Latest news with #Newberry
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Yahoo
Greenwood man arrested child sexual abuse material charges
GREENWOOD, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A Greenwood man has been arrested on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) related charges. Joel Newberry, 28, was arrested on Tuesday, April 17, by the Sebastian County Sheriff's Office on charges of distribution, possession and viewing of material depicting sexually explicit conduct involving minors. Newberry's bond was set at $100,000, and he remains on the Sebastian County inmate roster as of April 17. On Dec. 16, 2024, the Arkansas State Police (ASP) received a report from NCMEC indicating that Kik had flagged nineteen images suspected to be CSAM, uploaded between Dec. 5 and Dec. 11, 2024, according to a probable cause affidavit. The cyber tip included the email address associated with the offending Kik account, newberry606@ and the username 'llamaboy67.' According to court documents, two videos uploaded from this account on Dec. 5 depicted prepubescent girls being sexually abused by adult males. A third video, uploaded on Dec. 8, showed a girl, another prepubescent, being assaulted by two men. Memphis man sentenced to 20 years in Arkansas for fentanyl-related charges An administrative subpoena linked an IP address to a Wave Rural internet account registered to a Greenwood, Arkansas, resident. The email on the account matched one used on a Kik account involved in the uploads. Based on this evidence, police obtained a search warrant and searched the residence on March 14, 2025, seizing an iPhone 14 belonging to Joel Newberry. Forensic analysis showed the phone's number matched the Wave Rural account and confirmed it was at the residence during the Dec. 8 upload. Investigators also found a Kik account on the phone using the same username as the one that uploaded the content, along with a Gmail address tied to the case. According to court documents, Newberry admitted the email and internet account were his but denied responsibility for the uploads. Newberry's court appearance is set for April 23. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Chicago Tribune
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
With comics and video games, ‘Native Pop!' exhibits shows Native American history is not ancient history
When River Kerstetter was asked about three years ago to help curate an exhibit at the Newberry Library about Native Americans and pop culture called 'Native Pop!,' she said getting involved with the exhibit was a 'no-brainer.' The artist, who is a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, had not only worked with archival materials before, but is a self-described nerd. 'I play video games. I read comics. So, yeah, it was just like a perfect fit,' Kerstetter said. But for Kerstetter, working on the exhibit was more than just an opportunity to learn about different games and comics created by Native people. It was also an opportunity to shape how others think about Native people through mediums such as science fiction, photography and film. 'So, so often Native stories get pigeonholed as ancient history, or it's very romanticized,' Kerstetter said, emphasizing how Native stories historically have been featured in natural history museums rather than contemporary art museums. 'I think a show like this kind of contextualizes Native people as like, we're still here. We've been here this whole time, and also, we have many diverse perspectives and stories,' Kerstetter said. 'And I think pop culture is a really good vehicle to sort of share those stories and kind of get to the heart of what they're about.' 'Native Pop!' opened on March 20 at the Newberry and features everything from 'Star Wars' clips in the Navajo language Diné Bizaad to three video games by Native creators loaded onto an arcade machine specially designed for the exhibit. The Newberry is home to one of the strongest collections of Native American archival materials in the country. The collection was started in 1911 when American business magnate Edward E. Ayer donated more than 17,000 materials. Ayer's materials had a strong focus on early contact between Native Americans and European settlers and was later expanded to include materials on Indigenous Hawaiians and Filipinos. In all of these cases, the materials focused on accounts from Europeans and European Americans. The collection has since grown, but most items in the collection were older materials. But about five years ago, Hansen said the Newberry formally revised their collection development policy to intentionally focus on gathering more material by Native creators and from the present day. 'We never wanted to have a collection that made people think, 'Oh, these people used to be around and they're not anymore,' which could be the impression you got if we had a collection that really didn't have a lot from the last century,' said Hansen, who has been with the Newberry for nearly 11 years. 'So we've been doing much more collecting on material from, say, the second half of the 1900s up to the present day.' That mission to collect more contemporary materials from Native people is part of what inspired the creation of 'Native Pop!' From daguerrotype portraits to Polaroid pictures, the exhibit seeks to not only show Native people in a contemporary context, but also demonstrate how Native people examine and reimagine their past, present and futures. 'I don't know of an exhibit like ours that has drawn on both rare books, manuscripts and other kinds of artworks that are more historical and put them into a kind of dialogue with more contemporary Indigenous art in the way that ours does,' Hansen said. Old traditions and contemporary iconography One primary example of work in the exhibit that mixes the old with the new is ledger art. Its origins are rooted in the practice of people in the Great Plains painting on bison and other animal hides to decorate their everyday items and to tell stories. But that all changed around the mid-19th century with the near extinction of bison. 