FaeryRing by Jennifer Stewart

[Click on images to view full-size.]

I Know What I Like — Or Do I? Part Two:

I began recent entries in this series outlining with some certainty why I like certain fractal artists and then admitting my trepidations for being less sure as to why I’m drawn to the work of others. I acknowledged being drawn to fractals that can be “read” — that is, work transcending the commonly mass-produced style so prevalent in most fractal art: a beautiful but self-contained object.

However, like some literary texts, some visual texts are not easily decoded. How, exactly, does one go about “reading” them? Are there discernable, even multiple implied narratives undergirding a piece? Or is a work’s splendor ambiguous and slowly divulged through a scrutiny of aesthetical pleasures? Either way, one reads such images more with the mind than with the eye — until the mists burn off, the veil parts, or the curtain lifts.

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As with Tina Oloyede, whose work I reviewed last time, much of the early art of Jennifer Stewart (jennyfnf on Renderosity) typifies mainstream Ultra Fractal sugary treats — “sheets in the wind, and rings of gold” to use Tim’s ever serviceable metaphors. But many of her more recent works, especially those using Talis variation formulas in Fractal Explorer, are terrific — commoving and arresting. In fact, the more Stewart steps out of her comfort zone, the more mesmeric her work becomes.

FaeryRing (above) is exquisitely composed and suggests multiple narratives. The most easily observable connection is to a literal fairy ring (aka elf circle or pixie circle) — a naturally occurring circular arc of mushrooms. In European folklore, fairy rings serve as entryways to elfin kingdoms (so don’t be suckered by those drop-down cemetery doorways in True Blood). An appearance of a fairy, pixie, or elf causes such rings to appear, but they last for only five days. However, if an observer is stealthful and patient, he or she may be able to capture a fae creature upon its return to the ring.

Stewart shows us only part of the ring, but the mushroom forms are clearly identifiable and aligned in a manner consistent with imagining the unseen completion of the circle. The fungal hues and striations impart further verisimiltude. The half-lit sky implies mushroom-finding prime time: dawn. Additionally, the grayish granules seen at the base of the mushroom stalks could suggest the dead or dying grass trenches sometimes found marking fairy rings. A viewer could, of course, stop at this juncture and be content to appreciate the piece as a lovely landscape-like rendition of a natural phenomenon.

There’s more, though. Upon closer examination, the fairies themselves appear in the ring. The mushroom sprouts modify into wings, and the stalks morph into gossamer gowns. The lead fairy stands sideways at the far right and faces a line of fairies placed with their backs to us. She holds a candle, and, by inference, so do the other fairies in the line. Note how carefully Stewart controls light and shadow; the illumination seems to flicker in all of the proper places — the upper tips of the wings, the bottoms of the dresses (especially nicely done on the lead fairy), and the uppermost layer of the ground.

And there’s still more. FaeryRing pulsates with observances of nature’s fertility — its organic vitality. The poet Dylan Thomas described this process in the title of one of his most famous poems as “The Force That Drives the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” The sturdy, thick root form growing downward from the far left fairy cluster and running horizontally underground embodies such natural dynamism. Moreover, the root structure apparently also functions as a passageway from the elfin realm to our own. Now, click on the image, open it to full screen, and lean in a little closer to your monitor. Do you see several of the wee folk making their way through the tunnel?

A few Fractalbook commenters describe FaeryRing as magical, and, on this occasion, they’re not being hyperbolic. It is truly enchanting.

AllSaints by Jennifer Stewart

The overall composition of this piece dovetails nicely with its title. The texture mirrors the intricacies of stained glass, and the coloring (lush purples and browns but muted greens and yellows) is consistent with much classical religious iconography. Other design elements converge to nudge the work toward representation — tiled formations become ornate robes, circular backlit forms over head shapes suggest halos, and the downward points of inverted rhomboid forms even suggest hands folded in prayer.

The entire work brims with barely containable tension and frenetic activity as the various saints appear to struggle to break free from gravity’s restraints and begin their mass ascension into the heavenly “clouds” lining the top of the image. I’d like to imagine the two smaller forms near the upper-right corner are abstract cherubim assigned to escort the saints on their skyward trip to the Pearly Gates.

AllSaints is a wonderful ensemble of light, form, and color resulting in something rare: a truly spiritual fractal.

It’sALLLies by Jennifer Stewart

The Fractalbook comments on this piece gush over the soft lines and soothing pastels. One viewer even remarks: “It reminds me of gentle mists.”

It reminds me of the grotesque and malformed body horrors one commonly reads in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and sees in the films of David Cronenberg. Have the eyecandied assembly lines pumped so much saccharine slop into Fractalbooker’s lobes that they can no longer recognize the cognitive dissonance between a work’s title and its execution?

I’d argue Stewart has made a magnificent meta-fractal here. It has all the visually ornamental trappings of a rubber-stamped Fractalbook crowd-pleaser. Diffused focus. Chromatic color. Rounded, feminine forms. Stewart could have even slapped a sonorous-sounding but nonsensical Janet Parkeish title on this piece, and it would seem immediately fraught with weighty (but hollow) obscurities and certain to be a probable contender in the next BMFAC exhibition of candied concoctions.

But Stewart deliberately chose a title that cuts against the grain of the artwork’s style. Don’t be fooled, she seems to be saying. These gummi bear fractals polluting Fractalbook galleries like some sugar-glazed kudzu are ALL lies. They say nothing about the challenges and realities of our “meat lives,” as the cyberpunks like to say. Our bodies are beautiful, yes, but they eventually betray us. They cruelly turn on us. The vigor of youth decays steadily, incrementally. Our bodies — the ultimate epic fail.

Trust me. There’s something very wrong in Stewart’s pretty picture. A feminist reading might see this piece as a Rorschach for breast cancer. The shadings so admired by the commenters could well be lumps. The praised soft focus rounded forms could be emblematic of swelling. The attractive, vibrating, dark line accents could suggest the bombardment of radiation during chemotherapy.

If art is indeed in the eye of the beholder, then such is what I behold. Maybe Orbit Trap’s detractors are right when they’ve suggested in the past that I’m a despicably cynical person with an ugly personality. Of course, he’d see such negativity they’ll tell you.

Whatever. The terrifying beauty of It’sALLLies makes me very sad. And its beauty springs from its human condition subject matter and not from its mathematical mastery or algorithmic precision.

I once argued on this blog that beauty is not enough to push fractal art to the next level. I still believe that one function of fine art is to show us what we’d rather not see and feel changed enough ourselves to actively work for change in our own lives and surroundings.

Stewart’s image moves me more than any Race for the Cure ever will.

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Up next in the series: Art by Maria K. Lemming.

There is fractal art and there is the analysis of fractal art, and then there’s fractal events: contests, calendars and the occasional news item.  But then there are those occasional “things” that just don’t fall into the usual categories.  Here are some of those high points –special finds– of this 2011 holiday season on Deviant Art…

Season’s Greetings…

In all fairness, the authors never intended their images to be displayed like this.  Some authors choose to restrict viewing only to registered and logged-in members of Deviant Art.  All others are presented with the stock image padlock.

I think the idea is to prevent potential scammers from misusing their art as well as maybe web bots and those Google Image searches so the online gallery site can just stick to displaying artwork to those users who are browsing around looking for artwork.  I have a DA user account from a few years ago but it’s too much trouble looking up the password and username.  Besides, very few artists require registered log-ins so I don’t bother.  I don’t actually know what those “locked up” images look like.

