The museum of unnatural form: A visual and tactile experience of fractals

Abstract

A remarkable computer technology is revolutionizing the world of design, allowing intricate patterns to be created with mathematical precision and then 'printed' as physical objects. Contour crafting is a fabrication process capable of assembling physical structures the sizes of houses, firing the imagination of a new generation of architects and artists (Khoshnevisat, 2008). Daniel Della-Bosca has jumped at this opportunity to create the “Museum of Unnatural Form” at Griffith University. Della-Bosca's museum is populated with fractals sculptures – his own versions of nature's complex objects – that have been printed with the new technology. His sculptures bridge the historical divide in fractal studies between the abstract images of mathematics and the physical objects of Nature (Mandelbrot, 1982).