'When you're not allowed to roam on the prairie and go kill buffalo or deer and you're confined to the reservation, you have to find something else,' said Holly Young, a Thizáptaŋna/Wičhíyena Dakota artist located in Bismarck, North Dakota. Then comes the paper from ledger books, which were some of the most common sources of paper Plains people had back in the day. 'And Native people sort of use those kinds of ledgers to tell the kinds of stories that they would have previously told on hides, often exploits in warfare or battle, but other kinds of things too,' including courtship scenes and dances, Hansen said. Ledger art has seen a revival in the last 40 years. While the ledger paper may be hard to come by, many artists still seek it, scouring eBay, antique stores and trading with other artists for the paper. Now, some artists are mixing traditional and contemporary imagery in their ledger art to tell their stories. In one of Young's pieces, two Native people are take a selfie together with a bison in the distance — an image that was inspired by her daughter, who likes to take selfies. In another piece, created by Hunkpapa Lakota artist Gilbert Kills Pretty Enemy III, an Incredible Hulk is turned into a Native warrior and is seen fighting a black snake that represents an oil pipeline. The piece was created in opposition of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a crude-oil pipeline stretching from North Dakota to Illinois that sparked months-long protests for threatening the drinking water and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. 'I just believe with my ledger art, and I'm sure with everyone else too, is we're just continuing to express ourselves, our culture, our personal experiences, and record and document those,' said Terran Last Gun, a Piikani ledger artist inspired by his father, who gave him his first ledger paper. Last Gun's ledger art tends to take on more abstract forms, inspired by both the symbols his tribe paints on their lodges and the bright colors used by Western artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. In a piece featured in the exhibit, a yellow and pink hard-edged triangle is juxtaposed against a smaller blue and orange circle in the center. The triangle represents a mountain, a prominent symbol for the Piikani people who are originally from the Rocky Mountains area. 'I like to express to people that there was this geometric, abstract way of thinking already here in North America,' Last Gun said. 'I'm very much inspired by Western artists that are doing that type of work too, but it's very much my own tribal imagery that I'm trying to continue on.' Cara Romero and photography Like other pieces in the exhibit, Cara Romero uses her photography to tell the stories and experiences of Native people in the modern day — but she didn't always intend to become a photographer. Romero, who currently lives in New Mexico, stumbled into a black-and-white film photography class in college, and while she lacked some of the technical skills, she quickly fell in love with it. 'It was one of those professors and one of those college courses that really opened up my heart and mind to different possibilities,' said Romero, an enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. 'Wanting to communicate the contemporary, lived experience of native peoples and my community was something that I was really searching for — and I just instantly understood that photography was going to be the vehicle for communication.' In a photo titled 'Dans l'Ombre,' which translates to 'in the shadows' in French, Romero plays on the film noir genre. A woman is dressed in traditional Native American clothing and backed up against a wall with a scared expression on her face. What she is fearful of is left up to the viewer to imagine. The woman is wearing a red dress — symbolizing the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. 'I think within the Native community, we understand what might be in the shadows, but it's really a chance for, cross-culturally, non-Native people to wonder and hopefully explore what she might be scared of,' Romero said. Another important aspect of Romero's work is helping young people understand their origins and Native culture, as well as their place in the modern day. 'Indigeneity becomes this timeless way to visually communicate that we are both modern and still carry all of that ancestral knowledge and cultural transmission, even though we're living in contemporary times,' Romero said. 'And I think that that's really important, primarily for our young people, to have that cross-cultural understanding that they're every bit as Indigenous as they ever were in these contemporary times.' Romero does just that in a featured photo called 'Coyote Tales no. 1.' The photo is inspired by the tale of the trickster but heroic coyote, who appears in hundreds of tales across different tribes. The coyote represents the side of humanity that is always making mistakes and learning from those mistakes, but is still loved regardless. In the image, the coyote is turned away from the viewer while two women in the photo look forward. The coyote is hiding a pair of flowers, suggesting that he intends to give one of the women the flowers, but his intentions are left to the viewer to ponder. 'There's ideas of painting the town red, of whatever is about to happen if the coyote is involved, there's bound to be some lessons learned,' Romero said. 'But the girls look very in control … And so it just kind of became this really beautiful composition that, for me, is really fun. It kind of brings back our storytelling into contemporary times, instead of just in, you know, ancient context.'
