¡Colores!; 1936; Dr. Jonathan Wolfe; XL Projects Gallery; Norm Oberle; Photographer James Reddington

>>Narrator: THIS TIME, ON COLORES! DR. JONATHAN WOLFE, HELPED ALBUQUERQUE BECOME THE FRACTAL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD AND SHARES HIS INSPIRATIONS >> Fractals are the pictures of chaos theory. With the help of computers we can visualize how fractal patterns grow and turn into these really beautiful things that echo >>Narrator: STUDENTS GET A CHANCE FOR ARTISTIC EXPOSURE AT THE XL PROJECTS GALLERY IN SYRACUSE NEW YORK. THIS SHOW EXPLORES RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONCEPT AND THE REAL WORLD. >>Our work still seems to have this commonality of like, ideas of the transitive state, which are, things that are, the interaction between thoughts and objects on this plane of reality thats not quite real and maybe even sometimes fantastical >>Narrator: NORM OBERLES

CURIOSITY FOR WHAT LIES BEYOND PLANET EARTH LED HIM TO BUILD A POWERFUL TELESCOPE. >>So I remind myself how bad it can be building a large >>Narrator: PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES REDDINGTON FOUND THAT MOST PEOPLE HAVE A TREASURE BOX FILLED WITH MOMENTOS. >>I love photographing anything regarding peoples secrets or anything where something is not readilyapparent to people. I like bringing that out in the open. >>Narrator: ITS ALL AHEAD JONATHAN WOLFE SHARES HIS FASCINATION WITH HOW FRACTALS MIRROR PATTERNS IN NATURE. in love with fractals

for about half my life now. Since I was in high school... when I discovered them... way back. As an artist I saw the potential for making really reallybeautiful patterns, I love exploring them. As soon as I got a powerful computer in the early 90s, powerful relatively, but it was powerful enough to make mathematical fractals. I was captivated by these things. Just on fired, loved them, Ive been exploring them ever since and had some ideas about turning them into some public art works, and its finally come to fruition and its been really interesting, an amazing journey. Now there are fractals all around Albuquerque and its been really wonderful to watch this vision unfold. to express chaos theory through your art? >>Wolfe: Its a good thing you bring up chaos theory because fractals are the pictures of chaos theory. With the help of computers we can visualize how fractal patterns grow and turn into these really beautiful

things that echo the patterns of nature. And thats really the reason we care about fractals. Not just that theyre pretty pictures, but they describe how the world works. So I like to say that fractals are the language of nature. But to answer your question, what are my favorite ways? I like flying over the city of Albuquerque in a fractal balloon. Thats an exercise in chaos theory. Because fractals and chaos really came from studying the weather. And as a balloon pilot Im exploring thechaos dynamics of the atmosphere. And its applied science and its an applied art form. You know youcan turn on the TV news and hear weather forecasts and theyll tell you that the winds will be blowing out of the west at 10 miles an hour, as if that was the truth. And its not, we all know that right. They do the best they can to predict things but if the wind really was blowing at 10 miles an hour what would happen at an event like BalloonFiesta? Wed have 700 balloons take off and they would all fly in a clump and in an hour they would land 10 miles

to the east right? Because thats what the wind did. But what that tells you is that the atmosphere is actually doing this.... Its swirling and its spiraling at all different scales. From tiny little dust devil to giant hurricanes. The atmosphere loves spiraling and it moves in non linear ways and its hard to predict when you do things like that but, because these 700 balloons go different places that tells you that if you know how to use the atmosphere you can go to any one of those destinations. >> How does that spark creativity? >>Wolfe: Well thats a good point. Its something I call butterfly power, because its not brute forcepower but its butterfly power its small changes. How does that spark creativity? Well, knowing thatthe system is dynamic and that its non linear, its interconnected and because of our interconnectedness and because of our innate

creativity, I can have an Idea and I can share it and I can inspire other people and they can share that and inspire other people pretty soon it ripples out and it in fact does transform the world. >> In a visual way can you tell us a little bit more about that math and how it creates pictures andhow it creates these stunning visuals. >>Wolfe: Fractals let you play with equations. Tinker with them and then see the results which is right away. The fundamental lesson of chaos theory is that a small change early in a system leads to abig difference in the outcome. And its in a nonlinear kind of relationship. So I make a small change and it makes a big difference. You can actually see that, any fractal is a complex never ending pattern. Its made by repeating a simple process over and over again. Nature works that way by doing simple things again and again, but we can simulate that with equations. And usually when you square a number it gets bigger, when you square

