographs than fractals.

[Bauzi]

Of course you are right with your opinion. If he is unique, how can somebody possibly prove him wrong? Media is easily fascinated, that's why they love the story. It's so unique and unusual, that they just had to make a big story out of it.

What I believe doesn't really matter. I'm fascinated about his life. I don't really care if his claims are right or wrong. I just want to portrait his life and that's okay. There are no plans to make him look like some science god. Personally I do believe that at least some of his claims are true, because many scientists and mathematics are interested into him. They for sure took a deeper look into his theories.

Media blindly follows stories. It's a good idea to be critical about them.

[bib]

Hey Jason,

Good to see you here, and thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself and to start speaking about your experience. This is really fascinating. I recently read Daniel Tammet's book and I found his synesthesia and calculation capabilities absolutely unbelievable. Are you also able to visualize the result of multiplications of large numbers by assembling shapes, colors and textures?

As to fractals vs spirographs, let's discuss that in details. I know it's not easy to draw fractals by hand (I did it many times!). For example in this picture, can you explain where is the self-similarity of scale? http://fineartamerica.com/featured/nuclear-fusion-jason-padgett.html

Hope we can chat more on this forum. Thanks again for having registered!

[Syntopia]

Hi Jason, and welcome to the forums.

I really don't have any problems with seeing your images as some kind of abstract, artistic interpretation of physics equations, but your press release made it sound like you have made some kind of important *scientific* contribution or discovery. And I don't think this is the case. It is mentioned that you have 'revealed' connections and 'shown' that the structure of space time is fractal, but nowhere is there a link to a published paper (or even something in print). You also refer to yourself as a mathematician in the press release (three years ago), even though you are still a math student.

Wrt to Bauzi's statement: Being unique doesn't mean you cannot follow normal scientific practices. Certainly Einstein's contributions were unique, but he published his findings in peer-reviewed papers - as every other scientist does.

Now, there is nothing wrong with discussing ideas publicly in less formal forums (for instance in web forums such as this!), but don't expect bold claims to be taken seriously by the scientific community, unless you are prepared to (and able to) publish and defend them through the standard channels.

But once again, welcome to the forums.

[bib]

Thanks again Jason for taking the time to explain your situation and experience. It seems you are fascinated by Pi, and as you understood, the geometrical method to calculate it and that you visualize is very very old. I also understand you are fascinated by fractals, which is great, because you are here in the best place on the world wide web to discuss fractals.

Have you ever heard about the Logistic Map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_map and the Feigenbaum constant? The Logistic map is a very simple function which generates chaos by period-doubling (called bifurcations) when iterated and when changing the value of a parameter. And the so-called bifurcation diagram is a well-known fractal (that has many strange relations with the Mandelbrot set by the way). The Feigenbaum constant is the ratio between two successive bifurcations (its value is 4.669...), and like Pi, it is a fundamental and universal number that comes up whenever we are talking about chaos, not only in the logistic map.

If you have not done so yet, please document yourself about that, I would be very curious to know what your mighty brain can come up with on that topic, knowing that the mathematical concepts behind are not too complex, and for sure much less complex than the maths needed in quantum mechanics.

Your graphical calculation of Pi was a first step, so I would say that, before going into the more advanced realms of relativity and quantum physics, why not use your visualization capabilities to go to the first level of fractal calculation?!

Have you read "Does God Play Dice?, the New Mathematics of Chaos", by Ian Stewart?

All the best,

bib

[Bauzi]

After coming back here after a holiday break, I'm kinda confused that Jason's posts are missing. The bad thing is that I didn't took the time yet to watch the linked videos.  Or reading and understand on how to draw pi.

Does anybody know what happened here?

[bib]

Does anybody know what happened here?

He probably deleted his own posts

[Bauzi]

Does anybody know what happened here?

He probably deleted his own posts

Probably. I wonder why. Let's hope that he still wants to help me.

[Jesse]

I guess it was a bad start here, and i wanted also to know how this handdrawing could reveal pi!
Such basic things are always appealing to me, even this is not "high physics" or whatever, but basic things, seeing from a different, and hard to find in the common world, viewpoint, can be very enlighting.  Just my 2 cents... all the best for him anyway!