CNN
14-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Trees in art, as well as life, often follow simple mathematical rules, study finds
Summary Scientists have discovered that trees in famous artwork follow the same mathematical fractal patterns as real trees. Researchers analyzed tree art across cultures, finding consistent branch scaling values matching those in nature. A University of New Mexico mathematical biologist says these patterns may help humans recognize stylized images as trees. In Mondrian's increasingly abstract tree paintings, the recognizability disappeared when fractal patterns were abandoned. Fractal patterns in art and nature are both functional and aesthetically pleasing, according to the study published in PNAS Nexus. Trees depicted in famous artworks across a range of styles follow the same mathematical rules as their real-life counterparts, scientists have found. The math concept hidden in this tree art — geometric shapes known as fractals — is apparent in branching patterns in nature and may be key to humans' ability to recognize such artwork as trees, according to Mitchell Newberry, a mathematical biologist at the University of New Mexico, and his colleague Jingyi Gao, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin. Like the branches, twigs and leaves of a tree, fractals repeat the same patterns across different scales. Snowflakes, lightning bolts and human blood vessels are also fractal structures, which all show a degree of self-similarity: As you zoom into the details of a fractal, you can see a replica of the whole. 'If you look at a tree, its branches are branching. Then the child branches repeat the figure of the parent branch,' Gao said in a news release. Newberry and Gao chose to study artworks depicting single trees. Their selections, which they said spanned different times and cultures, included 16th century stone window carvings from the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in India, an 18th century painting called 'Cherry Blossoms' by Japanese artist Matsumura Goshun and two early 20th century works by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. They also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). They found that the trees depicted in the artworks, even when abstract or stylistic, mostly, but not always, corresponded to branching patterns and scale found in natural trees. 'Any kind of abstraction is a way of trying to get at natural laws, whether it's a mathematical abstraction or an artistic abstraction. There's a lot of different kinds of trees in the world, but this theory shows us (and) gives us some baseline for what we expect a tree to be,' Newberry told CNN. Newberry said he had long been a fan of Mondrian's work and how the artist depicted trees in abstract ways, removing all but the most essential elements but still clearly conveying a tree. It jibed with his own work explaining mathematically how treelike structures in human biology such as veins and arteries and lungs use their physical form to efficiently deliver blood and air. To reach their findings, the researchers successfully came up with a method of assessing branching patterns in trees and generalized it into a simple common formula, according to Fabian Fischer, a researcher at Technical University of Munich in Germany who wasn't involved in Newberry and Gao's study. 'The method is based on ideas that go back to Leonardo da Vinci and have been revisited by biologists multiple times,' Fischer said. 'I found it a highly stimulating read, with an interesting connection between works of art and biology.' Scale of 1 to tree In nature, fractal patterns aren't just aesthetically pleasing, they're also often related to function. For example, branching enables trees to transport fluid, harvest light and maintain mechanical stability. Since a fractal is a geometric shape, mathematicians can calculate its complexity, or fractal dimension — even when it appears in art. 