the answer it gets bigger, it goes to infinity. But not always, and thats the key to fractal math in this fractal we call the Mandelbrot Set. Some numbers when you plug them into this equation get smaller and you plug the answer in and it gets smaller, and it spirals inward. Stays Finite. Those are all the points we call inside the Mandelbrot set. Theyre in the central black part of this fractal. And then its surrounded by all these beautiful colors and those colors represent all those numbers that fly off into infinity. And the colors are not just arbitrary decorations theyre actually carrying information about the behavior of that equation. Because any column a point thats in the same color will have the same behavior. It will fly away at the same speed. And thats a really amazing insight that equations actually behave like something like living creatures. Different fractal equations have totally

different styles. The other thing about fractals is that theyre infinite; people are touched, moved and inspired because theyve come face to face with infinity and many people find that to be a very spiritual experience. Its pretty awesome. >> Why do you think thats critical that as an artist you kind of create this experience for people? >>Wolfe: Thats the role of the artist right? Is to change how other people see the world. Whats really fun about fractalizing Albuquerque, making us the fractal capital like this, that its not just myart. When I gave this project away and created the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge, what we do is that we teach kids how to make fractal art, we reproduce their art and blow it up big on the sides of buildings and schools and parking structures and things like that. Now theres a lot of fractal art out there,

and more coming soon. And its like whoa, we live in this beautiful fractal world of creative, beautiful possibilities and people are understanding that this is math. This is what math looks like and were part of what I like to call the fractal revolution, were changing how people look at math and science and were doing so in an artistic way. My goal is not to turn everybody into an artist. Thats really not the point. But I do want people to be looking at the world creatively. Weve got big problems to solve. We need new ways of thinking. New ways of looking at the world. New ways of appreciating non linearity, interconnectedness, complexity. With the science of chaos and complexity but we need to adopt that into our culture our political leaders need to start thinking about complexsystems and chaos theory and applying that instead of using brute force solutions for these kind ofproblems. We need subtle small changes. And you know

I hope that thats what the outcome is for the underlying message of the fractal revolution. >> Thank you for visiting us on Colores. >>Wolfe: My pleasure, thanks for having me. >>And were going to come take part in a fractal revolution. >>Narrator: XL PROJECTS GALLERY IN SYRACUSE NEW YORK GIVES TALENTED YOUNG ARTISTS THEIR FIRST OPPORTUNITY Im the programs exhibition coordinator for College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. We are standing in Excel Projects, which is the colleges downtown gallery venue. The way the gallery operates is that any students at any time either individually or collectively can submit proposals to exhibit here. This exhibition now, Transitive Flux is just one proposal that was submitted

by these four graduate students and was accepted. >>My name is Sarah Camille graduate student in the ceramics department at Syracuse University. This particular piece is titled Small Moments so its a number of small uh elements that are shown together. But the idea behind the piece is the mini tiny little moments that sort of make up our day to day lives and the way in which sort of stopping and paying attention to those moments can really enhance our experience of life. And that thats what our lives are really madeup of are the tiny little moments in time. The idea was conceived and constructed as a series so all of these pieces were made more or less at the same time, using the same materials, uh, but each piece is unique. Lives are made up of routines

that repeat over and over and over again, but are always different andif we can give a little bit of attention to some tiny piece of that repeating routine each time that we do that its a different experience. Even though it is part of our lives that tends to seem likeits the same over and over again. Our commute to work, our preparation of breakfast in the morning,all of these things that are sort of always the same, but always different and giving attention to the uniqueness of those Im a second year graduate student at Syracuse University. This is my work called um Condensate and this work what happens is that slowly over a period of time it sweats and drips water onto the floor. Talking about the human body as an object and also having

a relation to the form of snow. And the accumulation of those things and how they have similarities to one another and tie in together. Our work still seems to have this commonality of like, ideas of the transitive state, which are, things that are, the interaction between thoughts and objects on this plane of reality thats not quite real and maybe even sometimes fantastical or strange. The object can function as an external projection of consciousness and in a way that relates our own bodies to this idea of accumulation of form and thoughts. Uh, this is how I wrote the ideal situation for it to be displayed um it has more of a pop. It gets the window display and it can stretch across the room, really interacting with a space in a way that um it hasnt been allowed to do >>My names Rebecca Aloisio