Best Animation Thumbnail Link of All Time

Based solely on the style of writing and the type of rock used, I propose a date for this artwork of no later than circa 2011 BC

You know, most people who venture into the complex and time consuming realm of animation I believe have an above average level of user skills when it comes to using fractal software.  Why this artist preferred to scrawl this desperate, “dying man”  message in place of a single frame capture I’ll never know.  Actually, come to think of it, I found the thumbnail so funny I forgot to click on it and view the animation.  I guess that makes us both Neanderthals.

Best Use of Irony in a Signature Line

Signature lines are the bumper stickers of the Information Highway --Anonymous : ) =)

Yes, some of you know who this is.  And why is that?  It’s because you’ve seen this signature line so often!

I don’t know why, but I got to actually thinking what that quote was saying and thought to myself:  “She intends for us to click on those links, doesn’t she?  And does she not have to best of intentions that we should visit her galleries?  Wouldn’t it then follow that the road to hell goes right through her galleries?  Or at the very least, the road to hell *starts* with her galleries…”

Nirvana is the achievement of total watermark-nature

Bouddha Face by trsor7 (Deviant Art) -click for fullsize-

Okay, I understand.  People are always stealing artwork off Deviant Art and in some cases –paradoxically, in fact– reposting it to DA under their own name.  And what better way to foil such evil schemes than by stamping your username and gallery link on the image (under a huge Deviant Art logo).  And what better place to put that watermark than smack dab in the middle of the image?

In fact, after you’ve done that, maybe no one will ever want to steal your image.

Watermark springs a leak

Here’s the original image with a, shall we say, rushing torrent of a watermark:

Grey Skies by f--l--A--r--k (Deviant Art) Old version Dec, 21st

Then a change of heart…

Here’s the newer, cleaner version:

Grey Skies by f--l--a--r--k (click for full-size)

Note that Stan Ragets (stanragets.com) didn’t get rid of the watermark altogether, he just made one that didn’t leave tire tracks right across his image.  In fact, the new one is rather stylish.  Now how about doing something with that DA username?

Even God didn’t put a watermark on the Milky Way…

Hot Milkyway by geaannunziata (click for full-size)

After 2 weeks of rendering, a watermark says “it’s finished”

Hot and Cold Geometry by Joao Benoit (click for full-size)

Yeah, the details of the watermark show up a lot better in the full-size version too.  But then, it’s only natural to to finish off a composition like this made of squares with a nice square watermark right in the middle on a clear, white background.

Note how the centrally located watermark connects both the “hot” and “cold” geometry elements and unifies the whole picture.  Could the use of the watermark in fact be an artistic statement?

I wonder what his other artwork looks like?

Here’s one.  A mirrored photo with an almost fractal look.  Click on it to see it full-size and see if you can spot the watermark.

Satan's Employees by Joao Benoit (click for full-size)

It’s hard to spot that watermark in this one.  Watermarks just seem to blend it perfectly with Satan’s Employees.  But then, I’m not really looking at it from the point of view of an artist.  That is, a poor, ripped-off artist.  I’m looking at all this from the point of view of the audience.

Watermarked Mona Lisa by Me, me, ME!!! 2011

It’s entirely up to the artist whether they want to use a watermark or not; or whether they want to use any sort of digital restrictions.  But I would suggest you consider what you may in fact lose with all these things even if someone actually tries to “steal” your art.

Writing your name on your artwork isn’t a bad idea at all.  In my opinion though, watermarks just ruin your artwork by making it unviewable if in fact they do succeed in making it unusable.  But then, if you don’t want people to view your artwork, then what’s the use of uploading it?

Untitled by Jackson Pollock, 1943

Shimmering Substance by Jackson Pollock, 1946

Cobra Chair by Carlo Bugatti, 1902

Wall Piece 2 by Abhidnya Ghuge (Click for full-size)

We’ve all watched or taken part in, at sometime or another, that great quest to “define” fractal art.  Although few members of the fractal world seem very interested in this sort of “constitutional debate” everyone operates with at least some sort of understanding of a boundary around fractal art.  The boundary is where fractal art is combined with or merges into “other” things and becomes something more, or less, than fractal art.  There are limits to what we’ll call “fractal” art.

These “phase” things are attempts to clarify what fractal art is and thereby produce a more energetic approach to it.  More energetic because when one is more focused on what it is they’re doing, their efforts usually become intensified.  Also when one identifies new areas of the same discipline there is often a burst of creativity.  At least that’s why I keep returning to this puzzle of defining fractal art: taking stock of what you have or who you are usually leads to new possibilities and undiscovered resources.

But another reason is that I don’t think anyone has really put their finger on what exactly fractal art is all about.  Strangely enough, I have never thought fractals and fractal geometry was really the heart of fractal art, that is, the thing that people are pursuing when they make and view fractal art.

Of course not everyone whose work falls in the domain of “fractal” art is motivated by or pursuing the exact same interests.  There are some who (possibly) can claim their interest is primarily fractal algorithms and they aren’t interested in art work that might look similar to it but isn’t derived from the rendering of those fractal formulas.  But I see this more as a technical, scientific pursuit than an aesthetic one.  However, the art world is a pretty broad and eclectic place so maybe an obsession with math graphics qualifies as an art form as much as any of the more obscure art forms of the 20th century did.

I am not interested in fractals or fractal math, or any of the technical aspects of how algorithmic art forms are made.  The underlying mechanics of how algorithmic art is made to me consists of little more than technical trivia.  What’s important is the images themselves and discovering new sources.

What I’m getting at here is the notion that what attracts and drives fractal artists and their audiences is not the pursuit of rendering fractals and the establishment of an art form defined by –and delimited by– fractals, but rather the admiration and pursuit of this intriguing way of creating art works of color, shape and pattern with a computer.  Fractals are, so far, the best tools for doing this and as such fractal programs are the thing our mutual interests congregate around.  But it’s really those three graphical ingredients: color, shape and pattern; that are the heart of what we do and what drew us to fractals in the first place.

But who can overlook the incredible story of how fractal images are made?  Such simple geometric formulas… repeated a million times… yielding a galaxy-sized panorama of elaborate imagery.  But you get over that pretty quickly and soon it’s just playing with parameters and flipping through formulas until you see something that shows some potential –graphical potential– and not some new discovery in the field of fractal rendering.  We’re here for the visual thrill; to look at the “pictures”.  Fractals are just the only thing the machine will do, and so that’s what we do, and that’s how we label it.

But I think it’s more accurate, as well as more liberating, to say that what has passed for fractal art all these years and what will live on in the future as fractals compete with other forms of software, is that enduring game of creating art from color, shape and pattern.  Fractals themselves I think are a fad and eventually become a trap to those who either forget, or just plain fail to see, that what can be done with fractal software is just a small part of what can be done with graphical software as a whole.  There is nothing to be gained by “specializing” in fractals, and in fact, I’d say there’s a lot to be lost and missed out on by doing so.

We’ve made fractals the subject of the art form when in fact they’re really only the tool and the real subject matter is color, shape and pattern.

Well, that’s the end of the lecture, but here’s some really good examples of color, shape and pattern in current fractal artwork:

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

Destroy by bib993 (Jeremie Brunet)

Is Neo-Pollockian too strong a term to use here?  I just found this a few days ago browsing the Deviant Art Fractal feed for recent uploads.  I can’t think of a better example of the “abstract, but not really abstract” aspect to works of color, shape and pattern.  It also has that strange, endless detail quality to it.  There’s a thousands paintings in this one big one ironically named, “Destroy”.

