The Colours of Infinity

Arthur C. Clarke takes us into the world of fractals. We learn about their discovery, their fascinating properties, and about the people who use them. Fractals have been discovered in the 1980s by Benoît Mandelbrot who is also interviewed in this movie.

Clarke explains a fractals structure and properties using the famous Mandelbrot set as an example. He describes how to visualize them and what the colours of these visualizations represent.

Next we hear from Benoît Mandelbrot himself how he discovered the set we today call “Mandelbrot set”. This one-on-one-interview with the discoverer of the fractal structures transfers the fascination of this new kind of mathematics based on the simplest equations onto the viewer.

Different kinds of visualizations show the infinite precision of these sets and their natural looking structures.