A Journey into the Unending World of Fractals

FROM SATELLITE SOFTWARE ENGINEER TO ARTIST and teacher, Masonic Village at Elizabethtown resident Bill Decker has certainly lived a complex life. His long-time hobby of creating fractal artwork surely follows suit.

Bill’s unique interest reaches as far back as his days as a student studying astronomy and physics at Penn State University.

“There was a nice library [at Penn State], and they subscribed to 40 or 50 of the biggest scientific publications,” he said. “I started reading ‘Scientific American,’ and there was a story about fractals.”

In the 1980s, as personal computer technology became faster and more available, Bill’s interest in fractals and creating digital fractal art grew. He continued creating fractal artwork throughout the early 2000s, but then took a break until 2017, when he came across more free time in retirement and started teaching classes on it at Masonic Village.

WHAT IS FRACTAL ART?

At a basic level, fractals are a visual art form that use mathematical formulas to generate images of surprising complexity and variety. They have patterns that can repeat infinitely and can be “zoomed in” indefinitely, showing the same pattern and shape forever.

These formulas always create the same shapes every time they are “solved,” so instead of saving each image that is created, the formula itself can be saved for later.

“Because of the nature of fractal formulas, you can load them back into the program later,” Bill explained, “so you can return to the ones that you really like.”

Over his decades of creating, reworking and expanding upon his artwork, Bill kept those formulas organized. This means he can always find the ones he marked down as “good” and recolor and manipulate them even more to create more interesting artwork. By the time he “rebooted” his hobby in 2017, he had more than 1,500 formulas and images catalogued.

“I was introduced to Masonic Village by my brother. About a dozen years ago, I visited and thought it looked nice,” he recalls. “Later, when I was looking at retirement, I was pretty set on this place.”

Besides having more time to focus on fractals, Bill feels blessed in numerous ways to be at Masonic Village.

Shortly after he moved to Masonic Village, Bill discovered the Life Long Learning Center, where he could explore new ideas with other residents and share his love of math and art with the community. Given his background in education and being a teacher’s assistant in graduate school, he decided to teach a class about fractals.

He received a good reception at the first event, and a few people came up to him afterward to ask about getting into the hobby themselves.

“I felt like I was babbling on and on and not making a lot of sense, but people came up to me after and told me how informative I was and how much they learned,” Bill said. also involved in other Masonic Village groups and activities. He hosts a discussion group where attendees watch and discuss video lectures on various topics.

“It’s much better than sitting at home and watching them alone,” he said. “There’s plenty to do here, and all the activities help keep track of the days.”

Through Bill’s classes on fractals and fractal art, his fellow residents learn you don’t have to be a math whiz to make or understand fractal art. In fact, fractals – seen in objects that display complex, similar patterns – can be hiding in plain sight. Clouds, trees, leaves, ferns and foods like broccoli and cauliflower – the list of fractals produced by nature are endless and all around us.