and Im a second year painting graduate student at Syracuse University. This piece is called Raise and um its one in a series of four. Uh, I do a lot of drawing, its uh I think of these as drawings. Uh drawing for me is um this process and an act and it serves as an interimI think between ideas and forms and objects so in my work I really focus on this tension between umcreating a form and a space and also a surface. So in a lot of these you can see theres, theres forms that are more defined and are coming forward and theres also a lot of surface being developed andareas that are more abstracted and flat. Um and lately Ive been including bright colors, neon colors uh into the work, um to kind of supplement for line. Im trying to use color instead of defining light using color to define form and shape.

Theres a lot of layers built into these I think when you get up close you can see. So some of them go really quick and just kind of work themselves out in a really natural way and other ones are a little bit longer and more of a struggle. Giannattasio I am a recent graduate from the uh sculpture program at Syracuse University. This particular work is titled Come Back to Bed and it is a more of a physical representation of an experience that I find myself constantly in. Uh, Ill find myself trying to wind down by the end of the day and go to go to sleep and as I go to sleep the ideas the creative flow starts to develop and starts to wake me back up. This is essentially a representation of what it feels like to have this kind of happening. Ive been you know exploring

the geometric forms um for taking on for architectural forms for crystalline forms and I find these, these particular shapes reoccurring a lot in my surroundings and reoccurring in my work itself. Uh so it comes from a very intuitive place, but it ultimately, you know takes these, takes this form from for me. In the future I would, Id be very happy if we had so many proposals from so many different branches of the college that I couldnt possibly deal with them. Um that I have to hire more staff >>Narrator: WHEN NORM OBERLE WASNT FOCUSING ON HIS DAY JOB, HE TURNED HIS ATTENTION TO THE SKY AND BUILT A POWERFUL TELESCOPE. >> Growing up in the 1930s, the closest Norm Oberlee came to outer space was

through popular sciencefiction magazines, like Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. At the time, space shuttles, satellites and even television didnt exist. That didnt stop Norm from pursuing his passion. >>It was just a genuine curiosity astronomer and had been involved in astronomy all his life. >>Although deeply interested in outer space, norm never became a rocket scientist, or anything as exciting as a pilot. He went into sales with his wife, Sandy. >>They had their own business. Theyd go around to the eye the instruments andtheyd take them and clean them...clean the eye grease off of them, clean the optics and he used to sales. >>But when Norm wasnt pounding the pavement, he put his knowledge of optics to work building telescopes. >>To build a telescope from scratch, especially grinding the mirror, and that surface has to be accurate to an eighth of an inch. Otherwise you end up with the Hubble Space

Telescope that was half a human hair off. Its, you dont do it overnight. Norm Oberlee So I thought we would record this for historical reasons here. So I remind myself how bad it can be building a large telescope >>He inspired so many of us as kids to pursue astronomy. And he pursued a lot of people to grind their own mirrors. And there are still quite a few students out there who are still grinding mirrors Norms style. >>Norm was a founding member of the Cuyahoga Astronomy Club and the Lake Erie Astronomical Project. He turned his house into a telescope laboratory and even built an observatory right in his front yard. >>He built a lot of telescopes over the years and used it not only for his own private use but to enhance the publics appreciation of the night sky.

Why astronomy helps us to understand how everythingcame to be. Early cultures started to interact with the night sky, and were talking about Egyptiansand Eolithic cultures and that sort of thing. It really helped place them within, to located them within their world. >>Its a time machine. Every time you look at the night sky you look at the stars, youre looking backinto time, because its taken time for that light to get here. So what this does, it helps you take some years off that light travel. So you can look back further. So actually, it >>In the basement of his house, norm built a telescope ten thousand times more powerful than the human eye. >>People gasp when they look through this telescope. Its great for observing the moon and the planets. You know, with a 25.5 inch mirror its not just a typical

amateur telescope that you would buy over the counter say. It really gathers a tremendous amount of light. It allows you to see deeper into space. So the images are incredibly clear. You can see the rings of Saturn and when you look at the moon its almost like reaching into the craters so its an amazing experience. >>The telescope was so large that Norm had to build a retractable roof on the house so they could pan the scope across the night sky. >>He was a master at what he did. Everything was measured out and weighed. This telescope is perfectly balanced. You can see all nine planets. Galaxies in spiral arms and galaxies...the death throws of a dying star... you can see all that stuff with this telescope. >>In 1996, norms light faded from earth. He passed away and the Oberlee telescope went dark. That is, until Norms wife Sandy had an idea.

