Bakersfield College math professor Rafael Espericueta teaches more than just math. He experiments with turning mathematics into an art form.
“There are techniques to literally make visible the beauty of mathematics,” Espericueta said.
Espericueta has been teaching at BC for 23 years. He graduated from UC Irvine with a bachelor’s degree in Math in 1979, and later earned a master’s. He then worked at UCI after graduating, spending four years as the senior programmer in their Brain-Imaging Lab. He also practices Zen, an ancient practice of meditation and took a trip to New Zealand’s Hamilton Botanical Gardens “Zen Garden.”
Espericueta designs his own art using fractals, which he says stems from “transitioning mathematics into visual forms. [My personal interest for fractal art] came out of frustration of only talking to mathematicians about math.”
A mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot originally conveyed fractal art. In 1979 he used pictures to illustrate complex mathematic equations. The first, titled the “Mandelbrot set,” “has the remarkable property that distorted copies of the whole appear at all levels of magnification” as stated in Epericueta’s essay.
Espericueta says that he makes his fractal art by writing his own software programs using a combination of photos and Photoshop for interesting and unusual effects.
Espericueta states “the whole universe operates in much the same way [as fractals], where the ‘simple algebraic formulas’ are the laws of physics.”
Espericueta also says that the universe is never ending, “so it’s perhaps not so surprising that we find ourselves living in a giant fractal.”