'There are some characteristics of the art that feel like they're aesthetic or subjective, but we can use math to describe it,' Gao said. In their research published in the scientific journal PNAS Nexus on February 11, Gao and Newberry analyzed the variation in the thickness of the tree branches in the artworks they studied. They took into account the number of smaller branches per larger branch and used this information to calculate a number they called the branch diameter scaling exponent. The study found that the trees in the artworks had a branch diameter scaling value broadly matching the 1.5 to 3 range for real trees. Outside those values, the objects depicted weren't easily recognizable as trees. Gao and Newberry were surprised to find the highly stylized Indian mosque carving had a value closer to real trees than the tree in 'Cherry Blossoms,' which they had initially thought was more natural-looking. Though extremely rich in detail, with over 400 individual branches, 'Cherry Blossoms' exhibited a scaling exponent of 1.4, while the pair calculated the Indian carved tree has a value of 2.5. Newberry said that having a more realistic branch diameter scaling factor may have enabled artists to take more creative risks yet still have the object recognizable as a tree. 'As you abstract away details and still want viewers to recognize this as a beautiful tree, then you may have to be closer to reality in some other aspects,' Newberry said. Of course, artists such as Mondrian and Klimt would likely not have been aware of fractals, or the math that underpins them, but perhaps had an innate understanding of the subtle proportions all trees share, according to the researchers. However, Fischer noted that the study was exploratory and the range of selected tree species and works of art is small and selective, therefore it's not possible to draw strong conclusions. Fractal pattern impacts The authors studied a series of works by abstract painter Mondrian that depict the same tree but in increasingly less realistic ways. His 1911 work 'De Grijze Boom' ('The Gray Tree') shows a series of black lines against a gray background, but the painting is nonetheless instantly recognizable as a tree, with its branch scaling value in the real tree range at 2.8. 'I don't think he (Mondrian) is even trying to find the essence of trees but as he's pulling things out, this thing that we think is really important in science ends up being one of the last things to go (away) in the art,' Newberry said. 'Clearly, he thinks it's really important, and clearly it's really important to human perception.' However, in Mondrian's 1912 'Bloeiende Appelboom' ('Blooming Apple Tree'), a painting in the same series, the branch diameter scaling is gone, Newberry said, with a value of 5.4. 'Whereas most viewers of Gray Tree immediately perceive a tree, naïve viewers of Blooming Apple Tree see dancers, roots, fish, faces, water, stained glass, leaves, flowers, or nothing representational at all,' the authors noted in the study. The researchers also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). Though the tree's depiction in this artwork is highly stylized, the study's measurements suggest it also fell into the statistical range of a real-life tree. The study authors are not the first to apply math to trees in art. Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci observed tree growth and came up with his own mathematical rule for painting trees. His work on tree physiology inspired scientists and landscape artists alike to study branching patterns, according to the new research. The findings from the study are intriguing because they integrate artistic and scientific approaches to studying trees, said Richard Taylor, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon. 'Although focusing on trees, the article is tackling a much bigger question — why are natural patterns so beautiful — and interdisciplinary collaborations are essential for delivering the answers,' Taylor, who was not involved in the study, said via email. His research has focused on the positive impact of viewing fractal patterns in nature, which he said could reduce stress levels. 'Studies such as this one emphasize the aesthetic power of trees. There is a Japanese tradition known as 'forest bathing,' Taylor added. 'Based on studies such as these, a more appropriate description is 'fractal bathing.' We should soak up the aesthetic qualities of trees — whether this is in nature or in art.'