Sunturn by DarK--MatteR (Deviant Art) aka Boris Danilevitch

New things from old tools!  That’s what the relentless pursuit of color, shape and pattern is all about in its highest expression.  How many of us have written off “spirals” as exhausted and cliche?.  And yet there’s plenty more possibilities as Boris has shown here.

X Marks the Spot by element90 (Deviant Art)

Old school; maybe more like ancient school: “Classical”.  But forget all that and just take a closer look at the patterns.  From one side to the other and also from top to bottom, there is no similarity except shapes shifting into each other –a liquid pattern.  There’s really nothing retro or primitive about fractal imagery like this.  The newer rendering methods and formulas just make different stuff.  But in these simple renderings patterns stand out much better and are presented more effectively.

Flowabrot-13M by ker2x (Fractalforums.com)

I think this was intended to be a test render posted to a thread entitled: “A 3D Buddhabrot with 13 Millions voxel :) “.  There’s a YouTube video related to it.

What is so great about this image?  The author, Ker2x didn’t even post it to the online gallery and as you can see this is just a screenshot of what I think is his own program Flowabrot (download link -Windows).  Color and shape is what I find most engaging about this image.  But the colors are fairly basic;  and yet that oversaturated effect (which comes naturally when using oversaturated colors) is electrifying.  The shape is unique and although symmetrical there is enough variation in the edges (a type of pattern, or texture) to make the fairly simple shape engrossing.  This is another great example of how fractal tools can really give us an edge in making works of color, shape and pattern, that is, at least when we keep looking for new things to do with them.

Anyhow, I hope I’ve at least made the idea seem plausible that fractals are the tools and not the subject of fractal art –as strange and contradictory as that may at first sound.  The ramifications of this I think are obvious: fractal artists will see and discover new opportunities and get a “second wind”, as marathon runners say, when they begin to see fractals merely as the tool and not the subject of their of their art;  an art form that is simply defined as the combination and permutation of three graphical elements: color, shape and pattern.

Fractal Alchemy (Detail) by Carl Scrase

Now that the decorative dust has settled from the most recent (and oftentimes lamest) iteration of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest (BMFAC), I figure it’s time again to revisit the notion that the competition (and fractal art in general) ought to think outside the program and envision our discipline in broader and more encompassing terms. To this end, I decided why not begin a short series of OT posts dedicated to re-showcasing some possibilities and advantages of a Phase Two approach.

Tim first outlined the ramifications of Phase Two fractalness, and I followed up with some posts (like this and that) examining what a Phase Two exhibition of fractal art might include. To me, Phase Two reimagines fractal art as any art that utilizes fractal forms and/or exhibits fractal properties. Phase Two moves beyond the borders of computer-generated imagery and settles directly into the realm of fine art expressions like painting, sculpture, ceramics, collage, installations, architecture, and so forth. Phase Two is a new way of thinking about fractal art — a way of seeing the discipline with new eyes and incorporating new tools.

Too bad BMFAC decided to keep wearing its program-generated-or-nothing blinders. I question whether BMFAC will ever evolve beyond ornamental eye candy unless it a) allows more post-processing (Tim makes a case here), and b) permits fractal art entries made using Phase Two tools.

And, yes, I know BMFAC went out of its way to embrace fractal art’s (current) new wave: 3D fractals. But maybe we should pause in our oohing and awwing over Mandelbulb splendor to remember that reality also comes 3D-enabled and is rendered in very high-def — that is, to remember that Phase Two fractal art can often have a depth and tactility beyond what can be created using conventional fractal art software.

Why tell when one can instead show…

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Bicycles by Ai WeiWei

Ai WeiWei is a contemporary Chinese artist who works primarily in sculpture/installation/architecture and whose works often dovetail with social, political, or cultural criticism. Ai is probably best known for his collaborative work with architects Herzog and & de Meuron in designing the Beijing National Stadium (the “Bird’s Nest”) for the 2008 Olympics. Ai has been openly critical of Chinese human rights abuses, and for his outspokenness he has been both detained and beaten. Last January, his studio was destroyed without warning by local government authorities.

I’ve written before about the necessity of artistic witnessing and the possibilities of making political fractal art, to the chagrin of some (see several comments to the linked post), but Ai may be the best living example of an artist who convincingly can mix fractal forms with political commentary.

Mock Up Beijing by Ai WeiWei and Herzog & de Meuron

Mock Up Beijing (Detail) by Ai WeiWei and Herzog & de Meuron

In December of 2008, Ai spearheaded an investigation into student casualties caused by the Sichuan earthquake. By mid-April of 2009, Ai’s list had amassed 5,385 names. Ai published the collected names as well as multiple documents substantiating his research on his blog until it was shut down by Chinese authorities in May of 2009.

The loss of the schoolchildren is suggested best in Mock Up Beijing. Absence pervades the piece as the empty chairs, suspended and tilted in space, impaled as if on public display to shame the government’s inaction on the children’s fate, remind us of ties to the lost and the missing. The emptiness left behind by the dead is shown by the vacant seats and the stark poles that map the connections of those who vanished to one another. The recursive forms undergirding the installation suggest the exponentially growing numbers of the disaster’s victims, as well as the still unrequited counting of loved ones who have disappeared.

BMFAC could sure use a little more of Ai’s aesthetic cure-all, and a lot less of bitter medicine like this.

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Pepper Spraying Cop (After Klimt). Seen on Pepper Spraying Cop.

Satire has long been indispensible ammunition in the arsenal of political art weaponry, and the Internet has proven a dependable rapid-fire delivery system for political-digital salvos. Politically tinged gaffes or quirks can quickly go globally viral and gel into memes. Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean uncomfortably discovered this truthiness when a blurted-out, overly enthusiastic “scream” was instantly mashed into pop parodies. More recently, after an evil eye worthy Newsweek cover, Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann has seen her eyes digitally transplanted into numerous historical persons and icons.

The latest Internet meme centers around the now infamous “pepper spraying cop,” that is, John Pike, the police officer who pepper-sprayed a seated and seemingly non-violent group of protesters at the University of California at Davis. In the ever mediated now, any news event, no matter how much it stings the eyes or shrivels the soul, instantaneously becomes an amusing meme. Soon, faster than Windows Vista can reboot, the iconic officer was pepper-spraying his way throughout the ages. Fresh spraycan-in-action evidence was unearthed and ranges from pre-history to earlier social protests to art history classics like Wyeth’s Cristina’s World and Picasso’s Guernica (apparently, those writhing, firebombed wretches haven’t yet suffered enough).

Tim first made the connection between fractal art and Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt on OT back in 2007. The parody above of The Kiss faithfully captures Klimt’s idiosyncratic, self-similar features while adhering to BMFAC’s criteria of having “lots of good, interesting fractal detail.” Click on the image above for a high rez see-for-yourself testimonial.

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Fractal Alchemy (Installation) by Carl Scrase

In Fractal Alchemy, Australian artist Carl Scrase has chosen unusual readymade materials: binder clips arranged to replicate the self-similar patterns found in biomorphic forms. The result is an unsettling fractal origami using office supplies that brings to mind embedded, elemental, naturally found blueprints like genetic coding and the self-organized designs of living organisms.

