Geno Pheno Sculpture: Fractal Dice No. 1

source: artsynet

Continually challenging what constitutes reality, conceptual artist Keith Tyson pursues questions of chance, causality, and interconnectedness using a wide array of media and materials. Tyson’s work hinges on the primacy of the idea. Indeed, for his 2008 collection of colorful geometrical sculptures entitled “Fractal Dice,” the idea—predicated on an algorithm—was of Tyson’s design while the construction and assembly of the sculptures fell to the gallery, who meticulously followed the artist’s instructions by
rolling actual dice to determine the next step. The result, as expected, was a series of works of immense artistry, complexity, and variation.
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source: trenthuntercasestudiesblogspot

Keith Tyson’s Fractal Dice sculptures are generated algorithmically, using a random variable to determine operations imposed on a regular rectangular prism. Random numbers decided which face to deform, and the size and nature of the operation. Colour is also assigned to faces randomly. These works are perhaps not technically fractals, but demonstrate the complexity that can be generated by a few iterations of fairly simple operations.