CNN
14-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Trees in art, as well as life, often follow simple mathematical rules, study finds
Trees depicted in famous artworks across a range of styles follow the same mathematical rules as their real-life counterparts, scientists have found. The math concept hidden in this tree art — geometric shapes known as fractals — is apparent in branching patterns in nature and may be key to humans' ability to recognize such artwork as trees, according to Mitchell Newberry, a mathematical biologist at the University of New Mexico, and his colleague Jingyi Gao, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin. Like the branches, twigs and leaves of a tree, fractals repeat the same patterns across different scales. Snowflakes, lightning bolts and human blood vessels are also fractal structures, which all show a degree of self-similarity: As you zoom into the details of a fractal, you can see a replica of the whole. 'If you look at a tree, its branches are branching. Then the child branches repeat the figure of the parent branch,' Gao said in a news release. Newberry and Gao chose to study artworks depicting single trees. Their selections, which they said spanned different times and cultures, included 16th century stone window carvings from the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in India, an 18th century painting called 'Cherry Blossoms' by Japanese artist Matsumura Goshun and two early 20th century works by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. They also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). They found that the trees depicted in the artworks, even when abstract or stylistic, mostly, but not always, corresponded to branching patterns and scale found in natural trees. 'Any kind of abstraction is a way of trying to get at natural laws, whether it's a mathematical abstraction or an artistic abstraction. There's a lot of different kinds of trees in the world, but this theory shows us (and) gives us some baseline for what we expect a tree to be,' Newberry told CNN. Newberry said he had long been a fan of Mondrian's work and how the artist depicted trees in abstract ways, removing all but the most essential elements but still clearly conveying a tree. It jibed with his own work explaining mathematically how treelike structures in human biology such as veins and arteries and lungs use their physical form to efficiently deliver blood and air. To reach their findings, the researchers successfully came up with a method of assessing branching patterns in trees and generalized it into a simple common formula, according to Fabian Fischer, a researcher at Technical University of Munich in Germany who wasn't involved in Newberry and Gao's study. 'The method is based on ideas that go back to Leonardo da Vinci and have been revisited by biologists multiple times,' Fischer said. 'I found it a highly stimulating read, with an interesting connection between works of art and biology.' Scale of 1 to tree In nature, fractal patterns aren't just aesthetically pleasing, they're also often related to function. For example, branching enables trees to transport fluid, harvest light and maintain mechanical stability. Since a fractal is a geometric shape, mathematicians can calculate its complexity, or fractal dimension — even when it appears in art. 'There are some characteristics of the art that feel like they're aesthetic or subjective, but we can use math to describe it,' Gao said. In their research published in the scientific journal PNAS Nexus on February 11, Gao and Newberry analyzed the variation in the thickness of the tree branches in the artworks they studied. They took into account the number of smaller branches per larger branch and used this information to calculate a number they called the branch diameter scaling exponent. The study found that the trees in the artworks had a branch diameter scaling value broadly matching the 1.5 to 3 range for real trees. Outside those values, the objects depicted weren't easily recognizable as trees. Gao and Newberry were surprised to find the highly stylized Indian mosque carving had a value closer to real trees than the tree in 'Cherry Blossoms,' which they had initially thought was more natural-looking. Though extremely rich in detail, with over 400 individual branches, 'Cherry Blossoms' exhibited a scaling exponent of 1.4, while the pair calculated the Indian carved tree has a value of 2.5. Newberry said that having a more realistic branch diameter scaling factor may have enabled artists to take more creative risks yet still have the object recognizable as a tree. 'As you abstract away details and still want viewers to recognize this as a beautiful tree, then you may have to be closer to reality in some other aspects,' Newberry said. Of course, artists such as Mondrian and Klimt would likely not have been aware of fractals, or the math that underpins them, but perhaps had an innate understanding of the subtle proportions all trees share, according to the researchers. However, Fischer noted that the study was exploratory and the range of selected tree species and works of art is small and selective, therefore it's not possible to draw strong conclusions. Fractal pattern impacts The authors studied a series of works by abstract painter Mondrian that depict the same tree but in increasingly less realistic ways. His 1911 work 'De Grijze Boom' ('The Gray Tree') shows a series of black lines against a gray background, but the painting is nonetheless instantly recognizable as a tree, with its branch scaling value in the real tree range at 2.8. 