full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So here's a Nankani village in Mali. And you can see, you go inside the family eorlnucse — you go inside and here's pots in the fireplace, stacked recursively. Here's calabashes that Issa was just showing us, and they're stacked recursively. Now, the tsiinet calabash in here keeps the woman's soul. And when she dies, they have a cnermeoy where they break this stack called the zalanga and her soul goes off to eternity. Once again, inftniiy is important.

Now, you might ask yourself three questions at this point. Aren't these scaling patterns just universal to all indigenous architecture? And that was actually my original hypothesis. When I first saw those African fractals, I thought, "Wow, so any indigenous group that doesn't have a state sceioty, that sort of hrairechy, must have a kind of bottom-up articrtehuce." But that turns out not to be true.

Open Cloze


So here's a Nankani village in Mali. And you can see, you go inside the family _________ — you go inside and here's pots in the fireplace, stacked recursively. Here's calabashes that Issa was just showing us, and they're stacked recursively. Now, the _______ calabash in here keeps the woman's soul. And when she dies, they have a ________ where they break this stack called the zalanga and her soul goes off to eternity. Once again, ________ is important.

Now, you might ask yourself three questions at this point. Aren't these scaling patterns just universal to all indigenous architecture? And that was actually my original hypothesis. When I first saw those African fractals, I thought, "Wow, so any indigenous group that doesn't have a state _______, that sort of _________, must have a kind of bottom-up ____________." But that turns out not to be true.

Solution


  1. hierarchy
  2. enclosure
  3. society
  4. infinity
  5. ceremony
  6. tiniest
  7. architecture

Original Text


So here's a Nankani village in Mali. And you can see, you go inside the family enclosure — you go inside and here's pots in the fireplace, stacked recursively. Here's calabashes that Issa was just showing us, and they're stacked recursively. Now, the tiniest calabash in here keeps the woman's soul. And when she dies, they have a ceremony where they break this stack called the zalanga and her soul goes off to eternity. Once again, infinity is important.

Now, you might ask yourself three questions at this point. Aren't these scaling patterns just universal to all indigenous architecture? And that was actually my original hypothesis. When I first saw those African fractals, I thought, "Wow, so any indigenous group that doesn't have a state society, that sort of hierarchy, must have a kind of bottom-up architecture." But that turns out not to be true.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
infinite number 4
georg cantor 3
seed shape 2
aerial photograph 2
fractal model 2
tiny village 2
spirit people 2
stacked recursively 2
native american 2
kids learn 2
board game 2
deterministic chaos 2
binary code 2
brian eno 2


Important Words


  1. african
  2. architecture
  3. break
  4. calabash
  5. calabashes
  6. called
  7. ceremony
  8. dies
  9. enclosure
  10. eternity
  11. family
  12. fireplace
  13. fractals
  14. group
  15. hierarchy
  16. hypothesis
  17. important
  18. indigenous
  19. infinity
  20. issa
  21. kind
  22. mali
  23. nankani
  24. original
  25. patterns
  26. point
  27. pots
  28. questions
  29. recursively
  30. scaling
  31. showing
  32. society
  33. sort
  34. soul
  35. stack
  36. stacked
  37. state
  38. thought
  39. tiniest
  40. true
  41. turns
  42. universal
  43. village
  44. zalanga