In the spirit of Sindbad, I went on a voyage and just recently, returned. It was a digital voyage. Not really a voyage I guess, but I left where I was and out of curiosity went somewhere different and then here I am again.

I journeyed to the edges of minimalist window managers and desktop environments in Linux. While doing so, I often experienced a completely black screen (call it a desktop) from which I was only able to send messages to the system by way of a run dialog opened with the keystroke alt+F2.

Like a sailor whose map is the stars and navigates better at night than in the day, I found that a simple run dialog was often more efficient (and certainly much simpler) than desktop icons or menus. Better still was the boolean search feature in Thunar which would allow you to access any icon in the /usr/applications directory.

As I continue with my tale from strange lands, I discovered the near ability of the Opera browser to replace all the functions of my operating system with the exception of the ability to run Opera itself. In addition to browsing the internet I could read my email and RSS feeds and also browse (in a primitive way) my hard drive and even write postings via it’s onboard notes feature.

I loaded a widget that completely replaced the calendar, clock and appointment manager that normally requires a taskbar and system bar and was able to switch from application to application via something so incredibly simple as alt+TAB.

The greatest moment of all was discovering this stunning image of the planet Mercury which, like my empty, minimalist desktop (no taskbar, no icons, no clock, no right-click menu…) fitted in quite well with my floating in space desktop environment. I splurged with 8MB of RAM and launched xfdesktop and dropped this image of the planet Mercury into my desktop, which now was a completely black screen with only Mercury on it.

Mercury, from the Wikipedia

I don’t know if Windows will allow you to work with just a black screen and a few simple keystroke combinations, but I heartily recommend giving it a try if only for the brief feeling of drifting in space.

The thrill of Linux isn’t something as trivial as merely escaping the orbit of Micro$oft Windows. It’s about forgetting all about that old planet Earth and floating through space on a Journey to Mercury.

Technorati Tags: planet mercury linux xfce xfdesktop xfwm thunar sindbad desktop environment minimalist window manager opera

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | click art | clickism | illustration | vernissage | photoshop filters

Back in the early 90’s, I went through a 3 year phase when I wanted to become an airplane pilot. In addition to taking flight training in Ontario, Canada (where I live) I also “studied” in Phoenix, Arizona and Hoxie, Kansas where I took some cropdusting lessons.

During this time I became acquainted with some of the aviation “culture” including the juvenile, false bravado and machismo attitude of many pilots (particularly new ones). Aviation culture also included the habit of using the metaphor of birds to refer to airplanes.

I was never really comfortable with this bird analogy for planes, although, like birds, planes fly and planes have wings. Birds however, incorporate a lot of movement into flight unlike planes which are extremely rigid and also extremely smooth and streamlined — more like fish, fins and swimming than birds, wings and flying.

In fact, one sunny morning at the Scottsdale airport in Phoenix (it’s always sunny in Phoenix) I was doing my required “walk around” of the training aircraft and I decided to take a look at the underneath of the tail of the airplane. It was much like the smooth, curved underside to a fish, I thought. Isn’t an airplane really more like a fish or boat with wings?

In fact, “flying boat” amphibious aircraft require very little design modification to transfom them from what is a typical aircraft design. I suppose, of course, one could say the same thing about a duck — a floating bird — but that just emphasizes my point that aircraft are more like water creatures than air creatures (more like ducks than eagles).

Anyhow, I’m sure the bird metaphor for airplanes lives on, just as the James Bond mentality of many pilots probably does too, even though they’re both just as unnatural and out of place in the real world.

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | Fyre | Fyre 1.0.1 | aviation | pilot | machismo | bravado | arizona | scottsdale | phoenix | fish | bird | flying

Frames? Digital Pictures!

They really ought to be called something like, “Digital Display Frame” since the “frame” isn’t really digital, is it? It’s the picture that’s digital. But I think it’s an example of how language is a practical medium and changes according to the whims of those who use it, rather than the direction of any sort of authority. “Frame” is being used to refer to the entire mechanism, which in this case includes the picture.

Although they seem to be a little pricey right now ($79-4×6″), it’s an exciting development for people like me who find printing to be a completely different medium than the digital, computer one. Of course, they’ve had these sorts of things in Star Wars for some time now. But apparently science fiction is not the same as reality.

Whole new digital communities are already appearing — and disappearing

On the opposing side of things: isn’t a digital picture frame just a low quality computer screen that eats up batteries and wouldn’t it be better to view digital images on a computer monitor instead? Yes, but the “picture frame” performs the function of a decoration which occupies places that a monitor can’t. A digital picture frame is a digital ornament and that’s the exciting thing. Digital Ornaments are something new. So far, with the exception of printing (a pretty big exception…) digital art has been confined to a computer monitor; it doesn’t hang on a wall like it’s ancestors do.

Think of the possibilities: With technological development they could become cheaper and that would also translate into larger. It’s possible that the technology could produce a very large digital display “frame” that could substitute for large printed images.

Galleries could produce coin operated images. Put in, say, 25 cents and the image appears for a minute. If you want to take a closer look (some people do) then just drop in another 25 cents.

Hmmmn… That’s going to be a problem. Where is anyone going to find digital art that’s worth 25 cents?

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | digital picture frames | digital communities | digital everything man!

No way. Think again, brainiac.

Or go check out the articles in the Wikipedia regarding Nuclear Weapons. The hard part seems to be getting the fuel. You need Uranium or Plutonium, even if you want to make a Hydrogen bomb, but it’s got to be a special type — and lots of it.

I think because there are so many nuclear weapons in the world that people think they’re easy to make. Also, since the principles behind them are relatively simple (nuclear physics is simple, right?) and easily available, it’s reasonable to assume that anyone, who wants to, can make an “atomic bomb”.

It’s not as easy as you think it is

Enriching Uranium requires the concentration (isolation, separation) of the Uranium isotope, 235. This is difficult. “Difficult” means expensive in engineering or scientific circles.

Plutonium (239) isn’t even a naturally occuring element and has to be created from Uranium 238 (stable and useless) in a nuclear reactor. Unfortunately it explodes too quickly when formed into critical mass and requires very sophisticated (more money, again) methods to get a useful, high-yielding warhead.

Hydrogen bomb? It takes a plutonium or uranium (235) explosion to just get the Hydrogen bomb going. That’s a very expensive fuse. But after that… The biggest nuclear weapons are all Hydrogen (fusion of small atoms, as opposed to fission –splitting– of big ones) bombs.

