Richard Scott

Richard Scott

Towards a Definition of Pattern no.1

Pencil and acrylic ink on paper

Much of my work explores the relationships, nuances and grey areas around and between a number of related pairs of organising principles/perceptual paradigms:

order and disorder
form and content
figure and ground
discrete and continuous information
modularity and singularity
regularity and irregularity
repetition and variation
control and a lack thereof

This had led me to working a lot with the idea of pattern, specifically patterns which are quasi- or a-periodic, or irregularly repetitive in different ways. I'm interested in the factors which control how these patterns are formed, and what governs the perception of their "patterning" effect. As such, a lot of my work deals with emergent properties of systematic processes - rule-based iterative systems; feedback loops; growth mechanisms; interference patterns. I'm very interested in certain areas of science and maths, especially crystallography and the interrelated worlds connecting to it (symmetry; geometry; cellular automata), as well as information theory, combinatorics, entropy, harmonic analysis, and Gestalt psychology.

Richard Scott is an artist, musician, teacher and parent based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, working mainly in the fields of abstract drawing, installation, sound art, and experimental performance. After specialising in composition in the final year of my music degree at the University of Birmingham, he came to visual art around 2013 when he began experimenting with translating the structures and processes he'd been working with in sound onto a 2-dimensional plane - initially as a diagrammatic tool, but he quickly became enamoured with drawing and found it a more direct medium by which to explore the kind of forms he was interested in. Richard did a Fine Art MA at Margaret Street School of Art in Birmingham from 2017-19 and moved to the North East in 2020.

richard-scott.info

@richarddaviescott

Natalia Jurga on ‘Towards a Definition of Pattern no.1’ by Richard Scott

Arnold’s CAT map is a classical example of a chaotic dynamical system. The dynamics plays out on the torus, which is just the fancy mathematical name for the surface of a doughnut. The torus can be modelled mathematically by taking a square and identifying opposite sides.

This dynamical system was first introduced by the Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold in the 1960s. The origins of the name "CAT map" are unclear. In some textbooks it is used as an acronym for “Continuous Automorphism of the Torus”, the family of dynamical systems to which the CAT map belongs. A more amusing origin of the name may lie in the fact that Arnold first demonstrated its dynamics by showing what happens to a picture of a cat when the map is applied.

This piece of art reminded me of what happens to the cat after just a few iterations of the CAT map. In Russian, the map is known as "okroshka (cold soup) from a cat", which refers to its strong mixing properties. When the CAT map is applied, the poor cat is distorted by stretching it in one direction and squashing it in another. This stretching and squashing process causes different pieces of the cat to get mixed together very quickly, in the same way that dough gets mixed quickly under the stretching and kneading motions of the baker’s hands. Indeed, after just a few iterates of the map, any resemblance with the cat has disappeared and all that remains is a randomly pixelated picture which appears to bear no record of its history.

Natalia Jurga is a mathematician working on dynamical systems and fractal geometry at the University of St Andrews. 

My parents emigrated to the UK from Poland shortly before I was born and I grew up in Colindale in North-West London. During my GCSEs I fell in love with mathematics, especially after reading James Gleick's book "Chaos". I studied mathematics at the University of Bristol where Dr Thomas Jordan's and Professor Corinna Ulcigrai's Dynamical systems course captivated my curiosity. After Dr Thomas Jordan introduced me to fractal geometry during my final year project, I was committed to pursuing a PhD in the interplay between these two fields. I undertook a PhD at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Professor Mark Pollicott, where I was exposed to the vibrant research activity in these fields. 

When I finished my PhD I undertook a postdoctoral position at the University of Surrey where I worked with Dr Ian Morris, whose guidance helped me cement my research independence. In 2020 I joined the vibrant fractal geometry group at the University of St Andrews in sunny Scotland, where I have remained since.

Apart from my research, I am very interested in thinking and writing about the cultural and sociological aspects of academic pursuit and its connections to self-awareness. I also greatly enjoy playing football, listening to music and dancing (afrobeats), good conversations with friends, hiking, camping and the great outdoors in general.