{"id":2189,"date":"2011-01-11T19:04:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-12T00:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2011-01-11T19:06:02","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T00:06:02","slug":"bmfac-sorry-youre-looking-for-something-that-isnt-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2189","title":{"rendered":"BMFAC: Sorry, you’re looking for something that isn’t here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a riddle:\u00a0 when is the host of an art exhibition not the host of an art exhibition?<\/p>\n

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Search results for "fractal art" from the official ICM website<\/p><\/div>\n

Interesting search results for “fractal art”.\u00a0 Maybe they don’t call it “art?”\u00a0 Well, alright.\u00a0 Some people might not see fractals as real art but how about just “fractals”?\u00a0 That’s got to come up with something about the exhibit.\u00a0 As they say on Google, “I feel lucky!”<\/p>\n

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Search results for "fractal" from the ICM 2010 official website<\/p><\/div>\n

No way!\u00a0 Stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t fractal geometry something that even high school math students study?\u00a0 And yet there doesn’t even seem to be anything about fractal math at the ICM 2010<\/a>.\u00a0 I thought at least some of these folks were fractal math gurus and something, somewhere fractal related would come up.\u00a0 But apparently this ICM has no connection with fractal math much less fractal art.<\/p>\n

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Search results from ICM 2010 site<\/p><\/div>\n

Okay, maybe I’ve got to look at this ICM conference not from my own perspective but from the point of view of a ICM attendee, an esteemed mathematician, university scholar who’s traveled thousands of miles just to be part of the International Congress of Mathematicians:<\/p>\n

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Search results from ICM 2010 site<\/p><\/div>\n

But seriously, I’m getting the idea that the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest exhibition was a one-time thing.\u00a0 The very first year, 2006, it was sponsored by the ICM because that year they were giving a special award to Benoit Mandelbrot, whom as we all know is considered the father of fractal geometry.\u00a0 They had a fractal art exhibition to complement the special award being given out at that time.\u00a0 The ICMs are held every four years and the next one wouldn’t have been until 2010.\u00a0 The 2007 BMFAC naturally was not associated with the ICM because there wasn’t one that year.\u00a0 It was sponsored by Vodafone but held in the same city, Madrid, Spain, as the first (ICM sponsored) exhibition.<\/p>\n

There was no BMFAC in 2008 (no reason given) but they did hold a contest in 2009 which was intended to form the exhibition at the next ICM exhibition, that being 2010 in Hyderabad, India.\u00a0 The contest seemed to be held much farther in advance of the ICM than the contest for the last ICM in 2006 was; the contest judging was over and the results announced in late 2009, almost a year ahead of the ICM.<\/p>\n

But then it was discovered (yes, no mention of this by the BMFAC organizers) that there were three “extra” public exhibitions held before the ICM exhibition in Aug. 2010, suggesting that the early contest date had been planned well in advance, that is, intentionally<\/em>,\u00a0 to accommodate these three —<\/em>unannounced– exhibitions.<\/p>\n

All of these things characterized the organizers of the BMFACs as a very closed and secretive group:<\/p>\n