fractal wood burning

$fractal wood burning by Lara Sobel.$

Some photos from my initial trials of wood + saline + high voltage supply + variac. I have started making art pieces from this process. More info on larasobel. com.

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Comments

Synoptic Labs says:

This is absolutley gorgeous, well done!
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Lenny&Meriel says:

Oh I really want to do this now. What a fantastic technique.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

snarkhunt says:

any chance of getting an instructable on what your setup was? Voltage levels, prep, etc?
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

pmilg says:

Very cool, I think I will try it.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Looks like there's interest here! I will see what I can do in the next couple weeks and reply here with links to a more informative instructable, flickr set or video.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

rektide says:

@snarkhunt &
@AEther

There's a 4hv thread thread on this I started not but three days ago! It has a couple of setup suggestions & some discussion on photographing it. You should both drop by & say hello.

This photo is really nice! That arc is precious!
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

dnny says:

Inspiring and good job. I´m also waiting for some updates... or maybe I try this my self.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

erynthegrey says:

Okay, So watching the video, what does the voltage actually do? Or is it just the laser itself burning the wood? Watch the video and you'll see the laser.

blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/fractal_woo dburning_rev...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

dnny says:

@erynthegrey, I´m afraid that there is no laser involved in this, what looks like one is the current burning the wood.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

thecrankymonkey says:

Pretty cool. Based on just the pic my guess would be that this piece of wood is either Luann or Mahogany (Honduran)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

thinknow101 says:

Very cool. Anxiously awaiting further instructions on how to do this!
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

myowncompass says:

This is beautiful and I love the idea but the patterns are not, in fact, fractal.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

snarkhunt says:

they are a little fractish. From the wikipedia article you cite:
* It has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales. - yup
* It is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric language.dunno, but I suspect yup
* It is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically).yup
* It has a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its topological dimension (although this requirement is not met by space-filling curves such as the Hilbert curve). erm, I dunno
* It has a simple and recursive definition. yup
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

myowncompass says:

Not to be completely tedious but "arbitrarily small", "self-similar", and "recursive definition" have precise mathematical definitions not met here (as far as I'm aware). Again, I love the idea and I can see the similarity to a fractal shape. I'm just making the point. I think fractish is a good description. :)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

snarkhunt says:

I am known to be tedious throughout the land, so here goes:

The arbitrary small limit for these Lichtenberg figures is the arbitrary limit of electrons. As far as a fractal can be expressed in reality, this is arbitrarily small.

In a uniform medium the branches are self-similarish.

I think it's as close as you could find in reality - because we have these messy huge limits at the level of atoms.

Now that I've been tedious, I'd like to share the related links about these figures. If you are as tedious as I am, you might enjoy this and it will save you some googling: delicious.com/snarkhunt/lichtenberg
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Lara Sobel says:

Thanks for the links, snarkhunt. Those enjoying the debate of what exactly these are, may find this Flickr group very interesting: www.flickr.com/groups/emergence/
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

familiabrod says:

Beautiful!
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

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Taken on January 11, 2009
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fractal wood burning

Comments

Synoptic Labs says:

Lenny&Meriel says:

snarkhunt says:

pmilg says:

Lara Sobel says:

rektide says:

dnny says:

erynthegrey says:

dnny says:

thecrankymonkey says:

thinknow101 says:

myowncompass says:

snarkhunt says:

myowncompass says:

snarkhunt says:

Lara Sobel says:

familiabrod says:

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