Nor Does Lightning Travel In A Straight Line

An exploration of the idea of fractals, the forms they take, and the human anticipation of their mathematical complexity. The editing is structured to follow a fractal pattern and is intended to be self-affine over three levels. I hope to eventually revisit this project with a film tentatively titled "zn+1 = zn2 + c" that uses the same idea slightly more rigorously, but we'll see if I get around to doing that.

A Film by Isaac Karth

Music includes extracts from "Quattro pezzi chiascuno su una nota sola" by Giacinto Scelsi and "Metastasis (Xenakis)" by Iannis Xenakis, used under educational fair use.

Audio includes these sound files used from freesound.org:
By Erdie
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=118241)
thunder-long-distance.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24952)
mega-thunder.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=24003)

By dobroide
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=8043)
20092007.strike.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=41365)

By RHumphries
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=1112)
rbh thunder_03.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=2525)

By FreqMan
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=92661)
Thunder-7-9-1988-b.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=25383)

By Kaffein
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=134858)
Thunder Strike Close Indoors.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=22874)

By SpeedY
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=6479)
full_thuderstorm.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=17055)

By csengeri
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=197070)
Thunder200506_1.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=27246)

Video includes images and footage from

Lichtenberg Figure "PlanePair2" copyright Bert Hickman http://www.teslamania.com. Used with permission.

"Stock Footage Release 28 Clip 6" by Ivan Bridgewater licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.

"Duomo_Orvieto_facciata_08-09-08_f07" by "Marcok" on it.wikipedia.org licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

Some footage courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
used under the public domain.

Some images and footage courtesy of NASA, in the public domain. The use of NASA images does not imply endorsement or approval by NASA.

This work also includes additional public domain and original footage.

Special Thanks to Dr. Frank Dufour for his assistance.

Created for a Class Assignment
Originality and Anticipation
November 30, 2010
ATEC 6331.001
Dr. Mihai Nadin
University of Texas at Dallas

in memory of Benoît Mandelbrot (1924 - 2010)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Mandelbrot
• fractal
• lightning
• clouds
• zoom
• space
• time
• anticipation
• originality