Arthur C. Clarke Narrates Film on Mandelbrot’s Fractals; David Gilmour Provides the Soundtrack

In 1995, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci­ence fic­tion writer most well known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, pre­sent­ed a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary on the 1980 dis­cov­ery of the Man­del­brot Set (M‑Set)Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty brings us inside the world of frac­tal geom­e­try, and soon enough we’re encoun­ter­ing what has been called “the thumbprint of God” and some of the most beau­ti­ful dis­cov­er­ies in the his­to­ry of math­e­mat­ics.

Clarke nar­rates the 54-minute film, which includes inter­views with impor­tant math­e­mati­cians, includ­ing Benoît Man­del­brot him­self. David Gilmour, the gui­tarist for Pink Floyd, pro­vides the sound­track. It’s hard to imag­ine a more per­fect com­bi­na­tion. Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty first appeared on Open Cul­ture back in 2010, which means that a sec­ond view­ing is long over­due. A book close­ly relat­ed to the film can be pur­chased here: The Colours of Infin­i­ty: The Beau­ty, The Pow­er and the Sense of Frac­tals.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

BBC Radio Play Based on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Stream­ing Free For Lim­it­ed Time


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