Did you know that when U.S. President Harry Truman announced after dropping the second atomic bomb on Japan (Nagasaki, Aug. 1945) that if they didn’t surrender they would see an unbelievable rain of destruction, that he was actually just bluffing?

Apparently the U.S. had used up all of their weapons (they only had 3: dropped two and tested one –Trinity test, White Sands) and didn’t have any more enriched Uranium (235) or Plutonium with which to make another bomb, and would have entailed several months of enrichment processing.

So it just goes to show that the only thing more powerful than an atom bomb is a slick-talking president.

technorati tags: fractal art | digital art | algorithmic art | nuclear weapons |

Inkblot Kaos Parameter File

Getting through the winter seems to be so complicated and expensive for us humans. On the other hand, in the tropics houses are simple. All you really need is a roof that keeps the rain out, screens on the windows (or a mosquito net to sleep under), four walls and a floor.

Winter is the reason that human civilization has primarily stayed in places where nothing ever freezes. Winter is an enormous economic drain.

Which makes me wonder how all these animals up here manage to make it through the winter without ever paying a cent for oil, gas or electricity to heat their homes and yet keep living and carrying on just fine without all the complexities that humans seem to require.

The secret is going underground …and falling into a stupor …waking up every few weeks …seeing if it’s over …falling back into a stupor …again …again …unless something eats you.

Take the Mongolian Gerbil of South Central Siberia, for instance. Don’t be fooled by that “Siberia” name. Siberia is just the prairies or “western plains” of Russia. It’s no colder there than Manitoba (that’s Canada) or North Dakota, where actually it’s incredibly cold, as cold as Siberia.

original Inkblot Kaos image before India Ink-195.8bf

In the winter they… wait, apparently they don’t hibernate. The whole family moves down into their winter nesting chamber which is 4 or 5 feet below the surface. They store up food? Probably. The burrow is interconnected with tons of other ones. I think they have a pretty good time down there. They don’t shovel snow. They stay underground on super cold days, which means, super windy days. I think they carry the Plague.

Weird stuff happens in the winter up here. Some small rodents, ground squirrels, I think, hibernate. Hibernation isn’t “sleeping”. Hibernation is a (this is true) state of suspended animation where the body temperature drops to within a few degrees of “room temperature” which in these cheap, unheated rodent-homes, could be close to zero (freezing) Celsius.

Pick up a hibernating animal and drop it and it won’t wake up. It’s in a torpor or stupor sort of state.

Most hibernators however, dig a burrow down to a level which is below the “frostline”, which is the maximum depth to which the freezing cold of winter goes. There’s something called the sub-snow layer, too. Under the snow, but above the ground. Not as exposed, but certainly colder than the subterranean areas.

Bears, or at least most bears, don’t actually hibernate. They just lie around sleeping or doing nothing all winter. Apparently this was discovered, quite quickly, by researchers who went into the dens of bears in the winter to take their temperature (the main indicator of hibernation). After the loss of several hundred graduate students… it was assumed the bears were not hiberating and were actually quite alert.

Some small rodents actually allow their body temperature to drop below freezing and enter a super-cooled state (below freezing, but still liquid –not frozen). This allows for enormous savings in heat as a body temperature of -2C doesn’t require much metabolic activity. It’s been suggested that perhaps, in particularly cold winters, or during cold “snaps”, that some of these rodents actually die, so maybe it’s not as successful a strategy as one might think.

In the Arctic (snow, ice, tundra, igloos, seals, polar bears…) apparently there is very little or actually no hibernation (low body temperature state). Why? Isn’t it colder up there? Yes, but the winter lasts so long (like 14 months) that no animal could store up enough fat to make it through such a prolonged period.

Polar Bears are active all winter long. They even give birth in the winter. They eat people too. They’ll eat anything. I read about an experienced Inuit (Eskimo) hunter who was stranded on an ice floe and was scared to death about being killed by polar bears, especially at night. It just amazes me that anyone or anything would live way up there.

The squirrels of the Yukon Territory (Canada, east of Alaska) are the weirdest of all. They don’t go underground, or hibernate, they just avoid the really, really bad days. They’re active all winter long and instead of having an increased metabolism which is what you’d expect, since they’d need to supply more body heat, they have a lowered metabolism —yet they do not die. And they live in trees, in nests made up of a big ball of twigs and leaves. You cannot freeze a squirrel. It’s been proven. They have to be run over first. Or go through a snow blower.

I don’t live in the Yukon, but even here, way down south in Toronto (between Michigan and New York state) squirrels live up in trees all winter long. This has always puzzled me, because it looks incredibly cold, especially on windy nights. The trees are bare except for these strange, football sized clumps of leaves. You’d expect people to live that way, but not animals. Maybe living so close to people has made them stupid and they’ve abandoned the steady ways of their ancestors.

But for the Mongolian Gerbil, when it’s night time; minus forty; the wind howling away; he’s quite relaxed, down in his golden chamber, surrounded by the riches of the earth, while a winter storm walks across the plains.

technorati tags: fractal art | digital art | Mongolian Gerbil | hibernation | Inkblot Kaos | winter burrow | squirrels |

Inkblot Kaos Parameter File

From time to time I become curious about something and I start reading about it. A month ago it was hibernation, and in particular, the winter homes of animals. Lately it’s been nuclear reactors.

This sort of informal, casual study of things I’ve found to be similar to assembling a puzzle, or catching glimpses of something in the dark, or to guessing what’s in a bag by putting your hand in and feeling it without looking. It’s a process of sorting and assembling major (essential) and minor (detail) pieces of information.

Unless you’re a serious student following a formal course of study at a school, most of us learn about new things in this sort of way: a process of discovery and tentative conclusions (eg. “breeder reactors are the way of the future; why don’t we all use them?”). It’s a natural way of learning, I think, but not necessarily the most efficient; a formal course might not be as interesting but will bring you up to speed on a subject faster and give you a more complete understanding, although it might not be as “fun”.

Hibernation, nuclear reactors… and of course: Art, is one of those perennial subjects I like to “look into” and to form opinions about. Form opinions and forming opinions and reform opinions, because gathering more information often changes your opinion about the subject you’re gathering information about.

I’ve noticed something about art. There is something called, “Useful Art”. It’s not complicated. It just means that there is a category of artwork that is distinguished by being useful to people, as opposed to the more general category of artwork which is just art and only performs the function of being art.