>>It sat, and then one time, about three years she called me and says Ian, find a home for this telescope that Norm would be pleased about. >>We were approached by Ian Cooper of the Chagrin Astronomical Society and he said Hey, weve got this telescope, were looking to donate it. Would you be interested? >>Here it is, the rest is >>What youre looking at is the realization of Norm Oberlees dream. After spending decades toiling inhis workshop and spending a lifetime pointing others to the night sky, the largest telescope he ever built now has a new home. This is the dark sky park in Geauga County. Its certified by the international dark sky association, a national organization of elite scientists, ecologists and astronomerswho test and certify the best locations across the country for stargazing. >>The park district had

to prove that they were worthy. You dont just hand those out. And its a silver tier site. Its one of three east of the Mississippi. The night sky out here in Geauga County is anatural resource and its just beautiful and dark. You can see a nice clear the moon just blazes overhead. Ive been out here at nights when theyve had open houses and people say oh this is magical, this is awesome. This is beautiful. And this is the only one of its kind on the planet. Theres no other park district that has a facility like this...county park district. >>In 2012, the Geauga County district park completed construction of a dark sky park. The site includes a planetarium and observatory. The Oberlee telescope is the centerpiece. >>Between the observatory and the telescope, we can do a variety of space based programs specifically about asteroids and planets and comets and how early cultures developed the constellations that they had and what it meant

to them as a culture. >>Norm would just be grin from ear to ear knowing that his telescope is being used in such a facility, where kids could come out and see the rings of Saturn. The moons of Jupiter, the moon, galaxies, nebular...and have everything else, all this interpretive facility surrounding his telescope. Hed just be absolutely over the moon about it. He wanted it to be used for what Norm would want it to be used for and that would be educating, you know, turning a mind on, which is what it does. >>Narrator: DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER, JAMES REDDINGTONS PANDORA PROJECT CAPTURES PEOPLE WITH THEIR MOST CHERISHED ITEMS. >>James Reddington: See what Im doing...I think documentary allows a photographer to insert themselves into the work. It really gives you a window into the mind of the photographer and like

is a little bit of their spirit is in the work and you can feel it when you look at the images. I love photographing anything regarding peoples secrets or anything where something thats not a readily apparent to people I like bringing that out in the open through my photography. And the Pandora Project was through something that I had my self which was a little treasure box where I kept all my... you know mementoes and photographs and things from my past. I started discovering that almost everybody has one of these things or at least some sort of container where they keep their old relics from their past. I had them label the significance of each of the items on the print itself and I would also take a portrait of them with their box to kind of connect the face with the items in the box. of meeting people and getting to know peoples stories is the best part of photography

>>Narrator: NEXT TIME ON COLORES! PHOTOGRAPHER AND ALCHEMIST, IAN RUHTER, TRAVELS IN A TRUCK THAT IS ALSO HIS CAMERA. HE SHARES HIS EXPERIENCE PHOTOGRAPHING NEW MEXICO. >> When were shooting out in the elements, just a little bit of wind will shake the camera. Nature creates all the beauty but it also gives us the most adversity. >>Narrator: ARTIST NANCY MOOSLIN HAS SYSTEMATICALLY TRANSLATED MUSICAL PIECES INTO PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES, CREATING A UNIQUE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE. >>I developed a way to translate pitch, musical pitch, into color. >>Narrator: ONE OF THE 20TH

CENTURYS MOST ACCOMPLISHED PHOTOGRAPHERS, ROMAN VISHNIAC, CAPTURES GERMANYS CHANGING POLITICAL REALITY THROUGH A MODERNIST LENS. >>Its an incredible documentation of how quickly things changed. >>Narrator: NEW YORKBASED INSTALLATION ARTISTS STEPHEN NGUYEN AND WADE KAVANAUGH WORK TO RECREATE THE DENSE MANGROVES AND PLANT LIFE THEY DISCOVERED ON A TRIP TO THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES. >>By exposing ourselves to a different landscape, were trying to extend the language of our work. >>Narrator: UNTIL NEXT TIME,