The aesthetics of emergence

Nitin Upadhyaya
Flame University, Pune.
Nov 2018, AMOLF, Amsterdam 1/
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The aesthetics of emergence

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Disorder Engineering - Nature’s Way 18
An emergent property

Take a roll of transparent material, say plastic.

Cut a few pieces and stack them up.
What do you see ?

Nov 2018, AMOLF, Amsterdam 3/

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Aesthetics across scales

And could you now guess what might be common between the stack of
transparent sheets and the Koi fish ?

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Emergence of Color
Structural Colors emerge as a result of how light interacts with structure !

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Disorder Engineering - Nature’s Way 18
Emergence of Color

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Structural Colors and Pigments

A decades-old specimen of the African perennial Pollia condensata.

Note how the pigment based leaf color has faded, but the fruit still
maintains its metallic-blue iridescence.

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Some design rules: Order and Disorder

Paints that last forever ?

For pure colors, use an ordered arrangement of repeating units. Color

will change with viewing angle.
For superposition of colors, use disordered arrangement of repeating
units (on average).
For pure colors which do not change with viewing angle, again a
disordered arrangement needed.

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Minimal ingredients for emergence

A basic unit (structural/process) which repeats a very large number

of times (“∞”).
A form of interaction between the units.
Emergence is a result of coherent superposition/synchronization of
parts.

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Mathematical emergence

Now, take the basic repeating unit as the number 1.

Put it in a structure of the form
1
φ=1+ 1
.
1+ 1
1+ 1+···

What do we get ?
φ is popularly known as the golden ratio.
But why a ratio ?

Nov 2018, AMOLF, Amsterdam 10 /

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Mathematical emergence

Consider dividing a line in the following proportion-

The ratio needed to satisfy the above requirement is precisely the

golden ratio, i.e., ba = φ.
But how do we divide a line in this manner ?

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Mathematical emergence

Let us change one thing

√ 1
2=1+ 1
.
2+ 2+···

The ratio of the longer√

l to shorter s side of a regular A4 sheet is
specified by ISO to be 2. Why ?

We could change more things in the infinite fraction, let us try

1
3+ 1
=?
7+ 15+···
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Mathematical emergence: a visual perspective

Let us do a similar iterative process, this time, create a multiplication

table along a circle.

Shown here is a multiplication table for N = 2.

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Mathematical emergence: a visual perspective

Iterating several times, we get a Cardioid (heart) shape.

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Mathematical emergence: a visual perspective

By changing the multiplier (N = 5), we can generate different patterns.

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Mathematical emergence: a visual perspective

Let us now iterate in the two dimensional plane w = z 2 + c.

We obtain the famous Mandelbrot set, named after Benoit
Mandelbrot.
The largest image in this set is again the cardioid.

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Mathematical emergence: a visual perspective

Let us now iterate in the two dimensional plane w = z 5 + c.

Note how the largest image is the 4-petal we saw earlier.

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A beautiful confluence

A confluence of structural coloration and mathematical patterns.

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