If you think of this in the context of human society (and don’t we all do this sort of thinking?) then there are, “Useful People” and there are people who are just “People”. Some people are very productive and make a lot of money and there are others who’s contribution to society –usefullness to society– is, uh, less or even less than zero. People, however, unlike machines or highways or other “things” don’t have to justify their existence by being useful. We value all human life, in general, (most of us do) even when those lives don’t benefit us or even if they cost us something (eg. dependants).

Back to “Useful Art”. I’ve noticed (internet, books, media…) that often a greater value or prestige is placed on artwork that has been chosen for commercial purposes. Book covers; illustrations; newspaper articles; advertisements; calendars; posters; exhibitions; these are examples of the sorts of “medals” or “honours” that artwork can “win” –by being useful.

Some of these commercial purposes are more “Art” oriented than others (exhibitions), but I think it’s worth noting or keeping in mind that: the usefullness of art is not a direct result of its artistic merit.

I’m not saying this because my own artwork is useless. This is just the conclusion I’ve come to after observing an enormous amount of commercial art in the media. Commercial “success” and the commercial “look” is very deceptive. Most of the artwork we see is incorporated into advertising and contexts that are not related to the promotion of art for it’s own sake. The most common artwork of our society (there I go again, talking about “society”) is advertising and I think that has distorted people’s view of what makes for good art.

I think this particularly explains the very slick, simplistic, one dimensional, homogeneous look to a lot of digital art. This of course includes fractal art, but that’s just because I suspect the same cultural influences are at work in the minds of fractal artists as they are in the minds of digital artists in general. I really think that most of the people making this sort of artwork actually think it’s good stuff because it fits in well with all the advertising art that is “rampant” (wonderful word!) in our “society”. They have developed advertising “eyes” by observing so much advertising around them.

I used to be that way too (but now I make junk), I loved bump-mapping, rich vivid colors, stuff that looked “professional” and was glossy –or at least I tried to make stuff like that (it’s not easy making slick stuff, is it?). What happened to me was I got bored with it and I began to find the artwork in art books more interesting and then I just stopped paying attention to what anyone else was doing and just made stuff that interested me. Also, slick artwork doesn’t seem to come naturally –a point which I think deserves some deeper consideration.

Now, I’m not saying that all advertising artwork is bad or lacks artistic merit. There’s a wide range of artistic styles used in advertising, although, for the most part, advertising art is: eye-catching; simple themes; bright colors; cliches (they’re quickly understood); idealized.

So avoid all that. Make complicated, dark, revolting, obscure, cynical images.

No, no, no! What I’m saying is that you can’t trust the “standards” and the “examples” for artwork that you see everyday because that’s advertising and it only uses “art” when it cooperates with commercial interests. Trust your own instincts about what you find interesting and make stuff like that and don’t worry if it looks, “different” than anything you’ve seen before.

Of course, if your instincts tell you to make slick, commercial stuff and you actually find that experience interesting and exciting, then IT’S TOO LATE!!! YOU’VE BECOME ONE OF “THEM”!!!

technorati tags: fractal art | digital art | Inkblot Kaos | moire | art theory | creativity | advertising |

While doing some serious research on calendars recently, I stumbled on a gallery where:
Big Black Frames
and
Short Inspirational Titles
In Glowing White Text
Separated by a White Line
With Snappy Quotation Subtitles Below
Were The House Specialty

They looked nice. In fact, this inspirational poster framing style looked very polished and professional, which is what I think, “Corporate” is suppose to mean. I looked at lots of them until…

I got into the mood myself:

All good things come to an end, and what defines, “the end” better than a meaningless string of hitherto useful words? I don’t know, after all that lofty stratospheric, inspirational stuff, my mind just started to crave senselessness again. “Gibberish: Words into Song“

That very same day (this is the truth) a friend of mine dropped off one of his business calendars in my mailbox. And what do you suppose I saw? Yes!
Big Black Frames
and
Short Inspirational Titles
In White Text
Separated by a White Line
Snappy Quotation Subtitles Below
Were The House Specialty

Anyhow, I’m not saying it’s cliche and we should all get rid of the BigBlackFrameGlowingWhiteTitleAndQuotation style of presentation. Come to think of it, it did inspire me to make this posting.

I think the best background for artwork, especially digital artwork, is just plain black. The shining text that results is just an elegant bonus. Now I’m guilty too.

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | high class art | Fyre | Fyre 1.0.1 | calendar | poster

Desert Roads

Back several month ago, I posted about a program called Fyre. As is often the case with new programs and new forms of algorithmic art, I quickly reached what I thought were its creative limits.

A recent comment on my blog asking for information on how the images from Fyre are made, re-kindled (ha, ha…) my interest in the program. I went looking for the Fyre website to see if it had the information needed (I avoid trying to explain mathematical processes). While there, I visited the official Fyre gallery on Flickr where I saw some very interesting images and asked myself, “How come I couldn’t make stuff like that?”.

One of the extremely smart and super-convenient aspects to Fyre is the incorporation of a parameter “file” in the meta information (hidden notes) of the images it saves. Open up any image saved from Fyre and you can rework it just as you can with the autosaved parameter files from some fractal programs (Inkblot Kaos, Tierazon…).

So I opened up some of the images from the Fyre flickr gallery and began to see how others had used the program and made these images that I hadn’t thought were possible. I then went further still, and began to experiment in many new directions by moving around any parameters that weren’t nailed to the floor or screamed when I touched them.

Mountain Lake

Fyre has harnessed what I would call one of the primary tools of algorithmic art: RANDOMNESS. Ctr+R instantly gets you an image formed by it’s randomly generated set of basic parameters modified by the users pre-set rendering options (exposure, gamma, type of gradient…). The human mind cannot think randomly and so is handicapped when it comes to competing with the randomly generated constructions of computer software.

Don’t feel bad about this handicap. The ability to be controlled by randomly generated instructions is a result of the weak ability, or complete lack of ability, of machines to think. Machines don’t have a brain and so it’s easy to make them do “machine tricks” like senseless, random behaviour. People, on the other hand, think too much and ironically this tends to make them behave more repetitively instead of more creatively.

Portrait of Sindbad

So what are we good for? Sorting the good ones out from the bad ones, which is something that will probably always be beyond a machine’s capability, art being the sort of difficult to define thing that it is. Push buttons. Slide sliders. Interpret error messages… there’s plenty of work for us, brain-encumbered, creatures to do.

