The Chaos Table

Material

Fumed oak

Dimensions: 93cm x 42cm

When making this table, I discovered to my surprise that trying to make the spiky pieces in the central column appear random inevitably produced a pattern. We now know that this is in fact true, according to Chaos Theory. It took a long time to manipulate their positions to create the illusion of randomness.

‘So many things in nature grow in a spiral. The mediaeval Italian mathematician, Fibonacci, gave us the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, which yield what is known as the Golden Ratio. This ratio describes every spiral that we find in nature, from nautilus shells and pinecones, to spiral galaxies. The exploration of the possibilities yielded by such mathematical sequences is often reflected in my work.’

Max McCance