Fractal Alchemy (Installation) by Carl Scrase

To some, of course, Scrase has made only a 3D doodle during a supply room coffee break while momentarily on leave from his cubicle. Dr. Marcus Bunyan, writing on Art Blart, prefers that his bulldog clips stay out of the gallery and keep firmly clasped on term papers where they belong. He says of Fractal Alchemy that

The wonder of this piece is short-lived. Unlike the ever magical repetition of fractal geometry with its inherent iteration of forms that constantly amaze here the shapes are not stretched far enough, the exposition not grounded in broken or fractured forms that invite alchemical awareness in the viewer.

I’d guess that many in our community would agree. The limitations of physical space could never be stretched enough to begin approximating the theoretical infinity one often senses and even sometimes sees unfurling in computer-made fractal imagery.

Fractal Alchemy (Detail) by Carl Scrase

Still, Scrase has tapped into some primal pattern recognition. Form, like the fractal conventions of life itself, does not necessarily follow function here. The recursion is evident but unsettling and eerie. Do I see suggestions of caterpillar-like segmentation in Scrase’s shapes and beings? With a little push, could they one day crawl their way into the BMFAC exhibition?

Fractalforums.com 2012 Calendar (Cover art by Johan Anderssen)

Why is it the best fractal calendar ever?

• Great artwork by the best 3D fractal artists today
• Authentic, state-of-the-art fractal imagery that didn’t exist even a year ago
• Big!  Printed on A3 paper (297 × 420 millimeters or 11.69 × 16.54 inches)
• Chosen by real artists and fractal enthusiasts, not a political clique
• Contains artwork that has been highly praised in multiple online venues
• A real “art” publication and not just another kitchen calendar with fractals
• From the online forum where the original 3D Mandelbulb was born
• First of it’s kind; a souvenir of 3D fractal history
• Spiral bound, not stapled and hole punched like the cheap-ies
• Help support the best online fractal forum community

Ordering information on Fractalforums.com

As you can see, I’m excited about this one.  After all those years of the sickly (leprous!) Fractal Universe Calendar that “featured” cliche flowery spirals and was an annual embarrassment to the fractal art world, this Fractalforums.com 2012 Calendar is a sign that better things are truly possible in the fractal art world.

The very first one, proudly hung on the wall of Christian Kleinhuis, the proud Daddy of Fractalforums.com

The calendar is being sold by Christian Kleinhuis, the sole sponsor and operator of Fractalforums.com.  For those of you who don’t know much about him, he has this to say about himself and how he came to Fractalforums.com:

About Me:

Christian Kleinhuis, 35; Working as Web-Programmer in Cologne,Germany, living in Bonn.

Working with fractals and knowing about the theory behind it has inspired me, like most of us at the Fractalforums from a programming background.  I started my first mandelbrot in the year of 1990 in amiga basic.  My goal back then was to create a comfortable zoom tool to enable zooming into transforming fractals.  This was the time my first mutatorkammer was developed –a generic formula creator for iterative formulas.  I really don’t know if it was done earlier, but I found it out on my own.  I was using hybrid formulas, mainly alternative forms of hybrid formulas, where formulas (or just the parameters) are exchanged in each iteration step.

Ultrafractal has always been a source of inspiration, and THE database for fractal formulas, especially coloring algorithms.  Ultrafractal then developed the animation functionality, and I saw that it was perfect, and that my style of code (rather show that its working,and not make a usable program) wouldn’t lead to such great usability … this was then around 2006, when the Fractalforums.com was founded by “Jason Henegan”.

The forum was hanging out with about 70,000 clicks a month, counted by the board, meaning that it has to be divided by 5 to 10 … when Jason Henegan wanted to sell his domain, it was me that took over the domain with the data…

The idea for the calendar came to Christian around Spring of this year, 2011, while he was considering ways of defraying the costs of hosting the forum.  He alone was covering the cost of the forum’s expenses.  A change of hosts and increased advertising revenue improved the financial situation for the forum but he still wanted to produce a calendar and thought it was good idea for the forum in other ways.

In the Fall he put up a poll on the forum to find out what interest members might have in buying a calendar.  The response was encouraging enough so he made plans for selecting the images and finding a publisher.

The image selection was a combination of monthly voting choices by the forum membership (where the data was available) and also Christian’s own personal selections which were needed to bring the total up to 12 monthly images and artwork for the cover.  Hybrid judging from a hotbed of hybrid 3D fractals…

One of the images is a winner in the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2011.  Three others are variations of winning entries in the BMFAC 2011 by the same authors and reflect the sort of “multiple venue” selection I mentioned at the beginning.  All of them will be familiar to those who frequent Deviant Art’s fractal pages.

In my opinion, all the images are good ones and while there are maybe one or two that I’m not as excited about, there aren’t any mediocre ones and there aren’t any that resemble the sort of junk the Fractal Universe Calendar used to cough out year after year.

Here’s the individual pages:

iEar by Louis Markoya

Louis’ winning BMFAC 2011 entry was a variation on this theme.  In case you don’t know, Mr. Markoya is a newcomer to the world of fractal art –just this year in fact– but he’s a long time member of the larger art world and even collaborated with the great Salvador Dali back in the 1970s.

Viaduct by Krzysztof Marczak

It’s his program so he can put a shiny monolith in it if he wants to.  Krzysztof Marczak is the author of Mandelbulber, one of the popular 3D fractal programs that grew up around Fractalforums.com.  He’s quite accomplished with the program’s fine art of embedding objects.

Detail of Quadray Set by J. Dierks

One of my own all-time favorites.  The thumbnail doesn’t do justice to the full size image.  Like Krzysztof, Jesse Dierks wrote the program his images are made on.  You see how much talent there is on Fractalforums.com?

Secret Microcity by Jeremie Brunet

Jeremie needs less introduction than most 3D fractal artists do.  He’s had at least two shows of his artwork in Paris (France), a spot on a French TV art channel, and probably a few other things even I don’t know about.

Bridges to Everywhere by Brent McNeely

Brent is better known online as “Dainbramage” although he has yet to show any signs of permanent mental impairment.  Here’s a good example of those complex fractal forests that exhibit squares, circles and just about everything in between; an Eiffel Tower Forest.

Underwater Amazing Object by Jeremie Brunet

What?  Two images by the same artist?  This is Jeremie’s winning entry in the BMFAC 2011 where their (unwritten) rules state that an artist can only truly have one good image a year.  Everyone loves this one and evidently Mr Kleinhuis does too.

Sea Invader by Torsten Stier

Torsten, known also as “taurus66” is a dedicated explorer of the 3d fractal interiors.  He’s also one of the few artists who dares to be colorful and does a good job of it.  He’s not afraid to use lake effect either, although he hasn’t in this one.

Wasp Troll by Johan Anderssen

Another widely popular image and a variation of a BMFAC 2011 winning entry.  This was a monthly winner as chosen by the Fractalforums.com membership voting and won a few other awards elsewhere.  The whole world seems to love Johan’s Wasp Troll series of images.  I find them a little scary.

3d Burning Ship by Jeremie Brunet

Three images?  Ay caramba!  Hey, it’s all about art, not about artists.  Jeremie is always pushing the envelope of the Mandelbox and if the calendar could accommodate animation then his amazing vidoes would take up at least half the spots.  Maybe living in Paris just gives artists a little edge?