And write blog postings. Can a machine ever write a blog posting? No way! It’s us, who control the machines and direct their development that alone can do that. We’re the ones who do the thinking and comment on the processes and principles. Speak your mind and we’ll all be enriched and improved by it. The re-education camps are a thing of the past now. It’s safe to speak out, comrades. The Great Leader has said so. Let a thousand fractal art postings blossom!

—

Aw, get real! You’re comparing the guy to Chairman Mao!

Well. Categorically speaking, I think the analogy is pretty good. He forbids his subjects from speaking out and just as Mao encouraged everyone to criticise his Government and then jailed everyone who was naive enough to take his words literally, they all know well enough to keep their mouths shut, or at the very least, not to be the first to speak out.

I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Don’t you?

Hey, that’s another good one. “Mountain out of a molehill”. Yes, I’d like to see fractal art become a mountain instead of the molehill that it currently is!

Look. I haven’t got it on me right now, but I’m sure there’s something in the job description of a conscience that says you’re not allowed to use me as a straightman for your blog postings!

You mean, it’s unconscienable?

I don’t know what that means. And I don’t think you’ve spelled it right, either.

You’re a conscience and you don’t know what, “unconscienable” means?

Now you’re insulting me. You know, you’re the kind of guy who’d get sent for re-education even if you did keep silent.

Ha, ha, ha. Well then, I guess there’s no point in folks like me keeping quiet then, is there?

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | creativity | cheap shots | Jiminy Cricket | Fyre | Fyre 1.0.1 | Peter de Jong maps | Desert Roads | Mountain Lake

“For some folks I write a profound, richly articulated blog posting, and for others I just draw a picture.”

Here’s my latest commentary on the Fractal Universe Calendar: The Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar.

I made the cover for the Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar, so I’m especially proud of it, despite the lack of a cash bonus.

I think it’s a much better way for me to express my artistic thoughts about the calendar in a form which I feel is more illustrative.

What makes it especially exciting is the way in which it was made. In order to suggest the possibility of life on other planets in the fractal universe (and how it might have evolved) I’ve taken my share of the original images from the 2004 Fractal Universe Calendar and exposed them to damaging levels of graphical radiation that would normally be screened out by the Van Allen Belts of the fractal world.

Compare the 2004 Fractal Universe Calendar images to each of the Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar images and see if you can match the original to the “alternate”. Remember, my share have been run through several of my photoshop filter machines, so this a chance to use your forensic art skills and put flesh back on the bones (once you’ve put the bones back together).

Of course, in most cases you might need to do digital DNA testing to be sure, but each one of the months in the Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar started out as one of the 2004 Fractal Universe Calendar selections. That’s why it’s called it the Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar.

I know. Spectacular idea, isn’t it?

I hope this Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar will help all of Orbit Trap’s loyal readers come to a better understanding of my opinion about the artistic style of the Fractal Universe Calendar.

…And it’s free! Go ahead, save the images or download the whole thing and print out a copy for yourself. It’s my Christmas gift to all those fractal artists who’ve been dreaming of visiting other worlds in the fractal universe and might be encouraged by seeing a few moon rocks first.

—Tim Hodkinson

~/~

Kudos to the people who got off their backsides and did something, I say. Their detractors should be prepared to put their own time, effort and maybe money into a venture if they want something run differently, not just sit in a corner gnashing their teeth, spouting insulting untruths.
—WelshWench

Okay.

It’s a deal.

Damien M. Jones once defended his odd protocols (like mixing the judges with the judged) in the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest by saying “at least I’m doing something.” Well, now so am I.

I helped contribute to the Fractal Alternate Universe Calendar. In keeping with the traditions of the original Fractal Universe Calendar, the work is heavily weighted to showcase the work of the editors.

Like my “Energy Vampire” series, the works that served as a base for the images in the FAUC were initially found (in a previous life) in the 2004 FU Calendar. They’ve been digitally pulverized and pixelly reconstituted, though. And why should this surprise anyone? Isn’t this process just a variation of what most Ultra Fractal artists do? You know, pancake together layers of multiple parameter files mostly written by other people? No wonder so much of what appears on the original FUs look so similar.

Am I trying to make a big art statement here? Nope.

Am I taking a cut of the pie for this calendar? No way. It’s free.

Did I include all of my friends in the calendar? Absolutely not. Well — maybe one.

Terry
Rooms with a View
Blog with a View

~/~

Technorati Tags: fractals, fractal art, digital art, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, fractal universe calendar, fractal alternate universe calendar, satire, parody, intellectual cruelty, get off your backside

Inkblot Kaos parameter file

Back to fractals. I think I did something to the other machine. It’s leaking oil, or something. I smell something “electrical”, too.

My seven year-old daughter was recently invited to a birthday party. While we were looking around in the Barbie Doll aisle of a department store for a suitable present, me and my nine year-old son came across a misplaced item –TEST-TUBE ALIENS.

I can’t imagine who would put down a kit for “making” aliens in a test-tube and choose a Barbie doll instead because my daughter soon shared our interest in this hand-held Easy Bake oven for mutants. Some poor girl must have gotten a Barbie doll after her mother intervened and told her she’d probably have a lot more fun with a glamour pageant Barbie doll than the TEST-TUBE ALIENS that she picked up on the other aisle (where all the exciting, boy’s stuff is).

My interest in the TEST-TUBE ALIENS subsided somewhat after reading on the back that there were three or four different kinds, and they all had pre-detremined names — and predetermined shapes too, it seemed.

That’s no fun. I was expecting something more along the lines of a genetic experiment with such scrambled genes that the back of the box would only speculate on what they might look like and offer a guarantee that what crawled out of the test-tube wouldn’t threaten the human race with extinction. Ideally, it would also have come with a small handgun for terminating the experiment should things get out of hand… chains break, radio-activity be detected.

Guys like me won’t be designing children’s toys anytime soon.

Inkblot Kaos parameter file

Fortunately fractal programs are also test-tubes — digital ones — and have very few restrictions on them, which makes for hours and hours of frightening recreation. The results aren’t always pretty, but for the mad scientist in the family, they are rarely boring.

Now if you’d prefer to take a look at the Barbie doll aisle instead…

…

What? Did I go too far again?

Well, it does seem to be a popular calendar, and even if it isn’t, what’s wrong with people liking a type of artwork that’s different from yours?

