Ygrography, Creating Artworks by means of Hele-Shaw’s Fluxes
Amada Navarrete and Regina Bittencourt

Proceedings of Bridges 2021: Mathematics, Art, Music, Architecture, Culture
Pages 347–350
Short Papers

Abstract

As we explore nature, we observe similarities underlying among its many different forms. Driven by the desire of finding what is it that associates them, we searched for representation methods that would capture their essence, first graphically, and later on by means of mathematical models able to describe them. Flowing fluids ranging different densities running over surfaces with different kinds of porosity, bearing compressing sheets can create the type of patterns, “fingering”, we find on vegetation, corals, rocks and body capillaries. On the other hand, the description of fluids mechanics’ processes and their equations can enlighten us in the attempt of depicting the shape of flows. The physical phenomenon of fingering is a non-linear mathematical representation that is at the same time independent from scale: the same patterns can be seen in the delta of a river, on the blood system or in the images of our own work. The irregular boundaries produced by fingering may also make us think of a fractal nature, which is independent form scale and has self-similarity. We called this painting method, “Ygrography”.

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