Infinity's Eye by Ross Hilbert

Ross is another artist who has also created the machinery he works with.  I’m guessing, but I think this one was made with his Fractal Science Kit.  If you hang out at Fractalforums.com you will have seen many other richly detailed geometric artworks made by him.  He’s another “pillar” of the Fractalforums.com community.

Point of Origin by Hal Tenny

If you’ve seen anything this year in the world of 3D fractals you’ve seen some of these bronze metalworks.  Hal Tenny makes the best ones and I think he also made either the original ones or at least gave them their incredible popularity.  He had a winning entry at the BMFAC 2011 that was a variation of this.  Everyone finds these things cool to look at.  It’s hard to believe they’re not photographs, the surface texture and lighting is so realistic.

Fractal Beest by Forest Walz

A fine choice for a Winter month.  The small image here doesn’t quite show the wide range of shapes and crystalline details in this fractal “beest”.  It’s not the easiest thing to find this sort of dragon-like image and present it in such a pleasing way.  Fractal art can be a real challenge sometimes because it’s pretty easy to make and that makes it hard to create something that stands out so well as this.

Well, there you have it.  What a great event to finish off the year with.  Hopefully the calendar will sell well and this Fractalforums.com 2012 Calendar will become the first edition of an annual event.  Christian Kleinhuis and the forum voters have made a great selection.  The extra large size the calendar has been printed in along with the spiral binding ought to make for a long-lasting tribute to how great the early days of 3D fractals on Fractalforums.com has been.

Why not grab a piece of fractal art history and buy one?

## update 02/12/2011: Christian Kleinhuis sends in these comments about each of the images, starting with the front page:

1 title page – artist-mathematician-programmer the classic bunch of people hanging around at the forums, and whose konglomerative work have produced this calendar and most of everything at the forums…

2. iear – listening to what might come this year

3. travelling highway – the coder of one of the programs needed to be inside, funny thing is that it is in fact more of a test rendering, to test his program interact with euclidean geometry ….

4. approaching the city – jens is the other coder, and as well we have a test rendering here as well, jens just tried out a formula which he grabbed up at the forums, and this one popped out straight away!”

5. eploring the microcity parts – nice example of depth of field usage, and yes, bib has three entries, but this was not a candidate for discussion ;) it belongs to the pics of the kind: “this has to be inside!”

6. exploring fractal city further – showing of the rudimental aspect of converting a formula from 2d to 3d, the  sierpinskie structures nicely arrange in 3d, and thus this image is not only voted by the community, it show off some very basic fractal behaviour – namely self-similarity – which is not so well visible in all of the other images ;)

7. exploring the sea -(more of a secret )  if one of the images could be a problem it is this one, and should better have been exchanged with a better one …. first it won the annual compo, and the bfmac, and thus i felt like i had to use it, but it is in fact cropped far more as it would be good, and additionally the background of this image comes out very dark…. but c’est la vie!

8. summer jellyfish – this image always blows me away when i see it, love the colors and structure, and i am happy to push taurus into creating a 16:9 version out of his original 4:3 one ….

9. deep sea lifeforms – now more words about this one, just an extraordinary example of chaotic stuff that comes out of a single formula … johan not only helped in creating the calendar he also took is artistic-freedom and designed a 16:9 image out of his original 4:3 one…

10 flying dutchmen arriving – this image is in here, mostly because i want to honor the achievement of 3d fractals in general, and this image shows nicely how a 2d structure would look in 3d, just google for “burning ship” fractal, and you can show everyone that the 2d companion is just a slice through the 3d-burning-ship-fractal-bread

11. 2d cut – infinites eye – i wanted to honor ross for his extraordinary sharp and clean usage of ifs renderings, beside of that this image won the annual 2d compo ….

12 the work behind the scenes – this always reminds me about lenords work, but this image has been community voted, and it is the one that strikes most of the “normal” people, the ask when watching it: “is this a fractal ? or is it out of a computer game?”

13 up up and away – the journey continues, with this striking image ….

Let’s just jump to the heart of the matter:  Why is Deviant Art such a garbage dump?  What is it about fractal art, and especially the flame fractal category in particular that leads to the creation of these huge online wastelands of worthlessness?

Typical scenery to be found while browsing the Fractal category on Deviant Art

It’s not all bad

Oh yes, I have to acknowledge that there really are some flame images out there that are not garbage.  I’ve collected about 10 so far and that’s (only) after browsing maybe 4000 thumbnails.  Like I said in a previous post, I don’t mind scavenging for the good stuff, even when the ratio is 400:1.  You can breeze through 400 thumbnails in about 15 minutes.  The time required varies a lot of course depending on how promising the thumbnails look.  If you have to frequently stop and check out something that looks interesting, that can really slow you down.  For the most part you can travel at a pretty good clip, or click –show next page.

Jock Cooper left a comment recommending Cory Ench’s flame fractals.  I found a couple that would make me agree.  But…

Man. Even Cory’s got a lot of stuff there.  Something like 700 and frankly, while agreeing with Jock and acknowledging Cory’s ability to make some of the best flame fractals, he’s got quite a few “also rans”, to use a horse racing expression.  Whick raised the question:  Is this just the nature of fractals?  Is there always going to be such a wide range of “quality” wherever fractals are found?  Don’t all fractal artists have “a lot of stuff” in their galleries?

I went through all of Cory’s gallery, or galleries rather, mainly browsing the thumbnails.  It was quite interesting to see the progression of his artwork over time.  Cory’s best stuff is his most recent.  Or has he just become more discerning and more selective in what he uploads these days?  I’ve said before that all artists are editors and judges of their own work.

Three cheers for thumbnails!

An aside:  Next to Mandelbrot himself, we ought to celebrate the guy who invented auto-generated thumbnails.  Without those little visual samples we’d never be able to navigate the Sargasso Seas of the fractal world.  You can tell an awful lot about an image from it’s thumbnail.  And if there’s any substantial difference between a thumbnail and it’s full-size image, it’s usually that thumbnails make the larger images more appealing than they later turn out to be.  Thumbnails are a good visual summary.

Ich bin ein Garbage Picker

I’m a garbage picker and nowhere is it more so than when I’m crawling over the heaps at Deviant Art.  You know what gold miners do most of the time?  They shovel dirt.  It’s hard work but the chance of finding even a little bit of gold has caused people to dig away whole mountainsides.  Gold miners are really dirt miners.  Garbage pickers are the gold miners of the garbage fields.

What the fractal world really needs right now is more garbage pickers.  If you want to test yourself to see if you’ve got what it takes then try looking for good flame fractals on Deviant Art.  If a place like that doesn’t make you want to give up then I, King of the Garbage Pickers, salute you!

A new pile is uploaded: This could be the one, I just feel it!

They say I gotta dig

Finding good fractal art is like just like digging through heaps of garbage looking for useful or valuable things.  The better artists are like rich people and you’re bound to find something to make it worth your while “browsing” their garbage.  But what I’ve found is that the difference between the so-called “better” artists and the average, or even the worst, is not that great.  Artists who make good stuff often make a lot of the other stuff, too.  And the ones who upload endless pages of cheesy cliche images will eventually stumble on something noteworthy.  I love it when that happens.

Fractal Art is the realm of the scavenger

The notion that good fractal art comes only from skilled and talented people (as the Fractal Art Manifesto claims) is simply not supported by my numerous trips to the great online dumps of the fractal world.  Furthermore, this suggests that good fractal art is as much the outcome of playful experimentation as it is of any kind of ability or learning on the part of the fractal program “user”.  Fractal art is an electronic toy; a paint-by-number machine.  It’s only the grown-ups who want to make it into something big and important, not us kids.