Alright, sure, folks Christmas shopping in the mall might “like” that sort of thing, or at least buy it, which isn’t really the same thing as saying they think it’s great artwork… but it’s incredibly cliche isn’t it? It makes fractal art look like it’s nothing more than a children’s pin-wheel display. That’s not “arty” artwork.

“Arty artwork”? Sounds like some new animal species. I think you’ve become a test-tube experiment yourself, man. Maybe you should have a warning label.

Hey! You’re just my conscience. You’re not suppose to insult me. You’re supposed to act like Jiminy Cricket and give gentle advice and reminders, like when I’m totally wrong and steadily slipping into a muck hole of depravity.

Alright. Sorry — sorry for having a sense of humour! But back to your impolite comments about the Fractal Universe Calendar; I’ll try to be more Jiminy Cricket-like. I find the calendar’s choice of artwork to be a profound statement of time and very appropriate for what really is the current state of fractal art.

You’re joking again, right?

No, I’m serious. Every year, the same old stuff, reworked by a few people and slapped with a new label: 2005; 2006; 2007… In the words of Samuel Becket, I think, “Nothing ever happens”. You see? That really is the current state of fractal art: a handful of people doing the same old thing every year.

Hmmnn. That’s quite interesting. I didn’t think my conscience would ever come up with anything so cynical!

You’re having a bad influence on me. I’m going to ask to be reassigned.

technorati tags: fractal art | digital art | fractals | algorithmic art | cheap shots | Christmas shopping | Fractal Universe Calendar | Fractal Calendar | Jiminy Cricket | gone too far

Santa’s Bunker

Peter and Alice were still a long way off, but stopped to take another look through the telescope.

“I can see it!’ said Peter, “It has to be Santa’s home. But it looks strange.”

“Here, let me see” said Alice. “That’s barbed wire. It’s all over the place. He’s practically living in a fortress.”

“I guess it’s true, then” said Peter, “He really has changed. It’s Santa against the whole world. He’s lost all hope in humanity.”

“He hasn’t lost hope in anything –he’s gone ape-crazy! Get the radio out of your backpack and let’s call in the airstrike before one of his elves picks us off with a sniper rifle.”

“Can’t we at least try to talk to him? He’ll remember us from all those letters we sent him. Maybe all this is just for defense –to protect himself.”

“Sure, let’s talk to him. I suggest we start by ringing his doorbell with a cruise missile.”

-excerpted from: Santa’s Nuclear Gamble, (The All-New Christmas Fireside Companion, 2007)

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | picture-writing | illustration | Santa Claus | North Pole | Christmas

technorati tags: digital art | photoshop filters | vernissage | the Bomb | atomic field goal | plutonium pig-skin | pompei | radioactive Heinzman

Made with vernissage.8bf, a couple of Andrew’s filters, India Ink, some hue adjustment, and the cold November wind.

technorati tags: digital art | wind | picture-writing | illustration | half-poem | piano | music lessons | singing | photoshop filters | vernissage | high class art

Block-waving is all about lines. If there’s no lines, then you just end up with a pile of block-waved mush.

I was looking through an old book on my computer. It was a series of scanned, tiff images. I noticed the fine lines in the black and white engravings and instantly opened it up in ShowFoto and block-waved it. As is often the case in exploratory oil exploration or prospecting for gold, the results were disappointing; all it made was a whole lot of (uninteresting) tangled threads.

But I don’t expect these things to work out the first time, so I tried another black and white engraving. This one wasn’t a full page illustration, so it had some text included in the tiff image, above and below it. I didn’t bother to crop the image out and just went ahead and block-waved the whole page, illustration and text.

The full-page tiff images are quite large and I had to scroll down to look at the illustration. I did it so quickly in fact, that I didn’t pay any attention to the part that was just text. Again, the image was just a mess of smudgy bubbles and chopped up bits. But the caption just below it caught my eye:

Weird. Who would ever have thought of applying graphics filters to text? Not even me. But the block-waved text was more interesting than the image; like some sort of bizzare alien hieroglyphics. The words had turned into pictures.

This is what I find makes digital art, and fractal art as well, so interesting: the algorithms often have surprising, creative results and there’s always something new turning up just when you think you’ve seen it all.

“they’ve got a grand piano and they play it loud behind the Diamond Door…”

Some clothing manufacturers in Asia incorporate Western writing, like English words, into the designs on their clothing because it looks nice and gives a foreign look to it. To a Westerner, however, these “decorative” words and phrases can be easily read. To the foreigner, these “foreign” decorations often appear as meaningless, senseless strings of words, chosen, it would seem, for their graphical appearance and nice looking shapes without any regard for what they actually say.

Which make you wonder. What would those Chinese characters used as design elements on Western clothing actually say when read by someone who speaks Chinese? In the West, as in the East, foreign alphabets are used as stylish, graphical emblems completely removed from their usual function of communication.

Already, this new alphabet is evolving

In that sense Spider Writings are abstract art in its purest sense: they represent or stand for nothing, except themselves. In this particular case, abstract writing. Words that are an exact picture of what they describe –which is themselves, actually.

Looks evil, doesn’t it?

The pictographs of our time
made by a computer, naturally
on the walls of digital caves
in the time of the 21st century savage
the Digicene Period

technorati tags: digital art | algorithmic art | block wave | ShowFoto | DigiKam | pictographs | hieroglyphics | spiders | 21st century savage

(from the journal of Columbus)

Whereas, Most Christian, High, Excellent, and Powerful Princes, King and Queen of Spain and of the Islands of the Sea…

…this present year 1492, after your Highnesses had terminated the war with the Moors reigning in Europe…

…having been brought to an end in the great city of Granada…

…I saw the royal banners of your Highnesses planted by force of arms upon the towers of the Alhambra…

…the Moorish king come out at the gate of the city and kiss the hands of your Highnesses…

…So after having expelled the Jews from your dominions… ordered me to proceed… to the said regions of India…

…and for that purpose
granted me great favors
and ennobled me
that thenceforth I might call myself Don
and be
High Admiral of the Sea
perpetual Viceroy and Governor
in all the islands and continents which I might discover
and acquire…
…and that this dignity should be inherited by my eldest son
and thus descend
from degree to degree
forever…

…Hereupon I left the city of Granada, on Saturday, the twelfth day of May, 1492, and proceeded to Palos, a seaport…

(from the journal of Columbus)

All the great stories start in Spain.
All of them sad, and all of them true.

technorati tags: digital art | Spain | Columbus | Granada | Alhambra | Moors | Jews | Christians | ship | block wave | tragedy

Large Bank with Tree
Just as some people admire the traditional artform of painting because of the skill and effort that goes into making it, I’ve come to realize that I have the same sort of admiration for machine-made art. Furthermore, just as many people will quickly associate artistic merit with almost any subject done in oil paint –the traditional, hard to do, artform– I am also accommodating of work done by machines when it doesn’t seem to have obvious artistic merit, because of the admirable and noble process that made it. I find that “dead” computerized process particularly fascinating and, in turn, gives advanced standing to its results and associate a special “aura” of value to it. In short, I show favoritism when considering the merits of algorithmic art over other artforms; I like it because it was made by a machine.

