Journal Entry + Slides for Assignment #1

In working on Saara Lehto's incorporation of fractals in her art piece, I was given the opportunity to learn more about fractals and West Coast Indigenous art. On a basic level, we knew that the proportions aspect of fractals could be feasibly incorporated into the classroom, but I was surprised at the additional learning opportunities fractal art brought to the table. While working on the art recreation, I noticed that using artwork to demonstrate proportions was harder than it looked. Even after outlining how I was going to incorporate mini seahorses as part of a larger seahorse, I didn’t account for my pen width being a hindrance to the process. I also grew to appreciate that the requirement was “self-similar” and not “exact” because it made the project less stressful. Thinking about students, that would be a relief for them as well and it would allow them to be more creative. This project would make assessment more meaningful as well because no two students would have the same submission. Additional surprises came through working on the West Coast Indigenous artwork. Although on the surface it looked very easy, especially because we made use of templates as First Nations artists often did/do when using repeated shapes, it really wasn’t. The template had to be lined up and angled correctly to achieve symmetry. In hindsight, using a grid would have helped immensely, as well as created an additional opportunity to make use of math. A major flaw in our First Nations artwork was that we didn’t obey the rules of Indigenous art. I know that in the Northwest Coast, there are strict rules for colouring as well as proportions of spacing; however, I was unable to reach an artist who could provide that information. Not only would having those rules have made our artwork accurate in the artistic sense, it would have also been an asset in a classroom to have authentic proportion rules in a real-life setting so that students could see the value of learning about them. Following research or bringing in a guest artist, this could aid in Indigenizing our classrooms, while also adding an applicable layer to a lesson on fractals and proportions. Lastly, there was another opportunity to add different math concepts to the lesson through the use of Euclidean proofs. While creating the equilateral triangle shape in our Iterated Function System Fractal, we made use of the construction of Proposition 1 from Euclid’s Elements, Book I. 

 Edit: Here are our slides from the presentation:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1infhLZ4Ow7wofXp-yRHw7PSjB_5yOkyrOllgYZgh5pY/edit?usp=sharing