ABSTRACT
The rise of computer graphics as an integral part of scientific practice coincides historically almost exactly with the emergence of chaos theory as a cultural force. In 1987 the National Science Foundation of the United States published a report which set a goal to provide every scientist and engineer with their own graphics workstation. This had the immediate effect of stimulating a new market for specialized computer software and hardware. At the same time, in scientific journals, TV documentaries and magazine articles, computergenerated imagery seemed to have become an indispensable means of communicating scientific research both within science and out into the nonscientific community. Chaos theory was able, through media, to become an icon, to become the image of a Lorenz attractor, a Mandelbrot set or a Henon mapchaos was able to become Chaos.