Anyhow, this scavenging aspect to viewing fractal art that I’ve been alluding to I think just reflects the same scavenging environment that fractal art is created in.  We search parameter sets and search parameter variations looking for something that stands out –that catches our eye.  We search large panoramas for signs of promise, something that’s different.  The artists sort their work and the viewers sort what they’ve sorted.  Everyone who doesn’t like junk is a judge.

Even if you’re into post-processing there’s still a lot of experimenting and scavenging to be done.  Post-processing entails the most searching and experimenting of all.  It’s a natural extension to a fractal program: extra buttons.

No two piles are exactly the same

But why is there so much trash on Deviant Art?

We’re getting there.  Firstly, the making of fractal art is a lot of fun.  It involves experimentation, exploration and sometimes just the challenge of taking someone else’s parameters and making something different with them.  It’s a simple reflex to save the image and later upload it to some site like Deviant Art or Flickr:  Each upload represents some sort of accomplishment to the artist.

That is Deviant Art and most other art sites in a nutshell.  This is why there’s so much “garbage” piling up in places like Deviant Art: artists want to share their “accomplishments” where the possibility of getting a reaction is possible.  If they lack objectivity and think everything they’ve made is great, or fail to notice how much their own work resembles the truckloads that have already been uploaded, I think they can be forgiven.  At least they we can shrug off the “offense” of spamming the gallery or posting images that are random batch renders (I loved that feature of Apophysis when I first tried it out).

The average Deviant Art user is self-absorbed and seeks recognition.  The uploaded artwork reflects that self-indulgent, short-sighted and emotionally driven creative context.  The uploads aren’t for the benefit of the general public to come by and get acquainted with fractal art; rather it’s the kitchen fridge analogy that some commenter here on OT years ago pointed out.  Kids are proud of what they’ve made because they made it.  And parents (or in this case, your online buddies) are (almost) as excited because of the relationship they have and because giving compliments makes them and everyone else feel good.  I’ll bet cave painters got the same sort of comments from their friends as the folks on Deviant Art do today.  The whole thing is just the result of human nature and the ageless urge to create because it’s a fun thing to do and it’s a social activity as well.  Bigger things like “art” and “innovation” are not what these sites are all about.  They’re very personal and thus very trivial and that’s why one needs to approach them with gloves and a shovel, a sharp eye and a critical disposition.

What then should be done about these trash factories?

Firstly, Deviant Art is not some charitable enterprise set up to encourage and nurture young artists.  Deviant Art is a money making operation.  So the people running the whole thing don’t care so much about the quality of the artwork as they do about the quantity of people attracted to it and the commercial spinoffs it creates, like art sales, advertising and paid memberships.

I mean, think about it.  Why does Deviant Art (or Flickr) exist in the first place?  Those motives have a lot to do with explaining why the place is so member-focused and so inclusive.  It’s primarily the needs of the members that generates most of the income.  Deviant Art makes money off it’s membership, not people like me whose primary interest is looking around.  They might sell more prints though if they had, perhaps as a separate section, a more selective collection of artwork.  But I’m guessing that they’re reluctant to embark on any kind of sorting endeavor for such a massive amount of artwork.

And placing upload restrictions on it’s members would only spawn a new site where those restrictions didn’t exist.  Besides, features like “favorites” galleries go a long way to sorting through the trash even if some artists game the system.

Sites like Deviant Art will always resemble a landfill site and the only chance for most people ever seeing the better stuff is plain old word of mouth advertising.  The Favorites sections do this somewhat when they’re not too large, but beyond that they’re very few critical venues where the more interesting fractal artworks can break of out obscurity and get the sort of attention they deserve.  The contests at best are too infrequent and display too few artworks.  At their worst they’re horribly biased and choose work that should be thrown back on the heap instead of being held up for all to see.

Orbit Trap + More Orbit Trap = Deviant Art’s Best Friend

You know, Orbit Trap is probably the best friend Deviant Art ever had.  Look how many artists and artworks from there we’ve pointed people to.  And we’ve inspired a lot of “journal” postings too, I hear.

No need to thank us.  It’s payment enough just to be able to roam those flaming, smoking heaps at will and dig for gold where no one has ever dug before.

Or may ever dig again.

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

A View of Toledo by El Greco (c1597)

A classic example of El Greco’s trademark polyester/nylon sheen.  Things are always a little distorted, too.  I’ve often found El Greco’s style to be very modern and impressionistic.  Note the shadowiness.  Even the shadows have shadows.  Although the themes are always religious, as I guess most paintings were back then, his style is quite unique and radical and could even have been painted in our own time.

UFO by SvitakovaEva (Deviant Art)

“Sheeny”, distorted and shadowy:  Is it not the echo of El Greco?  I like the simple title, too.  The image is simple but potent.  In this tiny drop of formula there is river, desert, mountains, sky, clouds and eternal silence.  I’ll bet most of us would have just walked past this if we were zooming and browsing around in there.

I wouldn’t have called this “UFO” although that’s not a bad title as it accentuates the mysteriousness of the image; I would have done something daring and called it “Jet Trail of the Ascension”.  Yes, El Greco would have liked that, I think.  El Greco had a talent for combining religious themes with far-out, far-outed-ness.

View and Plan of Toledo (detail) by El Greco (c. 1610)

What exactly is going on there?  The top right figure in the “sacred cluster” looks like a ballerina spinning on her head.  Like Eva’s fractal, this image is only partially understood like something half hidden in a shadow.  And yet there is nothing disappointing about that.

Evolving Hologram by DorianoArt (Deviant Art)

I found this one El Greco-tesque, too.  The polyester sheen and the rushing movement, numerous folds of light.  And the square shape in the middle, repeated, echoed in pieces all over.  Is there a bottom to this well?  Drop your eyes and listen for the splash…

Hologram by DorianoArt (DA)

The Tornadoes from Toledos;  Hologram isn’t bad either.  There’s a glowing, fiery, aurora borealis look to this.

Hey.  You don’t suppose this is a flame fractal, do you?  Oh man.  I gotta check the gallery page to see if it says anything.

A screen capture is worth a thousand words

It’s a flame.  I bookmarked this one before I wrote my recent posting suggesting that almost all flame fractals be extinguished.  I must not have realized it was one of “those things”.  This is like the apotheosis of apophysis.  Good art speaks for itself and is more than the sum of it’s genes –or in this case, parameters.

At least he didn’t make it with Chaotica.  Then I’d really look foolish.

Let’s change the subject:

Friendly squid visit at night in Komodo National Park by Nhobgood (Wikipedia)

Well this ain’t no flame fractal, for sure.  But, look at the ghostly luminescence and the spirally tentacles and the way the animal’s body just slips away into the dark nothingness around it.  Isn’t this the sort of creation we could expect if the flame fractal genre develops some more graphical options and parameter choices?  I’m not a programmer or even a math person but I think the flame genre has some potential just based on what I see.  At the moment it takes some real experimentation to come up with something that hasn’t been done before.

Hopefully that sort of flame fractal renaissance will come from Thomas (Lyceum) Ludwig’s work with Chaotica, which just so happens, as he recently informed me, to be the main reason he started the project.  (A new personality would be nice, too.)

