Rotating Paint Catenaries : Pollock's technique explained

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Paul Robin (ENS, Paris)
• Thursday 12 July 2018, 13:00-14:00
• MR11, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Anne Herrmann.

Jackson Pollock is a famous abstract artist who used unconventional painting techniques to create huge non-figurative works. One of his techniques consists in swinging a brush coated in a very viscous paint in front of a vertical canvas. It creates a paint filament that stretches before splashing and coiling on the canvas, creating complex patterns that are impossible to recreate without precise control over the paint’s properties. In this talk, I will present various theoretical and numerical results on rotating filament of viscous fluid and discuss how viscosity, surface tension, gravity, inertia and air resistance affect the splashing pattern. First, I will derive a mathematical model for the shape of the paint filament while it is mid-air, and show how it displays very rich physics from viscous boundary layers to self-similar, friction-dominated spirals. Then, I will focus on the splashing pattern. It sometimes displays curly lines remindful of those of the famous “liquid rope coiling”. I will show how we can actually predict the apparition of coiling even with little understanding of the complex mechanisms at work – which Pollock did not have at the time.

This talk is part of the DAMTP BioLunch series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• BioLunch
• CMS Events
• CamBridgeSens
• Cambridge talks
• DAMTP BioLunch
• DAMTP info aggregator
• Interested Talks
• Life Science Interface Seminars
• MR11, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.