Author: Tim

fractal-81786 by Jock Cooper (click for full-size image) I’ve reviewed Jock Cooper before. But for those artists who are multi-talented, I simply have to have multiple reviews. Previously I reviewed Jock Cooper the Innovator; the…

Chrimbo-Tree by twinbee posted to Fractalforums.com “Cash prize has swelled from $10 to $20 now” “Yes, there’s prizes. However, to be eligible, I need at least 2 entries.” “Prizes include… …Brand new optical illusions I…

I think there are few people in the Fractal Art world today who have such a wide range of talents as someone like Stephen Ferguson. While Steve is mostly known for his programming and mathematical…

A recent online poll: Is Vote-Spamming a Problem?Yes – 32 votesNot sure – 18 votesNo – 1,456,776 votes “Any contestants found spamming to obtain votes will be disqualified from the contest.”I read this in the…

I’m sure that the decision to go offline this year was the just the thing they all needed to do some really serious thinking and re-engineering of the contest. I really admire people who are…

(photo by Kyle Flood) Yes, the internet has changed quite a bit over the years and the only purpose those web rings serve anymore is to drain away visitors from your site and pour them…

(Editorial Note: This is our first Guest Posting. Orbit Trap welcomes submissions for Guest Postings from anyone on any fractal related topic. Publication is not guaranteed and is solely at the discretion of the editors.…

20080308, by Samuel Monnier, 2008 (Click for larger image) Why? Because of the playful abstract shapes and the rich textured and detailed surfaces that one commonly finds in the work of both these talented artists.…

icecap02.loo In Mandelbrot’s greatest scenes we seem to seethat stunning moment in whichmathematics becamefissionable They pour upon the monitordice roll symphoniesparameter poweredplutonium geraniumsperfect in dirtless reality I have seen the brightest minds of my generationmouse-click…

Hey, that’s the name Paul DeCelle gave to it. I kind of like the serial number, date-stamp theme. Didn’t many of the great classical composers give their works names like, “Symphony #4 in A minor”?…

Why? Because you can’t sell it! Why not? Because Fractal Art, like all digital art, is easily reproduced, that is, displayed on a monitor or printed out — again and again! Need some more explanation?…

It was a dark and stormy night. Inside the castle, the notorious Dr. Leys was busy working away in his laboratory. Either by serendipitous discovery, maniacal experimentation, or exhaustion brought on by long bouts of…

How could this have happened? I really thought this was going to become a regular part of the Fractal Art world, but I guess that was too much to hope for. What could have gone…

Hey fans. Welcome back to the award-winning Image of the Week series here on Orbit Trap — your one stop clearinghouse for all things fractal. Today’s King for a Week is none other than the…

Bloody Sunset In the year, 2008, Fractal Art is boring. It wasn’t always like that. There was a time when Fractal Art was exciting. But that was just because it was new. Now the excitement…

I used to go hunting for exciting new images. Now I’m content if I can just find something that looks different. I don’t care if it’s great or not. The Golden Age of Heroes is…

Sterli30.loo I made this image in Sterlingware with only a slight hue shift in XnView, my trusty side-kick. Although Sterlingware is now over 10 years old, which is pretty old by software standards, and lacks…

Get back in your seats! First I have to show the Image of the Week: Wood Fractal by Skepsis, 2006 Flickr comments are a whole new genre of writing — and state of mind too!…

Alright. Sure. The swastika is an ancient symbol found in a number of cultural contexts and therefore has more than one meaning and significance. It also, I suppose, could be described as a simple geometric…

I think the developers of Ultra Fractal 5 have fallen into the trap that has plagued fractal programs from the earliest days: overly complicated, user-dependent configuration. I have always gotten the feeling, the several times…

Emergence by Mark Townsend 2006 While writing a recent posting, I was Googling to find Mark Townsend’s orbit trap works done using the image importer, Sprite, and I surfed head first into a coral reef…

“See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” That Biblical quotation…

I stumbled on another interesting find over at Flickr.com: Fractal Origami. fractal by polyscene Although I’m sure work like this is painstaking and requires considerable skill in the more advanced origami techniques (there’s a special…

Funny, I was Googling something a week ago, and while following a link to the 2009 gallery of winning images for the Fractal Universe Contest I found myself looking at an error page. These things…

My apologies to jamfancy, Funny Bunny and tibiloo, but I found this online vignette was just too precious not to share it with the loyal, die-hard, though thick and thin, grassroots supporters of Orbit Trap…

“After 85 gazillion fractals, I broke the camera out.”-Manas Dichow on his Flickr site Egold: “Love this one but it’s pity that yo’ve gone into “fractals” dream.” Manas Dichow: “egold, Photography isn’t dead yet. Fractals…

Chapter One: What is a contest? “an occasion on which a winner is selected from among two or more contestants”wordnet.princeton.edu “A contest, is an event in which two or more individuals or teams compete against…

Welcome back all you faithful Orbit Trap fans to this week’s episode of, “Image of the Week”. Well, as you may have guessed from the title, this review is not going to be pretty. Keep…

We’re starting a new weekly feature here on Orbit Trap. Every week we’ll be reviewing an interesting piece of Fractal artwork. This is nothing radical, of course; many sites do this sort of thing, but…

You’ve got to be sharp to win this one! It’s a fresh new year. Who knows what could happen? Although based on previous year’s results, almost half of the exhibition has already been chosen and…

Yes. Apparently all the diseases and infirmities that I’ve been complaining about in the Fractal Art world are widespread and commonplace — in the mainstream. The Fractalbook people that I said were obscuring the really…

Fyre embedded parameter file Lately I’ve begun to seriously question whether using the term, “abstract” to describe any piece of artwork can be realistically used. I think the term abstract is itself an abstraction and…

Fyre 1.0.1 embedded parameter file Most have never looked beneath the surface of a wall, or even considered doing such a thing. A wall is not seen as an object of substance, and therefore not…

Sterli18.loo Just like fractals, there is a special allure to the stories of The Arabian Nights. And also like fractals, I think that special quality that makes them attractive comes from their unique origin: fractals…

The Ecstasy of St Clickism It’s not exactly a single photoshop filter, “bernini.8bf”, but rather a syndrome of filters (to use a pathological expression). The sierpinski effect from multicrystal.8bf (Ilyich the Toad) produces the sharp,…

I remember the great arrival of the prose poem. I was taking a poetry “workshop” and there, suddenly, on a page in the poetry anthology was a clump of text without any explanation. This fragment…