Odysseus blinds the Cyclops

My continuing Odyssey in the seas of Deviant Art has brought me to what I shall refer to as the island of Apophysis, that being the great flame fractal program created by Mark Townsend which utilizes the “flame algorithms” discovered or invented by Scott Draves, the author of Electric Sheep, the original flame fractal application in the form of a screen saver.

My apologies to Mark; he did a great job of producing the software and gave it all away freely so that the whole world may use it (and sometimes it seems the whole world is using it).  My urge to ram a sharp stick into the eye of this cyclops is because I think that while it may be a great thing to play with, it has taken up a disproportionate amount of gallery space everywhere in the fractal world with endless variations of its very limited themes.

While I’m at it I’ll apologize to Scott Draves as well.  He had the right idea when he made a screen saver out of his flame algorithms because that’s all flame algorithms are good for: live entertainment.  Scott made the algorithm code open source under the GNU Public License (same license as Linux) which allows anyone else to use it as long as they don’t add restrictions to the software they produce with it.  That’s one of the reasons flame fractals are found in so many places.  If you love flame fractals in general and Apophysis in particular then give a hearty cheer for Scott and Mark.

Now let’s get down to blinding the beast.

The only good thing I’ve ever seen done with Apophysis was a 3D video full of glowing domes and cosmic laser beams.  You’ve undoubtedly seen this sort of thing because Apo (for short) only makes a few things: glowing jelly fish domes; feathers; jack frost stain glass windows; colored smoke rings; and cloudy lint-like cobwebby fragments.

Change the colors, mix and match the Five Great Themes, add an inspirational title and that’s about all you can do.  Now there have been some 3D additions like I mentioned as well as numerous attempts at animating these flame constructions but they don’t have anything like the variety of imagery types that the mandelbox or other 3D fractal hybrids do.  I’ll go out on a limb here and say that Scott Draves probably saw all there was to see when he made his screen saver program and let it out of it’s pen and onto many thousands (millions?) of computers.

Here’s my main point:  Flame fractals are fun to watch as a screen saver and fun to play around with in a program like Apophysis but they become boring and repetitive when made into still images.  It’s literally like photographing a fire: you can’t capture the quality that makes it exciting to watch.

Here’s some examples of that from the Electric Sheep screensaver, set to the synthesized sounds of Kraftwerk:

If fractals in general are best experienced in their interactive software form, then flame fractals are the best example of this.  In fact, I would say that flame fractals really have no other beneficial aspect to them than live entertainment.  There’s a few, very rare examples of something that someone has made that captures that ghostly, other worldly look of flames, but in my years of browsing other people’s fractal art galleries I don’t think I’ve seen more than just three or four of these.  Flames aren’t like other fractal algorithms in terms of creativity.

Here’s a recent, short (3:10) YouTube video by Scott Draves that adds some perspective to the whole flame fractal genre, from the original screensaver to more recent applications of it.  Look and see if you can see anything interesting and art-worthy in the various flame fractal graphics shown.

Whether you watched the video or not I think you’ll see that there’s an appeal to flames but that it’s almost entirely confined to their application as moving, animated graphics and even then it’s more of a plaything like the screensaver or a visualization accompaniment for music.  Alone, as in a still image (or thousands of still images) flame fractals are categorically less interesting, to put it mildly.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that flame fractals are a waste of time and ought to be separated from the main fractal category on sites like Deviant Art because they’re so uniquely boring and not likely to be of any interest to anyone except the people who make them.  Actually forcing the Apo crowd to look at their own work would be poetic justice.  Creatively it’s not much and yet it’s managed to draw a considerable number of “players” to it.

I think the creative shallowness of flame fractals is best exemplified by Thomas Ludwig’s new program, Chaotica.  Like Mark Townsend with Apophysis I’m sure Thomas (aka Lycium on DA) has made a good flame fractal program.  And also like Mark he’s giving it away freely, but based on what I’ve seen made with it, the same “Curse of the Flames” inhabits this new program as well.  If you’re not familiar with Chaotica it has it’s own Deviant Art group and you can see for yourself there what’s new and what isn’t.  I’ve been meaning to post about it for months but since I haven’t seen any artwork of interest made with it there’s not much to talk about.  To me, so far it’s just more flame fractals.  Perhaps Chaotica’s contribution to flame fractals is purely on the technical side?  faster rendering, optimized code?  But after so many years of these “flaming” flame fractals, who really cares anymore?  I mean, apart from the people who make them, that is.

That Cyclops has eaten enough of the Electric Sheep.  Please, don’t think twice before you post another flame fractal image –think three or four -hundred- times.

~Click on images to view full-size and on original site~

Brummbaer with his Fractal Tralfamadore images

The intersection of Brummbaer (he doesn’t use a first name) and fractal art is something worth taking a second, and more careful look at.  Brummbaer brings with him several decades of graphical and artistic experience and his “Tralfamadore” series of images are worth studying as well as appreciating for their fractal-ness.  There’s something to be learned from Brummbaer’s fractal artworks.

The Artist:

Brummbaer is a German-American digital artist who has done work as an art director, designer, graphic artist, and 3-D modeler. His fine art and underground magazine Germania brought him recognition in Europe during the 1960s, and he orchestrated light shows for musicians such as Frank Zappa and Tangerine Dream. In 1985 the International Synergy Institute in Los Angeles invited Brummbaer to be their artist in residence, and work on their Fairlight CVI computer. Brummbaer began focusing on computer graphics. He created several short computer-generated animations and has done visual effects for a number of popular films. Brummbaer was one of the primary computer animators responsible for the special effects in the Tristar motion picture Johnny Mnemonic. Brummbaer also created innovative openers for SIGGRAPH’s “Electronic Theater,” and has long been a pioneer in the world of digital animation, where he has been noted for his signature hallucinogenic style.

(from: https://sites.google.com/site/brummbaerontralfamadore/10—about-the-artist)

The Fractal “Paintings”:

The paintings are based on fractal designs, calculated on a computer using commercial and some offbeat programs. After the creation by the fractal generators, the design is either moved into a 3D program like 3D Max and further treated, or taken into photoshop, where you tweak the color and composites. After several testprints, a high resolution version is painted in the computer with the help of a Wacom-tablet. Finally the image is professionally printed on canvas or paper guarantied to last a hundred years. Once the canvas is stretched, it is ready to be painted on. Layers of oil, acrylics and varnish give me the ability to create a vibrant painting, using some techniques of the old masters. This goes on until the painting is finished. Every painting is a single, unique piece — nevertheless, once a painting is finalized, it is possible to do prints in any size on any permissible material.

(from: https://sites.google.com/site/brummbaerontralfamadore/home )

Brummbaer’s use of “post-processing” makes the most ardent fractal post-processor look like a purist.  And yet the images still retain their fractal-ness and only seem to have been enhanced and refined.  Don’t fear Photoshop.

Here’s a good example:

A Crack in the World by Brummbaer

He’s added the sky, which is not uncommon in 3D fractals, but he’s also added the birds, something which is much rarer but still not unheard of.   And then there’s the ladder reaching up to the little “wormhole” as Brummbaer calls them.  But the biggest difference in this sort of image by Brummbaer is the fact that it’s a series and they all fit into the setting of a story.  There’s a narrative context.

The Story:

Once upon a time on Tralfamadore

there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.

These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.

And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough.

So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.

And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the higher purpose of the creatures could be.

The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all.

The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else.