'I don't think he (Mondrian) is even trying to find the essence of trees but as he's pulling things out, this thing that we think is really important in science ends up being one of the last things to go (away) in the art,' Newberry said. 'Clearly, he thinks it's really important, and clearly it's really important to human perception.' However, in Mondrian's 1912 'Bloeiende Appelboom' ('Blooming Apple Tree'), a painting in the same series, the branch diameter scaling is gone, Newberry said, with a value of 5.4. 'Whereas most viewers of Gray Tree immediately perceive a tree, naïve viewers of Blooming Apple Tree see dancers, roots, fish, faces, water, stained glass, leaves, flowers, or nothing representational at all,' the authors noted in the study. The researchers also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). Though the tree's depiction in this artwork is highly stylized, the study's measurements suggest it also fell into the statistical range of a real-life tree. The study authors are not the first to apply math to trees in art. Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci observed tree growth and came up with his own mathematical rule for painting trees. His work on tree physiology inspired scientists and landscape artists alike to study branching patterns, according to the new research. The findings from the study are intriguing because they integrate artistic and scientific approaches to studying trees, said Richard Taylor, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon. 'Although focusing on trees, the article is tackling a much bigger question — why are natural patterns so beautiful — and interdisciplinary collaborations are essential for delivering the answers,' Taylor, who was not involved in the study, said via email. His research has focused on the positive impact of viewing fractal patterns in nature, which he said could reduce stress levels. 'Studies such as this one emphasize the aesthetic power of trees. There is a Japanese tradition known as 'forest bathing,' Taylor added. 'Based on studies such as these, a more appropriate description is 'fractal bathing.' We should soak up the aesthetic qualities of trees — whether this is in nature or in art.'
CNN
14-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Trees in art, as well as life, often follow simple mathematical rules, study finds
Trees depicted in famous artworks across a range of styles follow the same mathematical rules as their real-life counterparts, scientists have found. The math concept hidden in this tree art — geometric shapes known as fractals — is apparent in branching patterns in nature and may be key to humans' ability to recognize such artwork as trees, according to Mitchell Newberry, a mathematical biologist at the University of New Mexico, and his colleague Jingyi Gao, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin. Like the branches, twigs and leaves of a tree, fractals repeat the same patterns across different scales. Snowflakes, lightning bolts and human blood vessels are also fractal structures, which all show a degree of self-similarity: As you zoom into the details of a fractal, you can see a replica of the whole. 'If you look at a tree, its branches are branching. Then the child branches repeat the figure of the parent branch,' Gao said in a news release. Newberry and Gao chose to study artworks depicting single trees. Their selections, which they said spanned different times and cultures, included 16th century stone window carvings from the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque in India, an 18th century painting called 'Cherry Blossoms' by Japanese artist Matsumura Goshun and two early 20th century works by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. They also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). They found that the trees depicted in the artworks, even when abstract or stylistic, mostly, but not always, corresponded to branching patterns and scale found in natural trees. 'Any kind of abstraction is a way of trying to get at natural laws, whether it's a mathematical abstraction or an artistic abstraction. There's a lot of different kinds of trees in the world, but this theory shows us (and) gives us some baseline for what we expect a tree to be,' Newberry told CNN. Newberry said he had long been a fan of Mondrian's work and how the artist depicted trees in abstract ways, removing all but the most essential elements but still clearly conveying a tree. It jibed with his own work explaining mathematically how treelike structures in human biology such as veins and arteries and lungs use their physical form to efficiently deliver blood and air. To reach their findings, the researchers successfully came up with a method of assessing branching patterns in trees and generalized it into a simple common formula, according to Fabian Fischer, a researcher at Technical University of Munich in Germany who wasn't involved in Newberry and Gao's study. 