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Modern Computing and Indigenous Design
by Professor Ron Eglash (Author)
In everything from braided hairstyles to the design of housing settlements, the geometric structures known as fractals permeate African culture. In a new book, an Ohio State University scholar examines the unlikely pairing of this mathematical concept and the culture and art of Africa.
"While fractal geometry is often used in high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs," said Ron Eglash, senior lecturer in comparative studies in the humanities. Eglash is author of African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design. Eglash said his work suggests that African mathematics is more complex than previously thought.
He also says using African fractals in U.S. classrooms may boost interest in math among students, particularly African Americans. He has developed a Web page to help teachers use fractal geometry in the classroom.
Fractals are geometric patterns that repeat on ever-shrinking scales. Many natural objects, like ferns, tree branches, and lung bronchial systems are shaped like fractals.
Fractals can also be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics, and have become an important new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences.
Fractals are characterized by the repetition of similar patterns at ever-diminishing scales. Fractal geometry has emerged as one of the most exciting frontiers on the border between mathematics and information technology and can be seen in many of the swirling patterns produced by computer graphics. It has become a new tool for modeling in biology, geology, and other natural sciences.
Anthropologists have observed that the patterns produced in different cultures can be characterized by specific design themes. In Europe and America, we often see cities laid out in a grid pattern of straight streets and right-angle corners. In contrast, traditional African settlements tend to use fractal structure--circles of circles of circular dwellings, rectangular walls enclosing ever-smaller rectangles, and streets in which broad avenues branch down to tiny footpaths with striking geometric repetition. These indigenous fractals are not limited to architecture; their recursive patterns echo throughout many disparate African designs and knowledge systems.
Drawing on interviews with African designers, artists, and scientists, Ron Eglash investigates fractals in African architecture, traditional hairstyling, textiles, sculpture, painting, carving, metalwork, religion, games, practical craft, quantitative technologies, and symbolic systems. He also examines the political and social implications of the existence of African fractal geometry. His book makes a unique contribution to the study of mathematics, African culture, anthropology, and computer simulations.
Ron Eglash’s research examines the ways in which information technology, mathematical modeling, and other science and technology practices are intertwined with cultural categories such as race, gender, and class, and explores interventions in these relationships. His current project, funded by the NSF, HUD, and Dept. of Education, translates the mathematical concepts embedded in cultural designs of African, Native American, Latino, and heterogeneous urban youth communities into software design tools for secondary school education.
Professor Eglash’s educational background includes a B.S. in Cybernetics, an M.S. in Systems Engineering, and a PhD in History of Consciousness. A Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship enabled his field research on African ethnomathematics, as African Fractals: modern computing and indigenous design. He publishes in journals ranging from American Anthropologist to Complexity.
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