Cristóbal Vila created the above video as an homage to M.C. Escher. Eugene Buchko gives the back story to the opening scene:
When the creator of the game of chess showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the ruler was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The wise man asked the king: for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of wheat (in some tellings, rice), two for the second one, four on the third one, and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The ruler, arithmetically unaware, quickly accepted the inventor’s offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low price. But when the treasurer started doing the calculations, it quickly surfaced that this was an impossible offer to fulfill. Given the request, the final tally would have been 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 grains!
The Dish 