Although algorithms can be very complicated and creative (fractals, for instance), it’s natural, I think, for anyone to be amazed when the process of just clicking on effects (filters), produces anything of interest. Not so with the talented, dedicated human artist who uses a paint brush; for them we should have a much higher standard because they are free to think and choose and correct, on the fly, rather than blindly carrying out instructions which, by definition, is what algorithms are. We expect human thought and careful reflection to be the more successful strategy and, correspondingly, purely algorithmic, mechanical artwork has to overcome some resistance to it and thereby be twice as impressive to achieve equal standing.

If it were a matter of marks, then a machine’s C+ ought to be “corrected” to a rank equivalent to an artist’s A. Carried to it’s logical conclusion, artists would then have to work very hard to get their work noticed above that of a machine. Since machines can be very prolific in their output, it’s conceivable that when algorithmic art is given it’s proper, advanced standing, that human, home-cooked art will rarely be given much attention, at all –beyond the museum, that is, and special, nostalgic “tribute” events, specialty websites or obscure webrings.

But don’t fear, you humans! There’ll be plenty of honorable mentions given out so you won’t feel like losers when compared to the machines who soar high in the stratosphere of art, plucking gold from the heavens. Machines might be cold and insensitive, but they’re not stupid. Even a scratch-and-win coupon or promotional contest will say, “Sorry, try again”.

(Was that a cheap shot?)

(No, I wouldn’t say so. You’re just commenting on what’s going on around you: current events. “Free country” and all that.)

(But didn’t I take a perfectly innocent post about algorithmic art and turn it into a sudden back-handed slap at the contest? Won’t the peanut gallery get upset and start lambasting me with the same sort of short, sharp insults that made the whole thing begin to look like some political fight which completely overshadowed the real issue and left it conveniently ignored?)

(I don’t know. I think everyone’s forgotten about the contest, really. I don’t see anyone lambasting you in a gauntlet of angry comments or offsite “forum fallout”, this time. The herd doesn’t care and they aren’t interested in what it all means or doesn’t mean. They haven’t gotten over it, they’ve stepped over it.)

(Ha, ha, ha… Stepped over it! That’s great! Like dog dirt or garbage. I want to put that in my blog posting. Stepped over it! Nice one. But. Is that a cheap shot?)

technorati tags: digital art, algorithmic art, old masters, creativity, cheap shots|

These days, you could find yourself travelling half-way around the world in a few hours. And in the world of art: a couple clicks and you could find yourself in the Louvre. That’s the reality of our tiny, modern world: technology takes our little feet and straps jet engines on them.

Unfortunately, there are no licensing requirements for these turbine-powered, photoshop filters. The accidents will continue. He’s my latest attempt to land safely in the Louvre.

Technorati Tags: digital art rothko Louvre photoshop filiters flag day panic future pilot error

Look at it. Stare into it.

Learn it’s mysteries –if you dare!

Stop! Stop!
Your mind is in its icy grip!
Run, you fool!
The Stone of Mystery will DESTROY YOU!!!
Your puny brain can not survive its thunderous torrent of KNOWLEDGE!!!
(sung to the tune of, “Here Comes Santa Claus”)

Could this be the innocent precursor of… The Stone of Mystery?

I started with an old record cover I found at mentomusic.com; India Inked it, double resized it and wheeled it into the ever promising, and soon to be famous, block wave filter from digiKam’s showFoto. Then I cropped out a piece of it that looked great at the time, but which I have since deleted. This was then distorted several ways to produce something that looked like a Mayan temple painted pink and sitting in a snowstorm, which I then deliberately saved as a black and white, two-color file, for some reason.

Upon noticing the fine, intricate lines it had just then acquired, I returned to the block wave filter (the roulette wheel of filters). It was double resized again and finally, shackled to the table, sent back up and reanimated with the filter set on high (77 instead of 25).

Voila. The tricks of Clickery made plain. It looks easy, so easy, until you learn the torturous route I travelled to make it.

But, I am a hero, and thus, it is my lot to wrestle with the heroic. And now, unable to endure the comfortable ease of victory and it’s resulting decadent rewards, I struggle onwards, always onwards, to reveal…

Son of… Stone of Mystery!

Smaller.
Shallower.
Cheaper to produce.
But, featuring previously unreleased scenes, that didn’t make the final cut, the first time, because the movie going public were not ready for them.
Has a much better soundtrack, too.

-with thanks to Universal Pictures Inc., 1957

Technorati Tags: digital art stone of mystery ancient secrets revealed photoshop filters digiKam showFoto the hero

I deleted lycium’s (Thomas Ludwig’s) original comment to my posting about Fractal Art isn’t Rocket Science. But his expansion on the theme expressed in his original Orbit Trap comment grew to become an interesting work of art and well worth reading. It was posted in the fractalforums.com site, where I recently found it. It’s not exactly a “positive” review, but for someone like me, any attention is exciting.

A word about criticism. I once read about a sage who adopted the habit of sending all his new students off to listen to his critics. He defended this somewhat unusual teaching practice by saying that until his students had refuted the claims of his critics, he could not begin to teach them anything. I hope you will take lycium seriously and consider the possibility that what he says about me could quite very well be the truth.

Copied verbatim from fractalforums.com. The boxed, indented text is the quoted references from my posting to which lycium responds. His responses are the regular text which follows:

lycium’s review begins here…

just when i thought orbit trap couldn’t get any worse… tim posts this gem: http://orbittrap.blogspot.com/2007/09/fractal-art-isnt-rocket-science.html

i want to take a little time to reply here in detail, where more programmers can see what this man thinks of us.

