My Art by the Numbers

The author explains his affinity for numbers as it relates to his work as an artist spanning his long career. This affinity helped him invent one of the first systems for making four-color digital prints. Having been only recently introduced to the book Number and Time, by Marie-Louise von Franz, the author finds that he is in full agreement with her depth psychology theories on number. Recounting a synchronicity that he experienced while writing this paper helped the author to understand Jung’s concept of the unus mundus, as explained by von Franz in Number and Time. He speculates that number archetypes must have evolved in human consciousness over very long periods of time and writes about the number zero as a “recent” example. The author also describes his experience of a spontaneous mathematical vision that led him to create an algorithm, which in turn led him to realize that crystals having fivefold symmetry could exist in nature, which was considered impossible at the time. The author discusses his new inventions of quasi-periodic and random tile patterns, which were inspired by 15th-century Islamic tile patterns, as they related to the aperiodic patterns invented by Roger Penrose in the 20th century. He speculates about the ability of artificially intelligent computer software to be able to generate random quasi-periodic patterns. Lastly, the author recounts a synchronistic experience that occurred during the month of his 72nd birthday, in which his work with numbers is seemingly reciprocated by nature.