I moved into a yurt in a secluded pine forest in Maine as a freshly minted “art major”. I wanted to see if I could find my artistic self by studying nature.
I started a thought experiment which went something like this:
If life is made from a unit block–
What would it look like?
How would it manifest emergent order?
Could it be understood mathematically or as a code?
My drawings slowly turned into strange diagrams describing a system of algorithmic self-similar automata.
Nature’s breadcrumbs led me to a kind of math which exhibited a strange beauty.
I called this system “Y-theory” because that single “Fibonacci-esque” structures had a Y-shape. Y-theory gave me a lens to see the world in terms of common syntax and grammar.
I entered the woods an artist asking questions and nature responded with mathematical patterns and transformed me in the process into something else.