Quote from: Tim
Would it help me if I had such a solid math and programming background as these super stars did? It doesn’t seem to be helping them out too much.

let the slandering begin…

now honestly, how can someone with such earth-shatteringly poor “artworks” (which bear essentially no fractal traits at all, ignoring the 16 colour lsd-inspired palette) even think to question the works of others, let alone the forerunners of our field?! such collosal arrogance is SO rare, even among arrogant people.

Quote from: Tim
Moving on. What confuses things is that the “tool-makers” can also perform the role of “tool-users”. But the skills and abilities that lead to good tool making are irrelevant when it comes to using those tools to make art.

as if he would know; as if he has the faintest inkling as to what sort of skills and abilities it takes to design a vast fractal parameter space, or a flexible colouring algorithm, or a simple control system and all the other things necessary to hide the reality of fractal generation.

Quote from: Tim
They might as well be two different people because when the “scientist” takes up the tool he made, he begins the same process of discovery as everyone else who takes up that tool.

inhuman ignorance meants superhuman ego. notice how he puts scientist in quotes (!!).

Quote from: Tim
“Crafting nunchuks vs. swinging them like Bruce Lee.”

…

Quote from: Tim
Sure, the tool maker immediately knows how to operate the tool,

allow me to inline a quote from just sentences earlier: They might as well be two different people because when the “scientist” takes up the tool he made, he begins the same process of discovery as everyone else who takes up that tool.

hmm.

… and here is the tour de force:

Quote from: Tim
Actually the tool maker may have a handicap: he may think he has an edge over the one who is merely a tool-user and come to think his tool-making experience gives extra weight and an enhanced quality to his artwork.

really, this one needs no comment.

Quote from: Tim
Artistic activities, on the other hand, have psychological challenges (objectively evaluating your work; creative inspiration) that the quantitative sciences have less of.

too bad he has neither: (selected from his many “cutting edge” block wave filtered images; there are plenty of these littered about the blog)

tim is just as poor a spokesperson for the social sciences as he is for the fractal community (quoted from http://orbittrap.blogspot.com/2007/09/orbit-traps-change-of-format.html): We invited the Fractal Community to speak for themselves and they didn’t want to. We spoke for them and they told us to shut up.

Quote from: Tim
Furthermore, the precision and absoluteness of the quantitative sciences creates a mindset or approach to art that I think can be a stumbling block in the evolving, shifting, combinant and recombinant, alchemical world of art.

nevermind “different perspective” or “broader view”, it’s a stumbling block to have a clue how the software you’re using works. yup.

Quote from: Tim
But Fractal Art is Art; it’s got its own set of skills and talents, which in the same way, also count for nothing when applied to the world of mathematics.

no, you utterly fail at logic. having a grasp of basic maths DOES help with making fractal art. you just wouldn’t know because you don’t have it, so stop being so damn presumptuous and cocky.

…end of lycium’s review

Technorati Tags: fractal art rocket science criticism digital art

Technorati Tags: timbuktu block wave filter photoshop filters digital art fractal art join the mirage

I’ve been reading a book about various “-isms” in the art world. Eagerly wanting to follow in the footsteps of those great, outspoken artists of the past and to contribute something new and personal to the exciting pursuit of labels and the ever teetering tower of human achievements, I propose… Clickism.

First rule is: Mouse clicks only.

Second rule is: Start with any kind of image you like, but when you get finished the result should bear no resemblance to the original and in fact, can only be connected to it, with some doubt and lingering uncertainty, by careful DNA testing.

Third rule is: One level of undo, only. Clickism is forward thinking and reflects the relentless progress of technology which refuses to admit mistakes but rather sees them as a challenge and attempts to correct them with more clicking.

Fourth rule is: Stay lazy. Sure you can open your image up in a graphics program and start masking and layering and all that sort of artist stuff, but “painting” is not clicking. Better yet, use software that won’t allow you to use advanced graphical techniques, with the sole, and very important exception of….

Fifth rule is: Photoshop Filters. Freakier the better. It doesn’t matter if they don’t add anything of value to the image –yet, it just makes for more excitement, and the challenge I mentioned in the Third rule, of trying to make something awesome out of something apparently hopeless and growing increasingly dark and shapeless.

the horror, the horror …of Clickism

Sixth rule is: If you can remember where you came from, then you haven’t gone far enough. Apply several crazy filter effects just to get warmed up, and then let ‘er rip! Pretend you’re being stalked or followed by a crazy man or some insane wild animal infected with rabies or a strange new disease introduced by aliens crash landing their spaceship in a remote and forested region and you’ve got to lose them by choosing a series of completely unpredictable and incoherent choices. If the crazy man or the animal catches up, let them help out. Always have a clear idea of where you’re going and don’t go there.

Seventh rule is: More filters. That which does not crash your program will make you stronger. Don’t ask “why?”, instead ask, “what if?”. Look for ones that are “helpful” to the team not necessarily “useful” on their own. Distortions or anything that makes simple but random shapes are always useful, eventually. You never know what will be the final filter that turns something progressively awful into the Mona Lisa of Clickism.

Eighth rule is: The rules are never finished. Ask yourself, “What could I do that I haven’t done?” “What am I not thinking of?”. When you think you’ve reached the end and can’t make anything that even looks half good, then you’re just tired. Get some rest or do something else. Pretty soon you’ll be back and ready to set sail like Sindbad on a new voyage filled with more of the surprises and mysteries of Clickism.

Technorati Tags: clickism art movements isms digital art photoshop filters hit it with a hammer

Technorati Tags: vernissage digital art poetry photoshop filters apartment building suburban decay

somewhere
in the world
there is a cave

and the eye that looks from it
sees the star of arabia

years have passed
the eye, unblinking
looks from it

pale, dark, written with red
sees the star of arabia

the wind blows
the sand is rewritten
the eye, unblinking

there is a cave
in the world
pale, dark, written with red

somewhere
and the eye that looks from it

Technorati Tags: fractal art digital art poetry with crutches arabia cave dervish

Here’s another theory in the rough; something that I think is relevant to Fractal Art, and probably all artforms: There are “Artists” and there are “Craftsmen”.

An artist is… I don’t know what an artist is, exactly. They make “Art”. What is art? It’s more of a concept, somewhat subjective in nature, but not just anything at all. When we look through an art book, something general, like a history of art, then we know what art is. You can feel it, or sense it, maybe not while viewing every item, but I think we all sense something when viewing art that we don’t sense when we’re looking at an image that is merely nice to look at or colorful.

