[Soft-matter] Special seminar on 28 July 2025

[Maciej Lisicki]

Dear Soft Matter & Complex Systems Colleagues and Friends,

On Monday 28 July 2025 at 14:00 at the UW Faculty of Physics (Pasteura 5, Warsaw; room 1.40) we are hosting a special seminar during which 

Andrzej Herczyński (Boston College, USA)

will give a talk
Fractal Contours: Order, Chaos & Art 

Abstract

Over the recent decades, a variety of indexes, such as the fractal dimension, Hurst exponent, or the Betti numbers, have been used to characterize structural or topological properties of art via discrete parameters. A single fractal dimension, in particular, has been commonly interpreted as characteristic of the entire artwork, whether binary, gray-scale, or in color, and whether self-similar or not. There is now ample evidence, however, that such exponents are strongly dependent on the details of the procedure used. Here we propose a more discriminating scaling analysis of images with the aim of obtaining robust scaling plots and avoiding any fitting routines. To this goal, we carefully average over all possible grid locations at each scale, rendering scaling functions independent of grid position and image orientation. And instead of fitting these plots with straight lines, we calculate their derivatives – continuous fractal contours. We test this approach on synthetic examples, ordered and random, on images of algorithmically defined fractals, and then examine selected abstract works by acknowledged masters of modern art. Possible applications extend to physics, classification of medical scans, and art historical studies.
 
We warmly welcome everyone to attend the talk and the Soft Matter Coffee Break after the seminar, held in room 2.63 (2nd floor).

All best wishes,
Maciej

--
Dr hab. Maciej Lisicki, prof. UW
Institute of Theoretical Physics | Faculty of Physics
University of Warsaw
softmatter.fuw.edu.pl <http://softmatter.fuw.edu.pl/>
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