'The method is based on ideas that go back to Leonardo da Vinci and have been revisited by biologists multiple times,' Fischer said. 'I found it a highly stimulating read, with an interesting connection between works of art and biology.' Scale of 1 to tree In nature, fractal patterns aren't just aesthetically pleasing, they're also often related to function. For example, branching enables trees to transport fluid, harvest light and maintain mechanical stability. Since a fractal is a geometric shape, mathematicians can calculate its complexity, or fractal dimension — even when it appears in art. 'There are some characteristics of the art that feel like they're aesthetic or subjective, but we can use math to describe it,' Gao said. In their research published in the scientific journal PNAS Nexus on February 11, Gao and Newberry analyzed the variation in the thickness of the tree branches in the artworks they studied. They took into account the number of smaller branches per larger branch and used this information to calculate a number they called the branch diameter scaling exponent. The study found that the trees in the artworks had a branch diameter scaling value broadly matching the 1.5 to 3 range for real trees. Outside those values, the objects depicted weren't easily recognizable as trees. Gao and Newberry were surprised to find the highly stylized Indian mosque carving had a value closer to real trees than the tree in 'Cherry Blossoms,' which they had initially thought was more natural-looking. Though extremely rich in detail, with over 400 individual branches, 'Cherry Blossoms' exhibited a scaling exponent of 1.4, while the pair calculated the Indian carved tree has a value of 2.5. Newberry said that having a more realistic branch diameter scaling factor may have enabled artists to take more creative risks yet still have the object recognizable as a tree. 'As you abstract away details and still want viewers to recognize this as a beautiful tree, then you may have to be closer to reality in some other aspects,' Newberry said. Of course, artists such as Mondrian and Klimt would likely not have been aware of fractals, or the math that underpins them, but perhaps had an innate understanding of the subtle proportions all trees share, according to the researchers. However, Fischer noted that the study was exploratory and the range of selected tree species and works of art is small and selective, therefore it's not possible to draw strong conclusions. Fractal pattern impacts The authors studied a series of works by abstract painter Mondrian that depict the same tree but in increasingly less realistic ways. His 1911 work 'De Grijze Boom' ('The Gray Tree') shows a series of black lines against a gray background, but the painting is nonetheless instantly recognizable as a tree, with its branch scaling value in the real tree range at 2.8. 'I don't think he (Mondrian) is even trying to find the essence of trees but as he's pulling things out, this thing that we think is really important in science ends up being one of the last things to go (away) in the art,' Newberry said. 'Clearly, he thinks it's really important, and clearly it's really important to human perception.' However, in Mondrian's 1912 'Bloeiende Appelboom' ('Blooming Apple Tree'), a painting in the same series, the branch diameter scaling is gone, Newberry said, with a value of 5.4. 'Whereas most viewers of Gray Tree immediately perceive a tree, naïve viewers of Blooming Apple Tree see dancers, roots, fish, faces, water, stained glass, leaves, flowers, or nothing representational at all,' the authors noted in the study. The researchers also examined Gustav Klimt's 1909 painting 'L'Arbre de Vie' ('Tree of Life'). Though the tree's depiction in this artwork is highly stylized, the study's measurements suggest it also fell into the statistical range of a real-life tree. The study authors are not the first to apply math to trees in art. Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci observed tree growth and came up with his own mathematical rule for painting trees. His work on tree physiology inspired scientists and landscape artists alike to study branching patterns, according to the new research. The findings from the study are intriguing because they integrate artistic and scientific approaches to studying trees, said Richard Taylor, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon. 'Although focusing on trees, the article is tackling a much bigger question — why are natural patterns so beautiful — and interdisciplinary collaborations are essential for delivering the answers,' Taylor, who was not involved in the study, said via email. His research has focused on the positive impact of viewing fractal patterns in nature, which he said could reduce stress levels. 'Studies such as this one emphasize the aesthetic power of trees. There is a Japanese tradition known as 'forest bathing,' Taylor added. 'Based on studies such as these, a more appropriate description is 'fractal bathing.' We should soak up the aesthetic qualities of trees — whether this is in nature or in art.'