Nice to look at. That’s the other kind of work. People who make works that are only “nice-looking” are what I would call craftsmen. This isn’t supposed to be an insult; it’s just describing what takes place, describing the audience’s experience, or at least mine. Good craftsmanship takes talent, experience and dedication –technical ability. Think of “well-crafted furniture” as opposed to sculpture. They both have qualities of beauty but one of the items is the work of a craftsman and the other is the work of an artist.

Amsterdam Canal

It takes a great craftsman to produce a good copy of an artist’s work. But it takes an artist to design the original. There are probably artists with great ideas that never bring them to fruition because they lack the skills of the craftsman necessary to do that. Artists work with ideas; craftsmen work with media (paint, clay, computer code, tools).

Artists can also be craftsmen and vice versa. In fact, you could say that someone acts as an artist when they’re creating art and as a craftsman when they’re “crafting” something (manifesting the idea).

When something looks really ugly but captures our attention and causes us to feel something and think “deeply” about it, that, I think, is art and nothing more than art. When something looks really “cool” and causes us to feel good or happy, like sunshine, trees and a handful of balloons kind of happy, that’s craftmanship. Eyecandy is probably a better word; sweet, but only satisfying in a shallow, temporary way.

So you’ve got eyecandy at one extreme and at the other, stuff that may lack any sort of visual “attraction” yet is captivating and engaging to the mind in a deep, exhilarating way. Of course, art can be as colorful and sweet as a sugary piece of eyecandy. The essence of art being, I suppose, that it’s beautiful without “looking” good. Or rather, it’s beauty is of an inner kind, which stimulates the mind and it’s appearance is irrelevant.

You could say, I suppose, that there are two kinds of visual beauty: eyecandy, and art; surface and substance. Which is better? or more important? Well, they’re different, aren’t they? Like the proverbial apples and oranges, or like candy and “food”. We want them both, I think. Although I suspect we’d put greater importance on art, the nutritious stuff, because it’s serious and deep, but what I think most people prefer is a combination, some balanced amount of both.

Alright. How “balanced” is Fractal Art? Is it all just craftsmen?. Can an internet search bring up nothing except gallery upon gallery filled with superbly crafted toys for our little eyes and tiny minds to play with, to get bored with, grabbing up another, every few seconds, then going on to the the next brightly coloured Disney-thing in the toybox/website until we’re told it’s time to brush our teeth and go to bed?

The real challenge I see for Fractal Art is, how do you make the deep, thought-provoking, serious kind of art with something like fractals that are generally abstract and lack most of the rich meaning and symbolism that realistic imagery can contain. In other words, how does one move beyond the mere “cool graphics” and “awesome” eyecanding to anything else at all?

My strategy is to focus on the creativity of the algorithms and give the machine a free rein. (Let the computer become your brilliant assistant and steal everything it makes.) This means lots of experimentation, high volume, and picking out the stuff that looks good (if there is any). Of course, I like that sort of thing. It’s fun to play with parameters and anything random.

The other strategy I can see is much more traditional and doesn’t appeal to me at all. You use the fractal machine to produce images that you then assemble (layer) and tweak (mask, I think) and do other stuff, until the artist has actually created a piece of artwork pretty well by hand. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s the normal way to make art, or was, I suppose, but surprisingly it tends to turn people into craftsmen rather than artists which is quite the opposite of what you’d expect, isn’t it? You would think that human intervention –human expression– would be the essence of art, and the raw output of a machine, lacking any sort of intelligence or intent, ought to be limp and lifeless and artless (no pun intended).

It doesn’t have to be, but it’s been my experience that where you find the unexpected, you are more likely to find art. A very creative mind can produce an unexpected piece of fractal art through layering and masking, but it’s hard, and I might add, getting harder everyday. It requires craftsmanship of the highest order.

Technorati Tags: fractal art digital art amsterdam art theory craftsman algorithmic art

The Fractal Art world is an odd place. The strange combination of technical people (mathematicians, engineers, programmers) and artsy, creative people is curious and could almost be the setting for a mystery novel. My wife once told someone at work about my fractal hobby and said they were really impressed after visiting my website that I knew so much about chaos theory and fractal math. Hmmn… I wondered, why would they think I knew anything about math?

Recently, while looking into things, I came across an interesting association of attributes: science credentials and Fractal Art. I “hmmn-ed” again. What’s all this science stuff got to do with making fractal art? Would it help me if I had such a solid math and programming background as these super stars did? It doesn’t seem to be helping them out too much.

The Rocket Scientists are the sword-makers of our artform. They adapt new fractal formulas and all that “chaos stuff”, molding it into forms that are practical and useful in our hands. All our tools come from them, and the tools of the future will come from them also, not from people like me.

Blah, blah, blah… I could go on. I propose a toast, in honor of all the…

Houston, I have a problem

Moving on. What confuses things is that the “tool-makers” can also perform the role of “tool-users”. But the skills and abilities that lead to good tool making are irrelevant when it comes to using those tools to make art. They might as well be two different people because when the “scientist” takes up the tool he made, he begins the same process of discovery as everyone else who takes up that tool.

Building the racing car vs. driving the racing car. Designing the airplane vs. piloting the airplane. Crafting nunchuks vs. swinging them like Bruce Lee. Making a guitar vs. playing that guitar.

Sure, the tool maker immediately knows how to operate the tool, and may know an awful lot about operating that tool, but being creative requires more skill than just being able to use the tools. Actually the tool maker may have a handicap: he may think he has an edge over the one who is merely a tool-user and come to think his tool-making experience gives extra weight and an enhanced quality to his artwork. Artistic activities, on the other hand, have psychological challenges (objectively evaluating your work; creative inspiration) that the quantitative sciences have less of. Furthermore, the precision and absoluteness of the quantitative sciences creates a mindset or approach to art that I think can be a stumbling block in the evolving, shifting, combinant and recombinant, alchemical world of art.

Fractal math is challenging and requires math skills that one can’t acquire quickly (I’m guessing). Programming is another thing that takes dedication and work to be able to do well, especially when complex operations have to be presented via an interface that is easy to use. But Fractal Art is Art; it’s got its own set of skills and talents, which in the same way, also count for nothing when applied to the world of mathematics.

Technorati Tags: Fractal Art Digital Art Rocket Science Fractals Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest