The Arabian Nights

14 April, 2008 by Tim

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 springing from a strange new area of mathematics; and The Arabian Nights, from the Middle East.

I’m not even a student of literature, or even much of a reader at all for that matter, but I’ve noticed that there are artistic differences between the folk tales of the British and the Europeans, and with those of The Arabian Nights.

What are they, you ask? Well, read the book and find out. It’s there, as curved and flowing as the arabic alphabet it was originally written in.

So I like fractals to be fractal-ish and The Arabian Nights to be Middle Eastern, retaining their Arab and Persian (Iran) origins.

How can fractals or Middle Eastern folktales be anything other than what they are?

Just as The Arabian Nights can be mistranslated or European-ized, fractals can be layered and “artist-ized”.

For example: one translation of The Arabian Nights I read told how Sindbad returned to Baghdad after another voyage into the uncharted world and out of thanks for surviving, gave a large donation to a “church”. Obviously it was a mosque, but why use a word which in 20th century English usage is never used to refer to a mosque? (And this was a version from the 1940’s.) Why not change Sindbad’s name to Sigfried or Samuel or Stephen, as well? Or substitute Basra with Vienna (not a good substitute for a busy ocean port) or Paris or London instead?

Anyhow, translation isn’t always so simple and sometimes there is more than one reasonable rendering and the final choice can come down to subjective, stylistic preferences that grow out of long, complicated scholarly arguments — the sort of things which I suspect bored Sindbad in Baghdad and drove him back out to sea… In fact, the Sindbad stories, although also of Middle Eastern origin, are not considered part of the Arabian Nights and were included by European publishers who regarded all Middle Eastern folktales as a single category, in the same way as “fractal” art includes, from time to time, imagery that isn’t strictly “fractal”, but looks like it.

I’m not arguing for a “pure” fractal genre, or even that such a category (is such a category even possible?) should have a special status; many of the stories in the “Arabian” Nights are very similar to those of Indian and Jewish origin. So in the literary arts as well as the visual arts, categories are a matter of degree because styles and methods are easily, even subconsciously, influenced and exchanged across (apparent) cultural boundaries. In such a context, purity has to be defined because very little is or can be isolated.

What I would say is: Don’t overlook the “natural” beauty of a simple fractal formula rendered in a fairly plain way in a program like Sterlingware. There is no natural or “pure” way to graphically render fractals, but it is possible to use simpler methods which allow the fractal algorithm to contribute more of the imagery instead of less. Like a translation that doesn’t attempt to embellish or transpose the cultural context of The Arabian Nights, sometimes fractal art can be more interesting by allowing it to retain its original “style” and making less adjustments to it.

Technorati Tags: fractal art, the arabian nights, folktales, translation, cultural styles, Sindbad,

An Open Letter to Avalanche Publishing

12 April, 2008 by cruelanimal

April 10, 2008

Avalanche Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 55
Delafield , WI 53018

Attention: Publishing Team for the Fractal Universe Calendar

Dear Publishing Team:

I am writing you out of concern for the protocols used to solicit materials for your annual Fractal Universe Calendar.

I co-edit Orbit Trap, a blog devoted to fractals and fractal art. My partner, Tim Hodkinson, and I have become increasing concerned about the manner in which several major fractal art competitions are run, including the Fractal Universe Calendar. There appear to some serious questions of propriety in these competitions over issues of professional standards and conflicts of interest.

We have not only published our inquiries on our blog, but I have also taken the time to personally contact this year’s editor, Panny Brawley, to see if she might speak to our questions. The FAQ page of the Fractal Forum site clearly states that any questions not covered in the FAQ will try to be addressed and added to the FAQ page — or, if not, the publisher will be contacted. Here is the relevant passage:

We hope you will find that your questions have already been anticipated and answered. If not, please contact us. We will try to answer you personally, and add your question with it’s answer to this page — here. Where necessary, we will contact the publisher on your behalf for clarification.

I have now waited several weeks for a reply from Ms. Brawley, but I have heard nothing. I also have to assume that no one at Avalanche was contacted by her either, or I (or Orbit Trap) probably would have received some correspondence. Consequently, because of this lack of response, I have decided to write you directly in order to pose our questions.

One of our main concerns is why Avalanche Publishing solicits selections for the Fractal Universe Calendar using a competitive scenario. Although the web site claims “this is *not* a contest,” it certainly has the trappings of one. Your editor is actually more of a screener who whittles down the bulk of open submissions to a more manageable number. These finalists who have survived the initial cut are then sent to “the publishing team” who function as judges to make the final selection of thirteen images. This competitive framework is our major concern.

Such a competitive configuration seems to run counter to your usual selection methods. Under the heading of “Does Avalanche accept art submissions,” your own FAQ page on the Avalanche web site notes the following:

Due to the increasing amount of unsolicited materials we have been receiving each year, we no longer accept unsolicited submissions of transparencies and artwork. Avalanche editors will contact specific artists and photographers for submissions.

But all submissions for the Fractal Universe Calendar are unsolicited — at least by your definition. None of the open submissions for the contest result from direct contact with individual artists. Or, on the contrary, are specific artists sometimes approached? Later, in the contest FAQ, the following appears:

“Q: Will artwork, other than that submitted to you via this website, be considered for inclusion for the calendar?
A: Yes — possibly. In the past, Avalanche Publishing has requested specific fractals or fractal types. Special requests of individual artists may be made by approaching them directly.”

So content for the calendar is and is not solicited? If that is the case, why not just scrap the competition and have editors contact specific artists in the first place? Why not hire an editor who is a fractal artist, like Ms. Brawley, pay her a stipend, have her keep an eye on various fractal sites and art communities for a year, and then allow her to contact specific artists to submit works that fit with the calendar’s aesthetics? This would seem to be more in line with your usual practices. Moreover, by removing the competitive structure from the submission process, the questions about professionalism and conflicts of interest will vanish. As long as the Fractal Universe Calendar selection process is competitive, and the current practices are in place, questions of propriety will continue to arise. Here are a few that Orbit Trap has raised:

How are the Fractal Universe Calendar editors compensated for their services? We have heard mixed reports. One former editor noted that payment was strictly the inclusion of one image in the calendar. Another suggested that some monetary payment was also included — either for doing the editing or for having an image published. We have also heard that editors are free to include their own work into what is selected for the initial cut. Is this true? Is there a limit on the number of his or her own work an editor can include to the 200 images sent to the publishing team? What is that limit?

We feel that including an editor’s work — under any circumstances — into material that she or he is editing should raise questions about professionalism. But doing so in a competitive format is even more egregious and increases the likelihood that conflicts of interest might occur. This is not fanciful thinking either. By our calculations, just over 40% of the images published in the Fractal Universe Calendar from 2004 to 2008 were the work of just four people — all of whom were present or past editors.

Do you consider this ratio to be fair? Is this the reason the editors for previous years are not listed on the Fractal Universe Calendar web site?

Ich bin ein Bernini!

11 April, 2008 by Tim

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, stone-like appearance that extractor1.8bf expands upon so well. But it’s the simple mirror,mirror filter that takes it to a whole new level, and in such a simple way, by creating nothing any more exciting than bilateral symmetry, like a face has.

Or one of the great works by Bernini.

The Ecstasy of St Theresa by Bernini in Rome, from Wikipedia.org

This might help you relate to my, sometimes, obscure perspective:

Processed with Extractor1.8bf (Mario Klingemann)

Symmetry adds some sort of majestic quality to these crushed and crumbled images, taking what would otherwise be, uh, something crushed and crumbled, and raising it up as a monumental, altarpiece-like construction.

Have you ever been freaked-out by fractals? Stunned by a spectacular image that has apparently grown out of a mere mathematical formula? That’s how I felt, now and again, while making these Bernini-esque images.

Some I found a little disturbing:

Is it just me? Or is there a disturbing, skull-like head there?

This is like some scene from the altar of an evil, cult-like temple:

The book, the banner behind it, the black flags? You don’t think that’s scary?

What’s odd, and adds to the wonderment, is that they all have such humble, clickism origins. They start off as some image (it doesn’t really matter much what the image is) I’ve found on the internet. I then multicrystal.8bf it about 10 times till it looks nothing like the original — just a wall of sierpinski blocks in the colors of the original photo.

In a variation of the crumblescapes I made previously, I add two seemingly uninteresting filters and then use the mirror effect in mirror, mirror. The two new filters are distortion effects. Distortion effects can be the most creative effects of all, literally making something out of nothing.

Revolver33RPM.8bf and Overlap4.8bf (in that order) both by the prolific filter writer, Andrew Buckle, from his Andrew’s filters collection. They basically add a curved crushing effect, instead of the usual square crushing effect. I discovered this somewhat by accident, although I had already been using Overlap4 with extractor to make a couple of interesting “gravel clouds”.

Take that twisted, crushed thing and mirror, mirror it and then apply the extractor thing to produce the black and white, high contrast images here.

Do you see what I see? If you’re screaming, you do.

It’s interesting how combining filters can produce such a powerful effect — instead of the usual grey sludge that commonly results from driving half a dozen filters over the same image,
one after another
like a convoy of tractor-trailers
at night, in a rainstorm
obliterating a wet cardboard box
under their wheels
leaving in their wake,
shreds of box paper
pasted to the gleaming pavement

Technorati Tags: Bernini, Ecstasy of St Theresa, clickism, photoshop filters, Andrew's filters, altarpiece, digital art, horror,

Snorkeling in Wool

9 April, 2008 by cruelanimal

Hyperbolic coral forms by Christine Werthiem and Margaret Wertheim. Photo by Alyssa Gorelick.

From the “Goings on about Town” section of The New Yorker, 4-7-08:

Crocheting the Coral Reef: The Institute for Figuring, a Los Angeles based organization dedicated to bringing fractals, hyperbolic space and other high-flying mathematical and scientific concepts down to earth, has embarked upon an unusual project that’s inspired by the plight of the Great Barrier Reef. It is promoting the creation of woolen models of a coral reef, using techniques of hyperbolic crochet that were discovered by the mathematician Daina Taimina.

More on the project from the New York Times, 4-4-08:

This environmental version of the AIDS quilt is meant to draw attention to how rising temperatures and pollution are destroying the reef, the world’s largest natural wonder, said Margaret Wertheim, an organizer of the project, who was in Manhattan last weekend to lecture, offer crocheting workshops and gather recruits. The reef is scheduled to arrive in New York City next month.

[…]

Ms. Wertheim, a science writer, and her twin sister, Christine, who teaches at the California Institute for the Arts, came up with the idea of creating a woolly homage to the reef about two and a half years ago. The Wertheims, 49, grew up in Queensland in Australia, where the approximately 135,000-square-mile reef — and the billions of tiny organisms that it comprises — is located. But the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is much more than a warning about global warming. It marks the intersection of the Wertheims’ various passions: science, mathematics, art, feminism, handicrafts and social activism.

So what’s the back story on hyperbolic crochet anyway? We turn to the Institute on Figuring for the real skinny:

Hyperbolic crochet was itself the outgrowth of an unexpected branch of geometry. For two thousand years mathematicians attempted to prove that the only possible geometries were the flat, or Euclidean, plane, and the sphere. Great minds expended themselves on the effort, only to discover in the nineteenth century that a third option was logically necessitated. The discovery of this new “hyperbolic space” ushered in the field of non-Euclidean geometry, the mathematics underpinning general relativity, which aims to describe the shape of the cosmos. Mathematicians’ skepticism about hyperbolic space had been based in part on their inability to imagine how it would look, for they had no way to model it physically. Most were thus astounded when, in 1997, Dr. Daina Taimina, a Latvian émigré at Cornell University, presented a hyperbolic structure made with crochet.

Nature, meanwhile, had discovered the form in the Silurian age. Lettuces and kales — the crenellated vegetables — are manifestations of nearly hyperbolic surfaces, while in the oceans, corals, kelps, sponges, nudibranchs and flatworms all exhibit hyperbolic anatomical features. And so a woolly manifestation of a reef is not as unlikely as may first be supposed. Through the lens of crochet we may thus discern a hitherto unsuspected line connecting Euclid to sea slugs. Ways of constructing once perceived as “merely” women’s craft, and dismissed from the cannon of scientific practice, now emerge as revelatory forms of a more complex, embodied way of thinking about the world both mathematically and physically.

Now you know, fractalists. Ditch those mice and tablets. Pick up your needles and hooks instead.

~/~

And this information popped up in my Inbox this week. From the New York Times, 4-6-08, “In the Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Until They Drop“:

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

This news will likely warm the dark hearts of some of OT’s adversaries. Isn’t this exactly what Tim and I deserve for our many blogging perfidies? The. Death. Penalty.

But wait. Haven’t some our most vocal troll-hecklers recently gone on to form their own blogs? Hmmmmm.

~/~

And now — an update on our attempts to get some direct answers from this year’s editor of the in-progress Fractal Universe Calendar ~~contest~~, um, ~~competition~~, uh, sorta-publishing-like activity. Here’s what we’ve heard so far:

That’s right. Absolutely nothing. No emails. No letters. No updates to the FAQ on the FUC web site. But you already knew the answer, didn’t you? And it’s what we expected, too. After all, our fractal emperors can’t spare the time to address the riff-raff and hoi polloi as their carriages pass through peasant villages. Better to turn a blind eye to such peon baseness. Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

And to think our adversaries say we are the cowards.

Besides, maybe if the BailOutters and UFractali and the most important fractal artists in the world* ignore us, we’ll just go away.

Except we won’t. We are here to stay and are committed to bringing fairness and professionalism to both the Fractal Universe Calendar and the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest.

And I’ve waited long enough for a reply from the FUC editor. Now, I’m going to write Avalanche — the publishing company that produces the Fractal Universe Calendar. Maybe someone in the publishing house will be more inclined to address at least some of my questions. Stay tuned.

~/~

*It appears the link to this ostentatious, self-proclamation made about (by?) the self-selected, judge-winners of the 2006 BMFAC is no longer working. I wonder why? Just to keep its collective memory fresh for our readers, here is the claim that was made:

It [the 2006 BMFAC exhibition] will examine quality works from the most important fractal artists in the world.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
—John Kenneth Galbraith

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, hyperbolic crocheting, coral reef in fiber, institute of figuring, death by blogging, fractal universe calendar, avalanche publishing, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, orbit trap, snorkeling in wool

The Prose Poem

8 April, 2008 by Tim

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 of text, which was actually shorter than the poem on the facing page, had a title at the top, just like poems did, and the author’s name at the end of it, just like you’d expect a poem to have. I thought it was merely an interesting excerpt taken from a novel, but we were all told, to the laughter of the whole class, that it was a new form of poetry, although consisting entirely of prose.

Although I had also joined in the laughter, me and a few people like me who found prose exhausting and poetry frustrating, immediately saw the potential for such a wonderful development. And we also saw the embarrassment of writing what was basically a piece of “prose”, like a short story, but so short it couldn’t even be the beginning of anything, and which was conveniently called a poem for no other reason than it seemed to fit in the same space as one.

A poem was anything short and didn’t have to follow grammar rules. Prose took up a lot of pages and had “development”. Maybe they should have been more specific. But it’s too late.

Poems were short and prose was long. Poems made up for shortness by being intensive and therefore, hard to write. But not hard to write the way a novel is hard to write.

Since it’s much easier to write prose, there has to be a lot of it to make up for this imbalance. Either way it’s a tough job and a good poet actually gets the same respect as a great novelist because they both share the same pain. One kind of pain being extremely intense, but lasting only for about an hour, and the other, spread out over the course of several months and several hundreds of pages, acquiring unique qualities of its own, but reaching the same level of suffering when it’s all added up at the end.

A prose poem was obviously cheating because it’s so easy and because it’s so short. Maybe that’s the real reason we laughed so much when we first heard the idea. Could it really be true? Could there really be such a large, gaping hole in these prison walls of weekly assignments?

If you had a fantastic idea for something and could start by getting most of the entire first paragraph done…

I ran a marathon, once. It wasn’t anything like how hard I had thought it would be. I only ran part of it. I ran for two minutes. And I could do it again. And again. Its my favorite sport now — now that it has this new, modern form.

Think of each prose poem as a book. Think of each prose poem as just the fun pieces of the book. The rest of the book hasn’t been written, but could be written, but that isn’t likely because the book’s already been gutted and it’s most important parts sold on the black market as a prose poem. It’s a masterwork of editing and the audience should applaud it’s invention with a great sense of relief.

Relief from bad prose. And relief from bad poetry. There’s none of either in a prose poem.

The prose poem is the perfect genre for people like me who love to write, but just not very much.

Technorati Tags: prose poem, creative writing, prose, poetry, digital art, genre abuse,

The Continued Fall of the House of Usher

4 April, 2008 by Tim

All text taken from The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe, more or less…

Technorati Tags: Fall of the House of Usher, Illustration, gothic horror, gothic lying, Edgar Allan Poe, Sierpinski things, Poe to go, Classics Illustrated, Classics Defibrillated,

How to make Art from Garbage

4 April, 2008 by Tim

Technorati Tags: garbage, art garbage, my garbage and yours, our garbage, think garbage, what price garbage?

Crumblescape

2 April, 2008 by Tim

All text from The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe (in case you thought I wrote it…)

Recipe for Crumblescape
-Take any image, process 7 or so times with multicrystal.8bf (by Illyich the Toad)
-Process with Extractor 1 (Mario Klingemann, VM Toolbox), adjusting for optimal effect
Variation: use Mirror, Mirror (by Alfredo Mateus) to create a symmetrical appearance
Notes: don’t grease the pan, don’t sift the flour, let the smoke detector tell you when it’s done.

Technorati Tags: crumblescape, sierpinski, The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe, Poe, photoshop filters, clickism, clickism the great, digital baking made easy, one-bit wonders,

Better than Escher?

30 March, 2008 by Tim

Yes, but let’s give the old guy credit for having to work with such primitive tools — like himself.

That’s right; I don’t have to calculate or plan anything in my own head like what’s-his-name did. With a single, thunderous click I unleash an awesome whirlwind of mathematical calculations, the simplest of which would leave me frowning and scratching my head.

Folks like me often forget (or don’t know) how many sets of “shoulders of giants” we stand on and what those giants are doing down there. (Is it any wonder I often feel like a conqueror, standing astride this apex of culture and science?)

But that’s only one of the reasons I’m better than Escher. Or wait. Actually, that’s the only reason I’m better than Escher — it’s that simple!

Perhaps there is something from the mind of that Escher guy in one of my photoshop filters? That’s not a bad guess, especially considering how incredibly Escher-like this image is (I made it, not Escher). Declaring myself to be better than him (was he a man or a woman?) is my little way of tipping my hat to him/her.

Why then should anyone hold on to works by MC Escher, or look at them, when they’ve got my stuff? Well, lots of reasons. First of all, they make me look good.

Escher worked almost entirely in black and white while I work with millions of colors, although I restrain myself (most of the time) by sticking to a 256-color palette to reduce file sizes, and for some other reasons I can’t remember.

If Escher was alive today (he isn’t, is he?) he’d want to steal my enchanted tool kit and run out the door with it. But I wouldn’t stop him. In the classic sage-like response to just about everything, I would just roll on the floor laughing. And then download the whole lot once more. Times sure have changed, haven’t they?

What would Escher be doing today? He’d probably be writing graphical programs with a mathematical angle (no pun intended) like fractals or 3D; trading his pencils for pixels in an instant. He’d know better than to compete head to head with the likes of someone like me. Smart guy.

Technorati Tags: MC Escher, Escher, MC Escher II, Son of Escher, Revenge of Escher, Fall of the House of Escher, Es-cher! — Gesundheit!, eschewing Escher,

Nobody said a word, but I knew

29 March, 2008 by Tim

There was a time when the radio made pictures. There was a time when you could see the sounds you heard. You could look at the radio waves.

Abandoned now, the memories still exist. Ask anyone, like me, around my age, how the radios at one time used to come with a little TV screen, the size of someone’s palm.

I guess it was like a cell phone picture screen, but you didn’t see icons and a little computer screen, you saw the radio waves. They shimmered, sort of, and made scratchy looking, wavy shapes.

There’s nothing like it today. The colors changed a lot, and when you turned the tuning dial, the picture shook and crackled like the music did.

You couldn’t do a screen capture or save anything. Some people got really good at it though, and would show off the pictures they could make on their radios during recess time at school.

I don’t remember when the aliens came back, but that’s when all the radio screens disappeared. Nobody said a word, but I knew. I was playing with my radio and watching the scratchy colors and that’s when I saw their ship appear on the tiny screen. I saw it coming through the sky. Just one ship.

Not long after, my brother’s was gone and no one at school had one anymore, either. I kept mine hidden, but they found it.

Nobody said a word, but I knew.

Technorati Tags: radio waves, oral history, conspiracy theories, space aliens, fiction is the lies worth writing down, circular wave filter,

Are you ready for bubbles?

27 March, 2008 by Tim

bubbles03.loo

I don’t know what made me pick up Sterlingware again. After a year or two of experimenting with the formula parser in Inkblot Kaos and Tierazon and a whole bunch of photoshop filters, Sterlingware didn’t seem exciting anymore.

Once again, I’d thought I’d squeezed every good thing out of Sterlingware. Sure, like every progam it was still good for making raw material to morph and zap with photoshop filters, but I figured its days of stand alone usefulness were gone.

I started with the old the combinations that had been successful in the past; that’s a good way to review things and get back in the grove, but the old paths lead to the old places. I started with twister-weed and sine-trap; high color teethed grass and water falls; and then on to all those other rendering methods that I had always had high expections of, but had never worked for me…

That’s the point when I would usually give up out of frustration and move on to some other program, looking for new horizons. But this time I became fascinated with something that I’m sure I had already experimented with and abandoned: guassian sine dimension 9.

Visions of bubbliness

Sinister, and circular, bubbles14.loo

What’s weird is I’d seen these before, but at the time, I wasn’t ready for them.

It reminds me of the perlin noise images I’ve seen by Samuel Monnier and Paul DeCelle. Although I’m sure these two types of imagery are not related mathematically, they both have that same endless cloud feeling to them, of infinite resolution and unpredictable patterns.

Unpredictable. That’s what creativity is all about: making something you haven’t seen before.

I used to think stuff like this was garbage. But now I realize I just wasn’t ready for bubbles — back then.

Technorati Tags: Fractal art, digital art, Sterlingware, gaussian, bubbles, patterns, creativity, fractal art?,

Incoming

25 March, 2008 by cruelanimal

Incoming (1999)

Duck and cover, Orbit Trappers. There’s been some shelling this week on the Fractal Universe Calendar front.

Although I noted that the current Fractal Universe Calendar editor should presume she has been contacted with the questions raised in my last post, I would describe the response so far as tepid. To speed things along, I visited the web page for the FUC, where I discovered the following notation on its FAQ page:

We hope you will find that your questions have already been anticipated and answered. If not, please contact us. We will try to answer you personally, and add your question with it’s answer to this page — here. Where necessary, we will contact the publisher on your behalf for clarification.

That seems easy enough. So I sent off the questions I outlined last go around. No reply so far, but I find comfort knowing if the editor is unable to answer any or all of my questions, she will send them posthaste to the publisher. That should save me the trouble of having to contact Avalanche Publishing myself. So, in the meantime, I’ll wait and patiently — between checking boiling pots and watching paint dry — keep refreshing the FAQ page to see if there’s any reply.

~/~

Since I’ve heard that Orbit Trap is kind of like The Devil’s Workshop, there’s no sense in being idle, so I packed up my keyboard and ventured offworld. During my travels, I discovered the announcement calling for submissions for the 2010 FUC had been inserted into various fractal nooks and crannies. Being a citizen-blogger, and in the interest of keeping the social clubs of Fractalbook fully informed, I posted the following disclaimer wherever I found the FUC submission entreaties:

Some of us in the fractal community have reservations about the manner in which both the Fractal Universe Calendar and the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest are run. While blogging at Orbit Trap, we have written extensively to detail why the protocols of both competitions should be carefully examined in regard to professionalism, favoritism, ethical breaches, and conflicts of interest.

I understand this is a controversial topic in some quarters — but it is one that profoundly affects all of us as artists and the genre of fractal art as a whole. As such, the manner in which these competitions are managed should be carefully scrutinized and openly discussed.

We have a right to speak out — even if what we say upsets some of you and challenges the status quo. We did not come here to argue. We came here only to share information.

Please visit our blog, consider our arguments, and draw your own conclusions. Thank you.

Terry Wright
Tim Hodkinson

And that was that. Deed done. Services rendered.

But, no, a great clamor arose from the darkest heart of Fractalbook. A few of its denizens stirred from their trances of mutual admiration.

Over on FractalForums.com, sporadic OT commenter lycium/thomas made the following observation:

urgh, all you guys live for is to whine about art competitions you don’t stand a chance of winning

I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that his own chances of winning are also iffy, since the judges of BMFAC and old-new editors of the FUC currently comprise 40% of the exhibited/published material.

Meanwhile, at the Renderosity Fractal Forum, who should show up but former OT heckler-troll Ken. He’s fractaldom’s very own Howard Beale. He has one mood: mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. Here’s a shot of his latest imparted wisdom:

Contrary to Orbit Trap’s opinion, these events [the two main fractal competitions] are only two events. In the grand scheme of things, they are really insignificant. Every artist, whatever their medium or genre, has a large number of ways to present and expose their art to the public, if that is their desire.

Ken’s thinking is, so what if fractal art’s two major competitions are crooked and corrupt. It’s no biggie. Just turn a blind eye. Move on. Nothing to see here.

Activism is not Ken’s strongest suit. It seldom is for people dedicated to embalming the status quo.

And what exactly these “large number of ways” to also present one’s fractal art in competitive scenarios are, well, Ken didn’t say, although, with some wishful thinking panache, he described himself as “a critic” while pitching his own blog devoted almost exclusively to hating Orbit Trap’s cyberguts.

After correcting a few of Ken’s more vivid distortions, I felt a comparison of the two blogs might indeed be in order. I wrote:

I do hope forum members here take a challenge to visit both blogs. I agree that looking closely at tone is a must, as well as keeping a running tally of the number of insults, distortions, and ad hominem attacks one finds. Members should also carefully compare which blog presents empirical evidence and which relies on emotional venting. Ask plenty of questions, too — like which blog has a sense of humor? What longstanding ties do the individual bloggers have to various people managing or judging the two competitions? Which blog plays a whistleblower role by presenting controversial, even unpopular issues relevant to fractal art and artists — and which one merely responds negatively to the issues raised by the other in order to keep the status quo safe and its established power structure intact?

Ken seems distressed that we will not provide a working hyperlink for his blog here on Orbit Trap. We refrain from doing so only out of regard for the mental health of our current sentient readers. For the more masochistic among you, well, there’s always Google.

Oh, wait. One good thing about getting briefly reacquainted with Ken: he revealed his real name. He turns out to be one Kenneth Childress. Now, we can safely refer to him as simply Childress — thus preserving the informal tone for known friends and still unknown troll-hecklers. Childress has been calling us cowards for nearly a year now, although he stubbornly refused to reveal his own secret identity. We’re nearly beatified that he’s finally come out of the re-iterated closet.

But the real action was on a forum over on deviantART where a few Fractalbookers were scurrying like cockroaches on lemon cake crumbs. First, beebee127 had something to say:

As far as fairness in the image selection for the calendar, I’d say that since it is a private enterprise, and the editor has accepted payment of a guaranteed image, the balance actually becomes unfair. Compensation for months of work is nothing more than any of the others receive for only submitting. That’s not fair, but that’s really not our business, is it?

I didn’t quite see things ~~his~~ her way and wrote:

If the Fractal Art Calendar was a true publishing venture, it would be run like one. The publishers would hire an editor and pay her or him (with a check) for services rendered. Those services would entail directly soliciting artists to contribute original work to the calendar.

But that is not what happens. Instead, the entire venture is couched in a competitive scenario. The editor is actually a screener who pares down the many entries to a more manageable number. The misnamed editors turn these finalists over to a “publishing team” who function as judges and select winning submissions for inclusion.

Editors surely deserve payment, but a compensation that includes the editor’s work in the publication — especially when the selection process is competitive rather than solicited — is widely regarded as an unprofessional practice that runs an increased risk of invalidating competitions on the grounds of promoting favoritism and increasing the risk of conflicts of interest. The FU Calendar process further allows editors to submit their own work into the final pool of artists selected to be sent to the publishers. As a result of these unusual protocols, just over 40% of the images that appeared in the Fractal Universe Calendar from 2004-2008 was the work of just four former or current editors.

If the calendar was run as a conventional publishing enterprise, whether private or public, I’d have no problem with it. But since it has become one of only two major art competitions for our field, I’d say it is very much the business of all of us to insist that our competitions be run with the highest professionalism. If you and others are indifferent to having strict, commonplace standards, then I fear fractal artists will always be seen as amateurs and hobbyists, at best — and hacks, at worst — by the larger art community.

It wasn’t long, though, before a few of the BMFACer-loving, kewl kidz from Keith MacKay’s Wedreamincolor blog rolled in wearing tattered body armor.

Up first was sharkrey, although he had a little trouble initially comprehending the difference between facts and opinions. But once we got that distinction cleared up, he synthesized his argument with the following frat boy reasoning:

Your argument has the appearance of being based not on empirical data but on emotions. Reminds me of the college joke about the difference between a slut and a bitch. A slut being someone that will screw anyone, a bitch being someone that will screw anyone but you.

To which, I observed:

I laid out my ideas with specificity and in a deductive chain of reasoning. You’ve merely overgeneralized and completely misinterpreted what I said in my first response to you…

[…]

Personally, I find your college joke in bad taste. I would think most of the female artists in this community would find it offensive. The joke, in no way, says anything about what I wrote, but it probably says something about you.

Up second, and saying nothing about the joke (silence vaut acceptation?), was former OT troll-heckler WelshWelsh. First, she offered me the address for Avalanche Publishing (which I already had), then tried to sell me the same snake oil refrain she’s been peddling for months:

…take the bull by the horns and start your own competition and exhibition. Go on: put your time, your money and your effort into showing people how you think it should be done. Of course, if you did that, then your own rules would forbid you displaying your own work: how’s that for a lose/lose situation?

To which I replied:

Besides, I’ve already answered this question from you and others. I used the analogy of laws. Although I don’t write the laws, as I citizen I expect them to be fair — and, if they are unfair, I have the right to speak out. The same applies to these competitions. Although I did not create them, as a fractal artist I expect them to be fair — and when they are unfair, I have the right to say so.

And, in a reality check, are you really arguing that in order to offer any criticism of anything, one must also do the very thing one is criticizing? By this logic, before I can justifiably critique a presidential candidate, I must also run for president myself? I can’t complain about the food in a restaurant unless I’m willing to barge into the kitchen and cook the same meal? I can’t sue my neurosurgeon for a botched job unless I also take a crack at operating on my own brain? Is this your argument? Seriously?

Things probably went further downhill when I added:

If I had the desire to start my own contest, you can be certain I would not include my own art or writing. I don’t consider that trade-off to be “lose/lose.” Instead, I believe such a stance must be expected professional behavior for ethical curators, judges, editors, and contest managers.

With her usual aplomb, she ended one post by first quoting me before adding her own jab:

“I wish I had better news about these contests. I’m sorry if what I point out upsets people. I’m upset, too.” Crocodile tears, Terry, crocodile tears. Pardon me if I don’t snivel in sympathy.

To which I observed:

Please hold those crocodile tears yourself. Both you and sharkrey are contributors to Keith MacKay’s Wedreamincolor blog (which, curiously enough, also lists the FUC editor and the BMFAC director among its contributors). MacKay banned me after a single post. That’s his right, and I’m not upset. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t complain about our actions, while, at the same time, you say and do nothing as a contributor to another blog that does something similar — only with lightning speed. Tim and I certainly gave you and your friends a much more reasonable chance and put up with your antics for a considerably longer time than I was allowed on your group blog.

Why is it that our former troll-hecklers are so quick to decry our acts of “censorship,” but remain still and silent as living statues when identical actions occur in their own backyards? The hypocritical double standard of their convenient situational ethics is stupefying.

What a crazy weekend jaunt. It’s good to be back among friendlies and in the creature comforts my “home turf.”

Still need more psychosis in your life? Well, the full forum exchanges are there at the links for any of you willing to risk elevated acid reflux. Please stay tuned for further bulletins.

~/~

Image made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until the image shouted just a few seconds too late.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, computer art, fractal universe calendar, avalanche publishing, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, fractalbook, welshwench, sharkrey, lycium, orbit trap, brain surgery without criticism, mass hysteria

Postcards from the Future

23 March, 2008 by Tim

Technorati Tags: art contest fractal art contest humour humor art humour the art of humour say it with dogs

Springtime on the Fractal Plains

20 March, 2008 by Tim

Technorati Tags: say it with flowers, say it with carrion, postcard, art contests, fractal art, fractal art contest, what's suzy eating?,

Post-Card

18 March, 2008 by Tim

Technorati Tags: fractal art, digital art, illustration, postcards, say it with flowers, say it with insects, slugs, confucious, art judges, contest judging, art contest,

Facelift

18 March, 2008 by cruelanimal

Facelift (2008)

The call has sounded again for the 2010 Fractal Universe Calendar. And the website for all things FU has been given a text-heavy facelift. But peel away the new cosmetic facade, and nothing has changed.

The FU folks get really upset if you call this whole shebang a contest. Check our archives for details. So, this year, they’ve pulled out all the stops to be unwaveringly clear to inform you that the venture is an “image submission process.” But, hey, categorically, under no circumstances, is it a contest. How do we know? Because, like your mother, they said so. From the FU website FAQ page:

We would like to stress that while this is a wonderful opportunity for the fractal community as a whole, this is *not* a contest. The publisher will choose images that it sees as most commercially viable.

And, in case your eyes cannot focus in the new, denser FAQ verbiage, the posted announcements around various fractal venues, like Renderosity’s Fractal Forum, also reinforce the non-contest nature of this year’s process:

We would like to stress again this year that this is a commercial venture, and not a contest. The publisher will ultimately decide the final 13 images that will be included in the calendar.

You see, it’s that second statement that presumably is the deal breaker. Because the publisher makes the final selections, the “image submission process” does not resemble a contest.

And we’ve argued before — and say with a sigh again this year — such a claim is ludicrous.

What exactly is one supposed to call this “image selection process”? If it’s a publishing venture, it certainly deviates from standard practice. Publishers traditionally hire an editor who solicits material directly from those that publishers hope to publish. The editor is financially compensated for her or his services.

But what happens here? The FU “editor” actually is a screener who pares down submissions to a more reasonable number. After this initial cut, the finalists are tranferred to the publishers who serve as judges that make the final thirteen selections included in the calendar.

The model for this whole process is not one of proactive solicitation. It is, in fact, competition. And my edition of WordWeb Pro notes that a synonym for competition is contest.

And, if the process is competitive, then questions can be asked about the manner in which this particular competition is being run.

Like, in this case, how are the editors compensated? The traditional method is to simply pay them — with a check. And one has to ask why that method is not used here. Instead, the FAQ tells us:

This year, Avalanche Publishing has again agreed to include at least one image from the editor in the final 13, in recognition of efforts as otherwise uncompensated editor / facilitator.

Neither Tim nor I have ever argued that the FU editor(s) should not be compensated for services rendered. We have, however, questioned why compensation has to be including the artwork of the editor. When such rewards are given, especially in a competitive environment, propriety becomes suspect and issues of professionalism should be raised. Contrary to what our adversaries claim, such compensation is professionally frowned upon because questions of conflict of interest invariably come into play.

If the publisher is willing to monetarily compensate artists for inclusion in the calendar, then why not just pay the editors directly for their efforts? This simple solution would eliminate suspicious activity like…

…like the fact that just over 40% of the Fractal Universe Calendar selected entries for the last four years were made up of images by the previous four editors.

The mists are lifting. Why should FU editors lobby for change? Apparently, it’s good to be the editor.

~/~

For all of the fresh text covering the FU site, here are a few things that still aren’t clear:

*What exactly is the editor’s compensation? I’m confused. Ex OT troll Ken claims “at least one image included” is the only payment. But ex-editor Keith, in a now deleted (by him) OT comment, suggested that the standard payment ($200 for an image or $400 for a cover) is also given to images by editors. Which is it?

*Why doesn’t the FU site list the editors for past years? Is it because the powers that be don’t want you to do the math and discover the ratio of included images by editors?

*Who exactly are the we mentioned in the quotes above? This year’s FU ~~contest~~ website lists only one editor. The only other person listed is someone who maintains the website. Is this person part of the us? And how is the site’s web designer compensated for her services?

*In the past, editors have often had more than one image included in the final selections. Precisely how many of the editors’ own images can be included in the preliminary cut of 200? The FAQ does not say.

*The FAQ notes that the list of the final 200 images will not be made public. Why — other than because we say so? There are no privacy issues involved. And artists who made the cut might have added incentive to submit again the following year.

*What protocols are in place to help prevent conflicts of interest — like editors or even “the publishing team” recognizing the submitted work of friends or family? Blind judging is apparently not strictly used, since the FAQ notes that signatures are allowed on submissions.

*What, exactly, does this mean?:

Q: Will artwork, other than that submitted to you via this website, be considered for inclusion for the calendar?
A: Yes — possibly. In the past, Avalanche Publishing has requested specific fractals or fractal types. Special requests of individual artists may be made by approaching them directly.

Okaaay. So, why not just do this in the first place? Pay editors to make solicitations. Then you’ll have a true publishing venture, and OT will never again question your operating methods. But, apparently, you’re running a competitive process to generate material — and doing solicitations, too? Will you publish a list showing which images were submitted and which were solicited? What is the percentage of solicited images included (say, in the last five years)?. Can FU Calendar editors (past or current) be among those artists who can be directly solicited? This whole bit sounds suspiciously like Damien M. Jones’ BMFAC rationalization of needing “a hedge against insufficient quality.”

*Finally:

We hope you will find that your questions have already been anticipated and answered. If not, please contact us. We will try to answer you personally, and add your question with it’s answer to this page — here. Where necessary, we will contact the publisher on your behalf for clarification.

Fair enough. Consider yourself contacted…

~/~

Of course, Avalanche Publishing — or any publishing firm — is free to publish whatever fractal art it chooses. Then again, as artists, all of us have a stake in what is presented to the public as the contemporary face of fractal art. Do you feel the Fractal Universe Calendar’s face in this regard needs a comprehensive facelift?

But that’s another post for another day.

~/~

Image made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the image also asked for a tummy tuck and boob job.

Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, fractal calendar, fractal universe calendar, avalanche publishers, art contest ethics, orbit trap

Secret, Invisible and Ever-Unknown

17 March, 2008 by Tim

Photographed by Sterlingware, the Hubble Telescope of Fractals (Sterli12.loo)

Technorati Tags: fractal art, great fractal art, really really good fractal art, the best fractal art, the apex of fractal art, greatest fractal art ever, bow before me — mortals!,

The Bird That Gave Birth to the Moon

16 March, 2008 by Tim

Click for Sterlingware Parameter File

There is a new legend that tells how a bird gave birth to the moon.

For thousands of years the bird had laid eggs and all of them had been eaten by animals in the forest.

The bird started by laying eggs on the ground, which were of course quickly found and eaten.

Next the bird laid her eggs under the ground. Some of these were dug up and eaten by animals on the ground and others were found by animals inside the ground. But the rest that stayed hidden, died and rotted in the ground.

Finally the bird laid her eggs in a tree. They were far away from the animals down on the ground and inside the ground, but not from the other birds. The birds came and ate the eggs.

For a thousand years the bird laid no more eggs because she was sad. But the bird started to get bigger and bigger because of all the eggs storing-up inside her. One night the huge bird looked up into the sky and said, “I will fly as high as I can and lay my eggs at the top of the sky. I am filled with children and I can’t go on living like this. If they also die, then I will die with them.”

The bird, who had now grown to a giant size, flew up to the top of the sky and instead of laying many eggs, laid a single enormous egg then returned to her tree to see what would happen to it.

The next night, all the animals gathered under the bird’s tree because they were excited about this bright new egg in the sky that was so bright it seemed to give them a second daytime. They laughed at the bird whose eggs they had eaten and said, “too bad your tasty children aren’t here to see this!”

The bird replied to her children’s killers, “Say goodbye to your easy hunting in the nighttime. This shining moon you see is the birth of a thousand eyes. The animals you used to hunt will now see you and escape. And with every new moon, when it is dark like before, you will be the one who is hunted, because your starving friends will turn on you in the dark.”

Technorati Tags: legends, fractal art, digital art, illustration, moon, birds, die weasel die!, sterlingware, Sam Peckinpah's Bedtime Stories,

Temple of Saturn

12 March, 2008 by Tim

Brought to you by the proud sponsors of the 2012 Olympic Clickism Team!

[Your Company’s Name Here]

I’m trying to get Clickism recognized as an official Olympic sport.

Of course, if that happens I probably won’t even qualify for a spot on my country’s first official team to compete at the next Olympics. The competition gets pretty stiff once that fabled Olympic status is conferred on any sport.

But that’s Okay; I train hard and run fast so that others will train harder and run faster. Just remember; it takes a lot of losers to make one winner. Who is the winner of a one-man race? Without a crowd of losers, a winner is nothing. But do the losers ever get any thanks or recognition? No. Anonymity is the left hand of losing.

Here are the hurdles that I’ve met, and mastered in my most recent race in the arena of Clickism. Do not be impressed! I went off-course many times before arriving at the finish line.

From Sterlingware, the starter pistol of champions, by Stephen Ferguson (Sterli01.loo)

Altered with “Mirror Mirror.8bf” by Alfredo Mateus

Clicked on “Add Or Sub.8bf” by Andrew Buckle (Andrew’s Filters)

And finally, click on Almodovar.8bf, another sports enhancing filter (not yet banned) by Andrew Buckle, and you’ll arrive at the finish line, to the sounds of applause (the 100m finals are being run in the same stadium), and the image posted at the top. If you haven’t suffered a serious injury (or been tackled by some nut in the crowd), you’ll be around to lose another race.

Grasshopper; Consider the way of the loser. Inspire others to lose so that you may win — so that you may be a winner at losing. Don’t order a lot of team jackets and uniforms, though. Nobody wants “LOSER” written across their back. Pride in losing is self-indulgence.

And self-indulgence is futile because self-indulgence has only 256 colors, which is not enough for any being who wishes to use photoshop filters. Go soak your head in vinegar until you understand this.

Technorati Tags: Olympics, Olympic Games, Beijing Olympics, Olympic Art, Clickism, fractal art, Sterlingware, Alfredo Mateus, Andrew Buckle, art steriods, loser, losing, loser-town,

Troll Prima Donna

9 March, 2008 by cruelanimal

Troll Prima Donna (2000)

Another paradigm shift: trolls are hecklers. They aren’t satisfied with the nearly infinite opportunities on the Internet to build their own spaces and places and express their views. They’d rather steal our voice and burn down our house.

Anyone who starts a blog, especially one functioning in part as a whistleblower, is eventually going to have to deal with trolls. You can be amused by them. You can shrug your shoulders and endure them. You can elect not to “feed” them. You can delete them and move on. Here on Orbit Trap, Tim and I have been through the entire evolutionary cycle, and now we’ve entered the last phase.

Let’s start with the obvious. We are as much members of the “fractal community” as anyone else. We, too, have the right of free speech. This is our blog. We write it. We do not automatically owe anyone who shows up an audience with “Orbit Trap.” We do not have to hold a courtroom in our comments section to validate or justify our right to speak out. We do not have to repeat the rhetorical chain of our arguments — on demand and ad infinitum — to people who have never bothered to attentively read what we wrote in the first place.

But, even as I type this post, I know our adversaries are firing up their keyboards to tell you (at great length) how we are cowards who have abridged their free speech. Just remember — they are hecklers.

Hecklers, by their actions, violate the free speech of others. Is that not true? When you are attending an event, whether or not an admission was charged, do you enjoy having the occasion interrupted by a heckler? Are you upset, or even raise your own voice in protest, when the heckler is removed by security? Why not? Could it be because the environment of that particular event wasn’t the heckler’s space or place?

Orbit Trap is our space. It’s like our auditorium. We built the space, made a stage, provided a microphone and sound system, and opened the doors for an audience. We assume visitors show up because they want to hear what we have to say. I know I tend to visit blogs I enjoy reading and usually shun those that raise my blood pressure. When a heckler turns up in our space, we might choose to initially engage him or her for the sake of discussion. But if no discourse develops, eventually, for the sake of our audience, we usher the heckler outside.

Orbit Trap is also our place. This blog is like our home. We get to specify what kind of behavior we will tolerate in our home. Would you invite a heckler into your home — to scream in your face, insult you, mock you, or dress you down in a smug and condescending fashion? No. You’d ask the heckler to leave, and if the heckler refused, you’d have her or him removed from your home.

A heckler does have free speech rights — but the exercise of such does not have to be tolerated in your spaces and places. By removing the heckler, have you denied him or her all free speech rights? No, you merely said my space and place are off limits. The heckler is free to rent a hall, furnish it with a stage, plug a mike into a sound system, and have at it. Say anything. 24 hours a day every day. And maybe an audience will even show up.

The Internet provides nearly endless opportunities for hecklers to find their own spaces and places — including some devoted exclusively to fractal art. And, if hecklers want a more personalized home, there’s always Blogger. Hecklers can create their own blogs in less than five minutes. Some of our adversaries have already done so, even as they slap up posts about how we denied them freedom of speech.

Things might have been different if our hecklers hadn’t been hecklers. For proof, please review the archives. It’s clear that those who challenged us didn’t come to OT to discuss or debate. We know our claims are controversial and aren’t averse to having critics. But our hecklers don’t want you to hear what we have to say. Their purpose is to shout us down through intimidation while diverting your attention. They hope, by putting up enough white noise, that you will be unable to see the big picture. They imagine you will be easily manipulated by such tactics. They are imperious but fear exposure. The status quo privileges them, and they want nothing to curtail the creature comfort perks of their self-selected fiefdom. So they storm our castle with bluster because we threaten to tear down the walls of theirs.

OT has no army, but we do have an audience. The “silent readers” Tim mentions are no myth. I know you’re out there. I can see you on OT’s daily stats. I understand why you don’t comment here. After witnessing our open house reception, who in their right mind would want such bile and grief to pervade their lives? It’s enough that you listen to what we’ve said and make up your own minds. We’ve laid out our case. You’ve heard what our adversaries have said and witnessed their methods. Weigh their tone. Reach your own conclusions.

And if you think we are right, then shift your private paradigm. Once you understand our fractal emperors have no clothes, you can’t screen out their lack of royal robes. There’s no going back to the old feudal system where they hold court and toss bread crumbs out the window of their passing carriage. You don’t need to become a whistleblower yourself. That Pandora’s Box has already been ripped open. You just have to understand what’s really going on. Knowledge is enough to begin a course change. Maybe you’ll talk among your friends. Maybe you’ll set up your own spaces and places. Maybe you’ll start your own Fractalus-like collectives with like-minded peers. Or add guest galleries to your site. Or build your own fractal art contests — no matter how small scale at first. Or maybe you’ll boycott the existing contests until they are run fairly and professionally.

Don’t let a small non-juried clique, selecting themselves as “the most important fractal artists in the world,” control an art movement that also belongs just as much to you and me and all of us. Take it back — using baby steps, if necessary — but begin to take it back.

Don’t let the prima donna trolls lying in wait under the bridge prevent you from crossing any longer.

~/~

Image made with Vchira. Post-processed until the image became bored and decided it was above me.

Tags: fractal, fractal art, fractal art contests, digital art, blogs, blogging, trolls, hecklers, free speech, orbit trap

Whistleblower

5 March, 2008 by Tim

Another paradigm shift: This blog, Orbit Trap, is a whistleblower. I think that’s why there’s been such hostility to it and such little open support. That’s always the way it is with the unpopular role — of whistleblowing.

from Wikipedia.com

Whistleblowing, by it’s very nature occurs in environments in which power is monopolized and everyone therefore falls into one of two categories: The Bosses, and The Bossed.

If power wasn’t being monopolized then whistleblowing would never occur and attempts to act like a whistleblower would appear ridiculous and simply be ignored. A dictatorship is an example of a monopoly of power, in a political context. It’s a classic example of conflict of interest and the resulting influence that such a monopoly of power has on everyone who isn’t part of the monopoly.

You don’t go to the courts and file a lawsuit against a dictator because the dictator owns all the judges. The judges, who would normally be expected to be independent (so they can judge independently) are, like everyone else who plays a visible role in the country, deeply dependent on the favour of the dictator for their positions and, should they ever decide to blow the whistle and oppose the dictator — jeopardizing their personal comfort or lives.

In an environment where no single group has control of everything, criticism is much more freely offered and issues are dealt with routinely, in their early stages, and thereby prevented from developing into deep-rooted and systemic (i.e. whistleblowing) problems in the first place.

In the fractal art world however, control over contests, calendars and just about everything else has become monopolized. The “official” face of fractal art is nothing more than a clique who use that “official” status as an opportunity to promote themselves — an opportunity which they could never have gained on the artistic merits of their work alone. The monopoly is maintained by the intimidating influence felt by anyone else who wants to gain recognition in an art form which the clique claims to represent and whose most publicly visible examples they administer as their private fiefdom.

Someone has to be the one to blow the whistle on all this if there is going to be any hope of changing the perception and attitudes amongst people in the fractal art world who, if they had knowledge of these things, could easily act to change the way things are run.

Criticizing judges and editors for their conflicts of interest clearly leaves one open to retaliation via those very same conflicts of interest that one is attempting to expose. Few are willing to suffer the consequences of challenging the same authorities who have both the power to correct themselves and the power to punish those who are challenging them — no one except a whistleblower.

So, my only comment to the Kens and Tobys (and the next Stooge to be sent from our adversaries) who show up to defend the status quo of the fractal world is this: Leave it to the many silent readers of Orbit Trap to judge the merits of what we say and come to their own conclusions. If you really feel our whistleblowing is a false alarm, then present your objections in your very own venue in infinite length and in total freedom. Then the audience can freely choose if they care to listen to you.

Technorati Tags: fractal art, digital art, whistleblower, whistle-blowing, Orbit Trap, monopoly, blogging, free speech, art criticism, online communities, stooge, stooger, stooging,

Fractalbook

3 March, 2008 by Tim

Hi, my name’s Suzyfrak745632

My latest paradigm shift: The online fractal “art” world is primarily a social network where one’s “art” is used to gain admission to, and build a network of friends. My impression is that something like 90% of all the fractal “art” activity online is little more than an attempt to participate in a social scene and not a serious interest in fractal art as one would suppose it to be.

If you want to join a motorcycle club, you’ve got to have a motorcycle. If you want to join a fractal “club”, you’ve got to have some fractals. It’s Facebook with fractals.

This is not a criticism of the fractal art world exclusively. I suspect that this sort of “social-hobby” mingling goes on in many places on the internet and has in fact gone on in the past for centuries in the form of cultural clubs formed around various ideological, literary or artistic themes. The internet however, has enabled it to take a quantum leap creating communities where art (or whatever the original theme was) takes on a token role, conveniently disguising groups that engage in idle chit chat and gossip as “art” communities.

What lead me to such a conclusion was a perennial question that for years kept puzzling me: “Why is art on the internet so boring?”. And this one: “How can there be so many people displaying art online and yet there be less creative output than one of my high school art classes?”.

I think this aspect of the online fractal art world has been misunderstood and its inclusion under the label of fractal art has diluted and devalued the whole genre — in the eyes of those who don’t see it for what it really is. Once the Fractalbook crowd is factored out, I think the remaining handful of artists, styles and opinions is much more easily understood and will take on a greater and more progressive influence.

Technorati Tags: fractal art facebook online networks social networks culture clubs online affiliation group identity online identity virtual idiots

Us and Them

1 March, 2008 by cruelanimal

Aigaios (2008)

All I want is some good Clean Fun
All I want is some Good Clean Fun
–Descendents, “GCF”

It’s not torture when we do it…
—Bark of the Moonbat (and countless others)

When so many love you, is it the same?
—Neil Young, “Cowgirl in the Sand”

~/~

Reader Toby — Orbit Trap’s wanna-be moral conscience and corrections headmaster — is typing again.

In fact, he’s taken up verse in the disguise of social commentary. Having created a new Ultra Fractal formula, he’s decided to dedicate it to Tim and me for our “untiring efforts to publicize UF” on Orbit Trap.

So, I thought maybe we’d offer a bit more free publicity to Toby’s doggerel — and to the subsequent comment raves about it. You can read the doings here on Renderosity — assuming you have a membership to that art community.

But here’s a taste of the poem for any non-members who don’t wish to hand over more personal data to who knows who:

In strident tones of hate,
they shout before the gate,
hoping that the masses heed their call.

‘Tis a shame they cannot see,
that their source of misery,
lies within and will not yield to the spar.

And what was my reaction when I read Toby’s poem?

I laughed.

I laughed because I can take a joke — even one at my own expense.

In one sense, Toby’s right. I sometimes take things much too seriously.

Why should I give myself ulcers over whether fractal art contests are fair? Does it really matter that UF’s viral popularity provides no inoculation against the spread of homogenized, production line art? Surely not. Better to chortle at yourself and reshuffle some priorities. Here in the U.S., a senseless war drags on as elected officials and pundits actually debate (and with a straight face) whether torture is acceptable. Civil rights, some as old as the Magna Carta, are being scrapped in the name of security. And I better not speak up or readers might flee from OT for the taboo of my mixing politics and art. That’s your cue. Feel free to now question my patriotism and insist the wiretaps and library lists and drug tests only trouble people who have something to hide.

And the shifting strain of daily life is certainly weightier than any disagreements played out on some blog. The give and take of love needed to make a marriage last. Holding on to one’s children — and letting them go. Watching friends sink under the waters for the third time.

So a good-natured poke in the ribs is much appreciated, Toby. Thanks. Every laugh — even those that sting afterwards — is a gift.

~/~

But can I add something, Toby? I’d surely laugh even harder if your joshing came ashore without a boatload of hypocrisy.

All those “strident tones of hate” you mention seem to me to be found at the “gates” of Orbit Trap’s comments section. That’s where the barbarians shout. Can you hear them? Listen. Tim and I are “cowards.” We’re “overly stupid.” We’re “so damn cocky and presumptuous.” We owe multiple apologies and should just “get over it.” We “talk out of our ass.” Yup. Yup Yup Yup.

And, Toby, while Tim and I are doing all this spiritual spelunking inside to excavate our sources of misery, would you mind embarking on an inward journey, too? After all, haven’t you been the one wagging your finger and chiding us how we should be ashamed for our mean-spiritedness and lack of noble purpose? Let’s roll some recent Toby comment footage:

Ah! another positive contribution to the fractal art world! Thank you guys so much for all the joy and light that you spread in our community…

[…]

Somehow that got lost in all the mocking and insinuation, I guess.

[…]

You must feel some sense of personal injustice to put so much energy into constantly harping on the subject. Or perhaps it is a function of your own psychic state: you just need a target on which to focus and discharge your anger…

[…]

I find decent criticism in our little fractal art world sorely lacking, but if you really wish to contribute positively then you must find a way to present your views responsibly, which means that your criticisms should spring from insight and should be presented in a way that will not be perceived as an attack on those at whom it is directed.

I think I’m beginning to understand how your worldview turns, Toby. It’s only negativity and mocking and insinuation and irresponsibility and attacking when we do it. But, when you do it, it’s just good clean fun.

~/~

It’s harder, though, to laugh at the echo of comments rooting on Toby’s cleverness. Springing from insight can be damned if the butt of the joke deserves to be bludgeoned. Apparently, one can yuck up attacks — if the cause among the cloistered is seen as just. Dig those smiling here-here emoticons — with plenty of thumbs-up praising going down, too. Toby’s insights are “wise” and “excellent.” “Loved the poem” chimes one. “A lovely…bit of words” sings another. Just another day of (what Toby once called) “idle, coffee-table chat.” Where’s the harm in it?

Of course, some of these people I once counted among my friends in the fractal community. In some cases, I hosted their art in guest galleries on my web site for many years. If they are not a judge for BMFAC or an editor for the FU Calendar, I’ve never questioned their motives or behaviors on OT or anywhere else. So why are they so quick to light the torches outside Frankenstein’s castle? Maybe they have stock in Ultra Fractal. Or could there be other reasons for hopping on the bashing bandwagon?

Overall, I think art communities like Renderosity and DeviantArt do a lot of good. They are useful places where beginning artists can get tips and advice from more experienced practitioners. However, among some people anyway, these sites occasionally lead to the shadings of insider quip-trading on display here. When such behaviors take root, these communities have little to do with art. They become only country clubs for socializing in small ponds that seem like oceans to the participants.

It is precisely these kinds of cliques that turned me off to art communities. There’s a kind of cloying smugness about them that should have been left in high school. Part of the problem stems from the infrastructure itself. Popularity indexes are embedded in the environment. Everyone can always see the stats you’ve racked up — page views, comments, favorites, and friends. Or, worse, and to your public shame, everyone instantly knows how poorly your art is faring. Clearly, competition is the prevailing rubric.

So you draw your wagons into increasingly smaller circles of self-satisfaction. Maybe you begin, even if subconsciously, to make art that will score more mouse clicks and a higher percentage of compliments. Before long, everyone in your circle is a genius producing masterpieces every hour on the hour. Outsiders who question such a cozy status quo threaten world order. Better put them in their place — before they become popular enough to take your place.

Is insulation like this — where “so many love you” and everything you say or do — healthy for artistic growth?

Uh-oh. I think someone’s getting too serious again. Quick. Somebody write another satirical poem that starts a new snarky thread.

After all, it’s not discharging anger when you do it.

~/~

Image made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until it blew out to sea.

Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, renderosity, deviantart, toby, high school clique, us or them, orbit trap

The Algorithmic Circus

28 February, 2008 by Tim

TieraZon, uscomic.8bf, XnView text – all three-rings

Technorati Tags: fractal art digital art tierazon algorithmic art circus balloons popcorn candy floss…

I’ve got a new filter!

23 February, 2008 by Tim

From Terry Gibbons’ The Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art

I don’t know exactly how it works, but where there’s math… there’s fractals! Sure, the math folks will argue with me, but like all great minds, I don’t expect to be understood in this lifetime (or solar system).

How does it work? Start with some colors and some shapes, move the two sliders around and then push the “shocko-wocko” button, labelled, “OK”. Actually, there’s more to it than that. Like all artistic activity it requires a good eye and knowing just when to click.

Behold, Alien Gunsmoke!

Yes. It’s a lot like the old western gunfight dueling with six-guns. But just as the people of the future will have to use the western gunslinging skills of the past to deal with aliens on other planets, I too will have to use the ancient, tried and true techniques of the old masters as I polish the artform of clickism in this (can you believe it?) 21st century.

Parameter files? How does one even start to list the parameters of this bold new art, much less quantify them? Every work of clickism is a total original and extremely hard to reproduce, or more accurately — reverse engineer. Ask Da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa again. He could try. He could come close, but it would be different. He’d be able to… uh, actually Da Vinci or any of the other old masters would probably be able to reproduce their own work quite easily since everything is quite carefully planned out and controlled. But it’s still hard work.

Yes, these are the Digital labours of Hercules. Fortunately I have strange new machines to do my heavy lifting, and detailed work (Leonardo got some help too, I read somewhere…), leaving me free to focus on the essential, more serious matters of looking and clicking.

Oh, of course. The filter is the circular wave distortion filter from Showfoto. You don’t need to use their’s though, just about every graphics program has one of these. I think they’ve been around for ages; they look like circular water ripples — that is when they’re used in their proper, prescribed way. (And why would anyone want to do that?) In fact, that’s why I never bothered to experiment with it before. Give something a clear, coherent label, and everybody thinks they know what it is …and what it does …and what it’s for …like Fractal Art

Technorati Tags: Digital Art, Non-Fractal Art, Circular Wave Filter, Da Vinci, Hercules, Astounding Science Fiction, Terry Gibbons, sfcovers.net, gunfighting,

Ashes to Ashes, Pulp to Pulp

18 February, 2008 by Tim

From Frank Wu’s collection of Frank R. Paul’s Golden Age Sci-Fi Pulp Covers

“The sages of Calisto were super-intelligent and had become so far advanced in the Sciences that there was nothing more for them to achieve. They had then moved on to the Arts. Rega, the sociable one who had helped me repair my ship, was eager to show me their art gallery. ‘Art, when it reaches perfection,’ Rega said, ‘is nothing more than a stunning cloud of golden dust, suggesting both the entire universe and a sub-atomic flash in the same image’. I laughed out loud when I first saw it. But now that I’ve been eating their secret scientific food for three months, I’ve come to agree with them completely.”
— (excerpted from A Student on Calisto, 1953)

Sliced up about 10 times in XnView’s slicer filter (no post-processing)

“Imagine my surprise when I arrived on the spacemen’s home planet only to discover I was a celebrity in their eyes and treated like some kind of king! Still, I was not fully at ease despite how well the whole ordeal had turned out. I wondered constantly, ‘What will they do with me when they find out what normal Earthlings are really like and that I was escaping from jail when they captured me?’.”
— (excerpted from, From the Electric Chair to the Throne of Pluto, 1949)

Further developed with Showfoto’s circular wave filter set to maximum

Every morning the same thing. Fifty or sixty gopher-sized holes – all new – would be discovered around our spaceships and equipment. Yet no one had heard or seen anything during the night. We all knew there couldn’t be any animal life since there weren’t even plants on Mars. That was before we’d started drillling.
— (excerpted from Gopher Hunting on Mars, 1962)

A detail of a 4x enlargement circular waved

Professor Menkin was a likeable enough fellow; he said hello to everyone and even once gave me a lift to the spaceport on one of his days off. I guess that’s what should have tipped me off: what was he doing driving out of town – and there ain’t nothing out of town on Venus – when he ought to be spending his free glide credits back at the Floaterium like the rest of us? He was working for the Venusians even back then, that’s what. I hear they’ve got his face on one of their coins now.
— (excerpted from I Wore a Tungsten Crown, 1951)

Technorati Tags: Digital Art Frank R. Paul Pulp Science Fiction Clickism Science Wonder Stories Mars Venus Pluto Showfoto XnView circular wave graphic filters

"The Best Fractal Art Ever Created"

16 February, 2008 by cruelanimal

Well, it’s an exciting neck and neck (sea)horse race over at the idreamincolor forum where the locals are busy buzzing and definitively storming the hive while answering this honey-dripping question: What Is the Best Fractal Art Ever Created?

Next week, rumor has it, members will reboot cerebrums to grok something less philosophically taxing…like: Which Is the One True Religion?

As one might imagine, there’s plenty of aesthetic wrangling and mucho diversity of opinion being displayed. So far, according to OT’s exclusive exit polls:

To everyone’s surprise, the forum moderator’s friends are doing extremely well in the balloting. So, too, and most unexpectedly, is the moderator himself.

Naturally, much of the “best” fractal art “ever created” is found exclusively at online ~~think tanks~~ art communities like Renderosity and DeviantArt. If you aren’t a member, well, sad to report your museum experience has suddenly gone dark, and the best fractal art ever created will remain unseen behind a shadowy scrim. Your only solution: register immediately, surf around billboard-blinking-gif undressed Poser babes, through software ads, over backslapping comment litanies, near parameter tweaking festivals, and, finally, settle and soak up all the self-similar greatness in a heavily commercialized and remediated environment.

Despite pundit predictions, Ultra Fractal images are absolutely trashing competing programs. In fact, now that I think back, I don’t remember seeing any competing programs in the listings. According to poll workers, most of the voters appeared to be UF users as well. A coincidence, no doubt — and certainly one within the statistical margin of error.

Our correspondent live at campaign headquarters reports that the Fractal Universe editors and Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest judges are reaping major repeat lever pulls — apparently proving P. T. Barnum‘s observation that if you select yourself as one of “the most important fractal artists in the world,” there will always be suckers born every minute who will line up to proclaim you also produce the best fractal art ever created.

And this just in from the editorial desk. No doubt some of OT’s recent commenters will applaud this survey as a positive, blogging landmark in finely honed fractal art critiquing. They will argue, unquestionably, if nothing else, this symposium delivers on crucial epistemological criteria like insisting that suppositions should “spring from insight” and — more importantly for those exercising keen critical sensibilities — empirical evidence is invariably “presented in a way that will not be perceived as an attack on those at whom it is directed.”

In fact, I can feel the love all the way over here. Why it’s the penultimate Über Top Twenty OF ALL TIME!!!!

ANOTHER. MASTERPIECE. AND. ANOTHER. AND. MY. GOD. STILL. ANOTHER.

Yes
one
big
cosmic
karmic
*V*!!!!!!!

~/~

Sorry. I got a little carried away there. I had to take a short break to towel myself off on the fainting couch.

I was so pumped by all the excitement because I wanted to add my thoroughly uniterated two cents to this list of lists. But then I remembered that I could not participate since the moderator had banned me from the forum after just one post. Oh woe. If I understood what gnashing of teeth was, I’d do it.

But, fortunately, I am able to still post here at Orbit Trap — thanks to the Chinese communist overloads who allow Tim and I to front this blog as their propagandistic puppet-stooges when we aren’t kept busy in the OT sweatshop dabbing toxic paint on exported and easily breakable toys.

Even so, I present my suggestions with much sheepishness. I know my entries for the best fractal art ever created pale when compared to the dispassionately selected works being critically metastasized just around the cyber-block. Nonetheless, after considerable soul searching and generator-wringing, here are my top five picks:

Broccoli

$I have complex recursion -- and a warmer personality than most fractal artists!$

Frost

Clouds

Trees

Galaxies

I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. The Big Bang‘s parameter files and The Creator‘s iterations just cannot measure up.

If only they’d used Ultra Fractal instead…

~/~

Web sites for photo credits: broccoli, frost, clouds, trees, and galaxies.

Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, best fractal art ever created, pitiful natural fractal failures, ultra fractal, idreamincolor, orbit trap

Painting With Power!

15 February, 2008 by Tim

“Great art picks up where nature ends.” -Marc Chagall.8bf

“One small step for a fractal artist; one giant leap for Fractal Art” -Neil Armstrong.8bf

“The aim of photoshop filters is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” -Aristotle.8bf

“What the mass media offers is not fractal art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.” -W. H. Auden.8bf

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough” -William Blake.8bf

“A new gadget that lasts only five minutes is worth more than an immortal work that bores everyone” -Francis Picabia.8bf

“I am become Clickism, the destroyer of worlds” -Robert Oppenheimer.8bf

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without photoshop filters” -Emile Zola.8bf

“Good taste is as tiring as good company” -Francis Picabia

“If we could but paint with the computer what we see with the mind.” -Honore de Balzac.8bf

“When I judge art, I take my computer monitor and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.” -Paul Cezanne.8bf

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of Ultra Fractal.” -Cecil Beaton.8bf

“Well begun is half done.” -Aristotle.8bf

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers… What we call art is a game. -Octavio Paz.8bf

“Photoshop filters produce ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Ultra Fractal, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.” -Jean Cocteau.8bf

“If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s synergy” -Wilson Mizner.8bf

“A fractal formula gives the image structure. An artist gives the image feeling. A photoshop filter destroys both and changes the hue.” -Ragland T. Tiger.8bf

“Fractal Art is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” -Edgar Degas.8bf

Technorati Tags: Fractal Art Digital Art Marc Chagall Neil Armstrong Aristotle W.H. Auden Robert Oppenheimer Emile Zola Honore de Balzac Cecil Beaton Marshall McLuhan William Wordsworth Octavio Paz Jean Cocteau Edgar Degas

Art Without an Audience

12 February, 2008 by Tim

Fyre 1.0.1 embedded parameter file

When Orbit Trap was started, back in August of 2006, it had always been foremost in my mind that it would be a positive contribution to the fractal art world.

What does that mean?

To me it means that it would encourage the creation of exciting new artwork. “Exciting”? Exciting doesn’t need to be defined; we know what excitement is when it happens.

Some of the criticism that Orbit Trap has received, and that I have personally received, has lead me to think that many people in the fractal world misunderstand the function of criticism that Orbit Trap is performing.

I believe it all comes down to the role that criticism, and critics in particular, play in the world of art. Serious, meaningful, and sustained criticism is something that has been oddly lacking in the fractal art world. Perhaps because fractal art is still a relatively new art form? Or perhaps because criticism in the fractal world has often been met with harassment and punishing consequences?

Criticism is simply commentary. The word “criticism” has acquired a negative connotation in everyday speech, but I’m using the word in it’s traditional, neutral way, which simply implies any kind of feedback or discussion regardless of whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant. Criticism is merely talking “about” something.

Critics are people who comment on art. They may easily appear “opinionated” because commentary is, by it’s very nature, opinions. While critics have played an important, and at times, very influential role in the development of new artistic styles and types of art, I would say they are not very common, and for that reason, are a somewhat rare and unusual type of person. Most people are uncomfortable in giving criticism — ironically, even more uncomfortable than they are in actually receiving it.

Critics like to comment about art. Why? Well, for the same reason artists like to make art: quite simply, artistic passion. Commenting on art produces new ideas and perspectives and in consequence – new possibilities. Critics are just as interested in art as artists are. The roles are different, that’s all.

Critics help artists and viewers to see art differently – and in some cases to see art where people don’t see it at all. Artists like Jackson Pollock, who have had an enormous influence on the art world, would probably have had much less success if they were not “interpreted” and “explained” and introduced to the larger art audience by the thoughtful writing of art critics who saw something valuable in what they were doing.

So, in the world of art, criticism persists because art persists. Critics do not “get over it” just as artists do not “get over” making art.

Art without criticism is like seeing without thinking. It’s like art without an audience.

Technorati Tags: fractal art digital art Fyre 1.0.1 art criticism art critics Jackson Pollock Art

Leave a Light On

10 February, 2008 by cruelanimal

Leave a Light On (2008)

Reader Toby, in our comments section, has finally taken up the challenge to address some of the points Orbit Trap has raised about the two major fractal competitions. He also added a few additional rimshots for good measure.

I admit it’s tempting to rip right into the snark. Wouldn’t everyone savor an entire post of juicy call-and-response cleverness like this?

~/~

As a personal aside, I find your meretricious writing style quite juvenile and hardly worthy of your obvious intelligence, but that is just a matter of taste.

Ouch. What does one say to such a stinging remark?

Option One: Apologize? I’m very sorry. The next time I make my weak arguments, I promise to use a style you find more pleasing.

Option Two: Fight fire with fire? I understand, just as I’m sure you’ll understand when I tell you I find your powers of observation and deduction to be somewhat lacking.

Option Three: Go all Zen? It’s just a cheap shot, Grasshopper. Journey inward and become one with it. Then you will attain the peace that passes all understanding.

I think I’ll choose Option Three….

~/~

Fun, yes, but ultimately off the point.

Toby’s post has more branches than an arterial system. But I will limit my response to his observations on fractal competitions. Much of the rest of his lengthy screed is diversionary fog. Toby said he perused OT’s archives, but I suspect he did not dig deep enough to find the big picture. If he had, he’d know Tim and I have previously addressed most of his arguments. Perhaps that is nature’s way of letting us know it’s time for a refresher course.

I never said anything about the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest until its second year. I gave Damien M. Jones a free pass the first go around and chalked it up to establishing initial seed money to get the project off the ground.

But last year’s contest had identical regulations and protocols — which were announced months before a sponsor was even named. How could the phantom sponsors thus be responsible for mandating the stipulations of the contest? Are they telepaths? And, even more astounding, what are the odds of two completely different sponsors insisting on indistinguishable arrangements?

No, there is a more logical assumption. Jones, as the resident “fractal art expert,” convinced the initial sponsors to accept his own regulations — like exhibiting the judges’ work. The second year, with the competition established, the late-arriving sponsors simply fell in line and accepted the existing procedures. Although Jones claimed he included the judges’ work as a “hedge against insufficient quality,” BMFAC handed out nearly fifty honorable mentions last year. And yet the big prize, the exhibition in Spain, will be nearly half-filled with the work of the contest’s own judges. Face the facts. BMFAC was deliberately created, first and foremost, for the judges’ own self-promotion. Everything else is an afterthought.

Toby notes that Jones was “uncomfortable” with the BMFAC arrangement and agrees that including the work of judges is “rather unusual and not particularly desirable.” You don’t say. Isn’t that just a euphemistic way of avoiding coming right out and stating such a practice is unethical and unprofessional? Why might such collusion be universally frowned upon? Because a contest’s results look rigged rather than fairly juried? Why was Jones so uncomfortable if his actions were so reasonable and appropriate? Because people like me might raise questions about their propriety?

Even if Jones did not write the rules himself, which is improbable, he’s not off the hook. No one forced him to accept the terms of his ethics-deprived sponsors. He made his devil’s bargain freely — knowing full well it would likely make many others uncomfortable, too. He chose what was expedient over what was correct. As a result, we are left with a contaminated competition.

Toby laments OT’s “slanted, polemical style” and claims that the entire BMFAC set up was not for “self-glorification” because the entrants’ work was “clearly separated” from the judges’ work. But such a separation, which in no way validates including the judges’ art, only occurs at the contest’s 2007 web site. There is no such separation on the 2006 BMFAC home page. Moreover, was any distinction between “winner” and “judge” made last year at the exhibition? Here is what is not in doubt. The judges stake out their 40% of the wall space first — guaranteed and completely unjuried. The rest of the contest is then filled in around them. That’s self-glorified enough for me.

But Toby’s entire point is bizarre. Does simply announcing that one is going to cheat allow one to then cheat with impunity? Being open about including the work of judges in a competition does not magically wipe away all ethical concerns. But I will grant that it is certainly arrogant.

Toby asserts that Tim and I implied that “judges and entrants [my emphasis] are a self-serving clique” and that we “failed to acknowledge that no artist’s names were known to the panel during judging.” Toby is being less than honest here. Neither Tim nor I have ever had anything ill to say about the contestants in any fractal competition. In fact, we have repeatedly made clear the selected artists are deserving of recognition and acclaim.

The 2007 BMFAC exhibiting judges are another matter entirely. Are any of them not members of the Ultra Fractal community? Certainly there is room for more aesthetic variety on the judging panel. And when you combine the UF backgrounds of the judges with the mandatory, mammoth, made-for-UF scale in the entry requirements, well….

Furthermore, how does Toby know the judges did not see the names of the entrants? The BMFAC site makes no such notation. In fact, some of the winning entries contained visible artist signatures. And were additional steps taken to ensure that judges/teachers in the Mississippi School of Anti-Fractal Art™ did not recognize the work of their own students — some of whom were selected as winners? In truth, a strong case can be made that BMFAC’s organizers consistently showed an overall laxness in preventing conflicts of interest.

Toby then ticks off the usual refrains about the Fractal Universe Calendar: it’s not a contest, including the editors is fair compensation, and the publishers rather than the editors are the final arbitrators.

If the FU Calendar was nothing more than a publishing venture, then the editors would directly solicit contributions. Instead, images are submitted and pruned by screeners. These editors are paid in part by having an image included in the final product, but are also free to add more of their own images into the initial cut. They then turn over a batch of pre-screened “finalists” to the publishers who act as judges. This is indeed a competitive process. I believe all accepted entries, including those of the editors, also receive a monetary payment.

Things go bad at the screening level. Again, we have a case of those doing the editing being “exhibited” in the calendar. That’s a fair compensation, you say? Would you still feel that way knowing that just over 40% of the selected entries for the last four years were the work of four past or current editors?

Just as 40% of the exhibition in last year’s BMFAC is comprised of the work of the contest’s judges.

I don’t have to study pattern recognition theory to see what’s going on here.

Again, as with Jones and his sponsors, the FU Calendar editors willingly choose to enter into their agreement with the publishers. The editors certainly deserve to be paid for their services. But they could aspire to professional standards by declining the option of having their own work included. They don’t.

We’ve made it clear that the publisher (Avalanche) is free to do whatever it pleases. Spiral away we say. It’s their money. But the editors aren’t forced to agree to the publisher’s terms, so why express surprise, yet alone anger, that someone might question whether such conduct is proper?

Toby then concludes that “it is Damien who comes out clean here” and asserts that Jones’ decision to “cease hosting your site was a rational act of self-preservation, which he appears from the record to have done honorably and sensitively.”

If you read the email exchange carefully, you’ll notice that Jones abruptly blocks access to my web site and informs me the situation is permanent. There is no mention of me being a “security threat” until much later. Nowhere does Jones ever show that I had either the ability or the inclination to damage Fractalus — which, as many readers know, is probably one of the most battened-down, secure servers on Earth. The suggestion that I could access files other than my own is absurd. No. Jones was trying to cover his butt. He knew how his actions would look, and he resorted to smearing me for the sake of damage control.

Such a ploy is not a new tactic on his part. Some years before, he used an identical maneuver to toss Paul N. Lee off Fractalus. Lee, too, had a record of being critical of Jones and suddenly found himself labeled a “security threat.” To my shame, I believed Jones’ explanation and said nothing at the time. I apologize openly to Lee — here and now — for my silence and for anything I ever said that wounded him. I was wrong not to look for the truth. What happened to Lee eventually happened to me, and I find nothing honorable or sensitive about any of it.

Toby finishes with a shot chiding us that it’s “easy to criticize when it isn’t you bearing the responsibility, isn’t it?” You think so? Toby should try moderating this blog for a month and see if he can still find his way home after the experience.

Tim and I will leave a light on for him.

~/~

Rooms with a View
Blog with a View

Image made with Fractal ViZion. Post-processed until they came by both land and by sea.

Tags: fractal, fractal contest, fractal art, digital art, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, fractal universe calendar, damien m jones, fractalus, toby, orbit trap

Epilogue

9 February, 2008 by Tim

The Persistence of Comments

In case there’s anyone still following this latest comment “thread”, here’s the final chapter.

Toby sent us his final remarks which he said we could post if we wanted to. Unlike Ken, Toby doesn’t accuse us of violating his human rights when it comes to posting his comments.

Toby writes: “in my view Damien’s decision to cease hosting your site was a rational act of self-preservation, which he appears from the record to have done honorably and sensitively”

Well, well. I think the polite term for guys like Toby is “fanboy”. He’s a Fractalus Fanboy.

Booting a long-time, paying client off your webserver when they criticize you on their blog isn’t retaliation or intimidation or an attempt to stifle free speech? No, no. Not when Fractalus does it!

According to Toby it’s “a rational act of self-preservation”.

In keeping with Toby’s Communist China analogy he used for us, I’d guess he’d probably say that Mao’s repression of criticism and throwing dissidents into labour camps was also “a rational act of self-preservation”.

Sorry Toby – and all the rest of you Fractalus Fanboys (and Fangirls). I don’t think your attempts to use the comments section of Orbit Trap to prop up your glorious leader by demanding, over and over, “freedom of speech” and “alternative viewpoint” are working.

That’s the current state of the Fractal Art world (in case you’re wondering what all this is about). But don’t worry about Orbit Trap; we’re not on anyone’s leash.

Technorati Tags: Fractal Art Digital Art art criticism Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest Fractal Universe Calendar Freedom of the Press Freedom of Speech Fractalus Fanboy Fangirl Damien M. Jones

Read-only Moon

3 February, 2008 by Tim

Technorati Tags: digital art terraform read-only moon space exploration space cadet space in my head

Looking for Arrowheads

1 February, 2008 by Tim

Made with Fyre 1.0.1. Embedded parameter file. Click, click, click, done.

I read once
about kids who would go looking
for arrowheads

I was a kid
so I went looking for arrowheads
also

The arrowheads
are in the ground
or just below the surface

The shaft of the arrow
is gone
and the feathers too
the guy who shot the arrow
is gone
but the stone, flint arrowhead
lives on

Flint is a stone
It doesn’t know
it’s an arrowhead

So it waits
the way a stone waits
stays sharp
stays covered

Technorati Tags: arrowheads fyre 1.0.1 childhood memories poetry picture talking

Odds and Ends

31 January, 2008 by cruelanimal

Ah, back to blogging after some wandering in RL wilderness.

The holidays nearly did me in. Although anti-depressants are currently weathering a storm of debunkers, their alleged restorative process might be an appropriate metaphor. Getting through the Yuletide Ho Ho Ho-ing took some uptaking. But recovery from Christmassacre required serious re-uptaking.

Halloween. Now that’s my idea of an enjoyable, even religious holiday.

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This post is just odds and ends. Fragments. Bits. Discontinuous. Blogging for the televisual throngs.

Best to type quickly until my internalized remote control begins to surf.

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Some regular OT readers will no doubt be surprised to learn that I actually have some friends — and some of our frenetic regulars might even make for the fainting couch to hear that some OT readers really do send me messages that do not fall into the category of hate mail.

I know. There are those who won’t believe me until I’m interrogated point blank while wired up on The Moment of Truth.

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I am a mathematician, and I’d like to stand on your roof…
—Ron Eglash greeting African families while researching fractal architecture

One friend sent me this link to a sixteen minute video featuring Dr. Ron Eglash, an ethno-mathematician, discussing how fractal patterns are featured prominently in African architecture and art — and even in board games and hair braiding. Eglash’s presentation is first-rate as he mixes geometry (and symbolic code) with humor while illustrating many of his observations directly from his laptop.

He certainly knows his stuff. He received a Fulbright to look at African locales and their structures up close and personal. I especially enjoyed his demonstration showing the noticeable fractal patterns in villages across the continent. He used schematic drawings and overhead photography to make a most convincing case. He further notes that fractal forms are not universally found in all indigenous groups but are unquestionably widely represented throughout African culture.

I think anyone who is fractal-addicted or fascinated with algorithmic art will enjoy this stimulating presentation.

If this topic sounds a little familiar, I wrote a post on fractals and African art in the early, mellower, kumbayaa days of Orbit Trap.

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And now, as Monty Python liked to remind us, for something completely different.

Another friend sent me to look over this installation in order to flush out my artistic preconceptions. Such work should make all of us feel better the next time someone tells us our art looks like…well…like…

Cloaca (2000) by Wim Delvoye

[Photograph by Dirk Pauwels]

Cloaca (Detail)

[Photograph by Cristoph Neerman]

Artnet, in a post titled “A Human Masterpiece” by Els Fiers, fills in the gaps:

Cloaca, the latest work by the Belgian conceptualist Wim Delvoye (b. 1965), has just closed out its run at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MuHKA) in Antwerp. It was a room-sized installation of six glass containers connected to each other with wires, tubes and pumps. Every day, the machine received a certain amount of food.

Meat, fish, vegetables and pastries passed through a giant blender, were mixed with water, and poured into jars filled with acids and enzyme liquids. There they got the same treatment as the human stomach would supply. Electronic and mechanical units controlled the process, and after almost two days the food came out of a filtering unit as something close to genuine, human shit.

During the exhibition, the smelly assembly line caused quite some consternation. It seemed to bring an infernal message into the world. There is enough dung as it is. Why make more?

Worse, the installation was placed in a cold, clean space at the museum, where it was nourished by a first class chef who prepared two meals a day in an attached kitchen. The atmosphere suggested a hospital equipped for a strange experiment — the birth and care of a machine that eats and defecates — a mechanical baby. “Hi,” it seemed to say, “I’m almost like you.”

[…]

Delvoye has given a name to his harsh creature: Cloaca, referring to the ancient sewer in Rome. But while the cloaca maxima proved to be useful, this Cloaca goes beyond every purpose, except of course revealing of the meaning of art. So, too, the spending and earning of money is part of its purpose. The machine daily delivered turds that were signed and sold for $1,000 each.

Delvoye has since gone on to make new improved iterations of defecating machines. Version 8.0, Super Cloaca, consumes 300kg of food and produces 80kg of waste daily.

And you say you’re having trouble selling fractal prints? Perhaps the problem with your art is that it’s just not as tactile as Delvoye’s:

Delvoye also set himself the task to insert the products of Cloaca in the global economic system. The Casino Luxembourg had a special Wim shop where you could buy a Wim action figure but also a whole range of Cloaca products: Cloaca T-shirts, a 3D Viewmaster, Cloaca toilet paper, posters, etc. But that’s just a merchandising detail: the Cloaca machines are works of art which produce works of art. On show were dozens of vacuum-packed Cloaca eliminations made during the 5 first exhibits of the machine around the world. There’s apparently a waiting list of collectors eager to buy one of those, and the faeces made during the New York exhibition are the most sought-after.
–from “Wim Delvoye: Cloaca 2000-2007” on We Make Money Not Art

This project takes the museum guide‘s admonishment of please don’t touch the art to a new level.

In fact, metaphors expand almost exponentially here. Is this elevating the low or undercutting the high? Is the message that all modern and postmodern art is crap (literally!!) or is this analysis from absolutearts.com more in line with your thinking:

Cloaca brings together trends in contemporary art that are usually considered separately. At one extreme is a growing interest in how art and technology intersect, particularly with regard to where life begins and ends, and the impact of artificial intelligence, robotics, software, and bioengineering on cultural production. At the opposite end of the critical spectrum is the investigation of abjection as a fundamental part of the human condition. Cloaca addresses both of these areas of inquiry by drawing direct parallels between the contemplation of art, the contemplation of our body and its functions, and the degree to which each are effected by advances in medicine, gene mapping, and technology. In its imitation of human behavior, Cloaca even functions as a modern-day golem.

Maybe, in the (ahem) end, we should let the artist have the last word

When I was going to art school, all my family said I was wasting my time, and now I have made a work of art about waste.

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Go for the Jugular (2008)

And speaking of art stuff that stinks…

Tim’s latest post on Anti-Fractals was definitely on target. A noticeable trend among some of the more prominent (through their own self-promotion) Ultra Fractal artists is to produce fractals that don’t look like fractals. In fact, these fractals (and Tim provided examples) seem to want to mirror conventional art — especially abstract expressionism resembling melted ice cream.

As Tim notes, UF’s upgrades have been deliberately designed to remove fractalness by adding Photoshop Jr. graphic manipulation tools. Now Xtreme layering and masking can be done in a “pure” fractal generator without suffering the heartbreak and guilt of “cheating” with Photoshop. Working in UF strictly in order to make large prints is a defensive rationale I often hear. But anyone with weightlifting processors and plenty of RAM oomph can post-process on a grand scale fairly easily in Photoshop. No, the real reason is probably an ailment found in royal blood — closer to a kind of disinterested, entitled snobbery.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see fractal art look less stereotypically identifiable as such. I’ve been hitched to that wagon for many years.

But how ironic is it that some of these fractalists freely exploring the increasingly non-fractal, non-representational modern art event horizons are the very people who will insist other ~~feudal~~ fractal artists remain confined within safe, conventional, same-as-it-ever-was boundaries.

Let’s revisit the rules for acceptable entries in last year’s Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest:

We want to show artwork that is uniquely fractal; artwork that uses fractal tools to produce less-fractal imagery is not as desirable.

Why do I keep expecting to read some huckstering small print ad speak like:

Using Ultra Fractal not included. Limitations not applicable to contest panel members.

Look at the images Tim included in his post. No, the rules did not apply to BMFAC’s judges. They were free to be as progressively avant-garde as they wished. That way they can come off looking more cutting edge — more convention-smashing than the regular entrants they conveniently artistically hogtied.

And if you want to join the vanguard of these pioneers, you best follow their lead and imitate their style. Better yet, just clone their representations by enrolling in the Mississippi School of Anti-Fractal Art™.

But don’t expect apologies anytime soon from this bunch who profit out the eating end by self-selecting their own work and then profit again out the defecating end by hanging that same non-juried work into a juried exhibition they themselves have judged.

Do you smell something?

I do. Every one of the BMFAC judges should be ashamed.

But they aren’t. At all. On the contrary, they’re getting big time promotional exposure as heavily trafficked blogs like Boing Boing send websurfers scurrying to gawk at the contest pages.

This is mixed blessing, of course. The true exhibitors and winners — those who actually had to enter the competition, who played fair by the hypocritical rules limitations the judges imposed but were not bound by, and who were juried and selected — deserve every recognition. I hope the BMFAC site is swamped with people coming to see the real winners. This achievement spotlighting their talents should be widely seen.

But it’s a travesty that the judges who set up this promotional self-glorification to further their own careers are also openly reaping rewards. BMFAC is a rich “field of dreams” for them. Apparently, if you build an arrogant publicity stunt, they (sadly) will come.

Fractal artists everywhere should be outraged at such transparent ploys.

Instead, though, a few supporters of the BMFAC judges continue flamethrowing me emails insisting I apologize for pointing out our fractal emperors have no clothes.

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Image made with Fractal ViZion. Post-processed until even vampires wouldn’t come near it.

Rooms with a View
Blog with a View

Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, ron eglash, vim delvoye, cloaca, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, art contests, ultra fractal, mississippi school of anti fractal art, orbit trap

Beware of the Anti-Fractal

26 January, 2008 by Tim

I know this will probably crack some folks up at first, but bear with me as I tell you about something that came to mind just recently while browsing the big page of “winners” at the 2007 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest site.

First, let me draw your attention to the “anti-” thing. I am referring to anti in the sense of “Anti-Christ”, a term which most people will be familiar with, mostly from the popular media, I suspect, which is why I want to clarify its meaning.

Anti-Christ has two accepted meanings. The first is the more common and obvious one, “opposed or against Christ”. The second is a similar, but slightly different meaning of “substitute or alternate Christ”. That’s the meaning I’m referring to when I speak of “Anti-Fractal” – a substitution for, or replacement for Fractals. Much more insidious than the first one.

A horrifying mutation is about to be born

So I’m looking at the winners’ page last week because I read a short blog posting about the 2007 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest and I wanted to double check which of the many “species” of winners the reviewer’s three favorites came from. There’s an interesting comment there, but let’s stick to the Anti-Fractal.

While browsing down the winners’ (that’s plural) page I was struck by the suddenly different style of three of the judges’ works.

Well, Ultra Fractal has a lot of processing options so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see some pretty unusual looking fractals. But it made me think, “Are they bored with fractals and trying to make artwork that looks as little like fractals as possible?”

I’m referring to the wispy, melting, flowing style of image. It’s not the usual crisp, structured, patterned type of fractal image that has traditionally been associated with fractals. It’s something new and different and in the art world that’s always a good thing.

But this is not the art world, this is the fractal art world and I say, “BRETHEREN! BEWARE THE ANTI-FRACTAL!”

Now, I’m sure the artists can produce plenty of fractal formulas and other scientific evidence to easily prove by way of parameter files that those images are as fractal as any other fractal image, but just different-looking than the usual old-fashioned fractals because these new flowing-style fractals have been created with cutting-edge Ultra Fractal techniques.

I think these judges are leading the way in leaving the little world of fractal art and heading out into the larger and more creative realm of Digital Art in general. And by corollary I would say that Ultra Fractal is a tool primarily designed for this purpose: Anti-Fractals – making fractals that don’t look like fractals but can still be easily called fractals because you didn’t use Photoshop, you only used Ultra-Fractal.

In other words, Ultra Fractal is being used to mask post-processing and conceal the the true label of “Digital Art” under layers of fractal formulas!

Don’t we all want something good for Fractal Art to come out of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contests? Yes! And now it has. The judges have shown us that Fractal Art is Dead and Boring and it needs to be cooked a little.

No more spirals – behold the un-spiral! Want your crisp frozen curves to look more relaxed and flowing? Enroll in the Mississippi School of Anti-Fractal Art. But be forewarned: only the good ship Ultra Fractal can take you down that river. You can’t do this with your small fractal crafts.

Unless of course you’ve got the guts to be a Pirate and use Photoshop.

I’ll stop now. I’m meandering.

Technorati Tags: Anti-Christ Anti-Fractal Boing-Boing Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest Mississippi Ultra Fractal Photoshop

Words in the Ice

23 January, 2008 by Tim

Algorithmic Art (art made by machines) is a lot like digital frost.

I think almost every photography book has a picture of frost on a window pane. Frost is a mechanical process and is quite well understood but the imagery it produces never seems to lose it’s allure.

There’s no Jack Frost or any deliberating influence involved, it’s just a simple, natural process of water crystalizing (freezing) on window glass. The frost patterns develop as more water vapour adheres to the edges of the growing formation.

The ingredients of frost are simple. The ingredients of algorithmic art are fairly simple too. Although some algorithms may be difficult to construct, they’re simple to run. Similarly, water molecules wouldn’t exactly be easy to make oneself, but once made, they run themselves.

Like the mundane process that creates frost patterns, these images were made with the block wave distortion filter in KDE’s Showfoto (part of the Digikam project).

It’s just a distortion effect and probably not anywhere near as fascinating as fractals, which seem to occupy a whole separate realm of digital art (and mathematics too). Distortion filters ought to be much less interesting than fractals, one would think.

What does that say? It says that art is stupid. It says that our eyes care little for the origins of the imagery they look at, although they can be easily influenced, temporarily, by a nice frame or a famous name …or a price tag.

A fractal on the computer screen is a fish out of water – dead – just another piece of visual meat to be devoured by our eyes. Fractal math is just an interesting anectdote and bit of trivia that people like to package with their fractal images like the phrase,”Sparkling Natural Mineral Water” that you see on the labels of bottled water.

“Post-processing”, the use of filter effects, lays bare the inner workings of digital images. Before long it becomes pretty obvious that “fractals” are just another photoshop filter. Add in the use of layering, one of the strongest and most common graphical effects, and the mighty label, “Fractal” starts to look a little transparent.

Yeah. It’s true. I know it. I speak the language of the ice. I can read it.

Technorati Tags: art digital art fractal art algorithmic art any kind of art KDE Showfoto Digikam

Orbit Trap

a blog about fractal art

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Arabian Nights

An Open Letter to Avalanche Publishing

Ich bin ein Bernini!

Snorkeling in Wool

The Prose Poem

The Continued Fall of the House of Usher

How to make Art from Garbage

Crumblescape

Better than Escher?

Nobody said a word, but I knew

Are you ready for bubbles?

Incoming

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Springtime on the Fractal Plains

Post-Card

Facelift

Secret, Invisible and Ever-Unknown

The Bird That Gave Birth to the Moon

Temple of Saturn

Troll Prima Donna

Whistleblower

Fractalbook

Us and Them

The Algorithmic Circus

I’ve got a new filter!

Ashes to Ashes, Pulp to Pulp

"The Best Fractal Art Ever Created"

Painting With Power!

Art Without an Audience

Leave a Light On

Epilogue

Read-only Moon

Looking for Arrowheads

Odds and Ends

Beware of the Anti-Fractal

Words in the Ice