And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.”

from Kurt Vonnegut, jr’s “The Sirens of Titan”

(from: https://sites.google.com/site/brummbaerontralfamadore/home )

Brummbaer adds his own bit to the storyline to draw his images into the context of Tralfamadore and set the stage for their entry:

So our cat “Missy” came back from Joshua Tree and claimed she saw an interstellar “earth lander” descending on the desert… under hypnosis she revealed the extents of her adventure, including detailed descriptions and measurements of the spacecraft, which we reconstructed, rendered and painted here for your enjoyment. Of course we could not stop here yet, and eventually built the spacecraft ourselves, constructing it exactly according to Missy’s hypnotic revelations. We understood that fractals in the real world suggest wormholes — the bridges between galaxies. Once you find – or create — a fractal design in the physical world, you have to find the smaller iterations of the pattern — and there, where the universe bunches up and folds into itself, you will find a wormhole to another space or planet. Since we built our machine, we hardly are home on the weekends…

(from: https://sites.google.com/site/brummbaerontralfamadore/home )

By the menu in the upper left corner of the Brummbaer’s Tralfamadore homepage you visit his galleries separated into various categories of Tralfamadore imagery:

Gallery menu

Here’s one from Gallery 02: Tralfamadorean Views and Landmarks:

Palace of Information by Brummbaer

Note the simple addition of the sign “PALACE OF INFORMATION” to the side of the “building”.  This immediately establishes a realistic context of building/cityscape to the fractal imagery.  With the exception of the reddish sky background, everything is just a fractal image, albeit one that has been exported and rendered in a 3D program.

This one shows Brummbaer’s transformative use of fractal imagery the best:

Follow Your Heart by Brummbaer

Who hasn’t seen this sort of quaternion or hypernion/3D toffee chew image before?  But the hand drawn additions: rider; pole; heart; whip; flags; sunset and moon; completely change the context and message of the fractal.  And it’s not just because he “drew” on it.  He obviously carefully chose this one and thought it over in his head about what he could do with it before even starting to add  those things.  Lastly, the title acts like a caption and frames the whole work with an idea that is the theme of the image.

Complex and subtle stuff, but Brummbaer, as you can see from the biographical note I quoted above, is a professional graphic artist and comes to fractals by a much different route than most of us have.  I think that’s why his work here is so different.  He’s taken similar kinds of imagery and done very different kinds of things with it.  Sure, there’s others who have drawn on fractals or even strung a few images together for a diptych or triptych, but Brummbaer’s Tralfamadore collection is much more refined and polished than anything of its kind I’ve seen in fractaland.

Which is not to say that no one else can do it as well as Brummbaer can.  In fact I’ve reviewed this little project of his precisely because I thought it might suggest other creative tangents that others might consider going off on after seeing such a rewarding example.  I’ve often thought fractals are better used in supporting roles than playing the starring role themselves.  I think that’s the lesson to be gained from this collection of Brummbaer’s fractal art.

“A lot of the people I hang out with at dA are the same people that are at Fractal Forums…”

Hal Tenny said that in a comment here on Orbit Trap recently.  After my recent posting, Renderfeast, which featured an number of Deviant Art folks (DAers) I saw people on Fractalforums.com remarking that they had been featured on Orbit Trap.  I didn’t recognize their FFs usernames from DA.

Hal Tenny is right though, much of what appears in the FFs gallery uploads section also appears on DA.  I should have noticed this myself and probably would have if it wasn’t for the aversion I have acquired over the years to the big online art sites like DA and Renderosity, Flickr, and just about anywhere else you can find easy upload access and instant social interaction.  Places like that just get swamped with mediocre stuff and it’s tiresome to wade through it all looking for a few good ones.

But I don’t seem to mind it so much anymore.  Maybe I’m more patient or maybe I’ve just come to accept the fact that digital art in general is like that and that places like DA are more like “refrigerators” to stick stuff up on than they are serious art galleries.  The Linux world often complains there’s too many versions of Linux and that that confuses and distracts too many newcomers from the really good ones.  I just see it as the expected result of removing restrictions to innovation and creativity; it will never be any other way.  We sort through things everyday when we’re shopping or reading the news.  Should online artwork be any different?  Who really wants less choices and fewer options?  Maybe the chaff makes the wheat look better?

What sets the gallery section of FFs apart is that there’s very little “fiber” to sift through.  Most of the FFs artists seem to have a home gallery on DA.  This is not so surprising really, since FFs has always been primarily a “fractal” site and not a fractal art site.  DA on the other hand is clearly a place where the graphical side of things is the main attraction.  It has the atmosphere of a flea market but that’s just the nature of online digital art.

Since becoming reacquainted with DA in the past few months and particularly in the last few weeks via the “favorites” sections of personal gallery pages I see DA and sites like it differently now.  Consider this:

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Ultimate Mandelbrot Xmas Fractal by aparks45 (DA)

I found it by browsing DA on the search term, “Fractal” and selecting “Newest”.  Instead of newest you can browse by “Popular” but that’s the kind of thing I always avoid on these BOAS (big online art sites).  Popular is “too subjective”, let’s say.  How else can you quickly find fractal artwork like aparks45’s up there?  You won’t find it traveling on “Popular Street”.  Now some of you may be thinking, “That’s a good reason to stay on Popular Street” but I’m of the opinion that there’s always something better out there “in the wild”.

I’ve discovered that there’s actually a separate fractal art section on DA with three subsections (go ahead and laugh).  You have to click on the “Digital Art” link in the left sidebar on the main DA page which then expands into the sub-categories of which Fractal Art is one.  It’s not as obvious as it ought to be, but I’ve always suspected that BOAS were designed to be member-friendly and not visitor-friendly.  Members are where the money (if any) comes from.  On the other hand, big sites like this are always a challenge to navigate because they’ve got such a wide variety of stuff on them.  Categorizing artwork is an art in itself.

Here’s another one by aparks45:

A Beautiful Fractal Christmas Holiday by aparks45 (DA)

These next two aren’t fractal, but I discovered them after getting off the main road and exploring aparks45’s own gallery.  I just love the way Santa catapults across the sky like he was shot out of a slingshot.

Christmas Holiday Snow Globe by aparks45

The Day before Christmas by aparks45

The very first image in this posting, Ultimate Mandelbrot Xmas Fractal, was posted along with this request:

And received (so far) only this response:

Negative criticism?  On Deviant Art?  Well, maybe SquallLion1 is an exceptional member of DA.  I don’t ever remember seeing such honesty on a BOAS like this except when it came to criticizing Orbit Trap for its criticism.  But I find it as fresh and energetic as these animated gifs by aparks45.

While sailing between Scylla and Charybdis on my  DA odyssey I’ve gained new insight into a place like Deviant Art as well as fractal art and computer/digital art in general.

Fractal art is:

• Easy to make
• Fun to make
• Lends itself to decorative application
• Popu-lous even if not as popular
• Never out of place in a waterball
• Always exhibits the properties of its medium

Here’s another one, hot off the DA presses:

Christmas Mandelbulb Fractal by aparks45 (DA)

No Christmas trees or other assorted stock items, just lake effect and some sort of sci-fi moire force-field crackling in the background.  I like this one…

I’d have displayed a larger image for this one but resizing animated gifs is a little more complicated than simple one-frame images and the full size version is a couple MBs in size.  As you can see, an animated gif is actually a looping video clip.  Fortunately DA creates animated thumbnails for animated gifs.  I recommend you click on this one and view the full size version on DA.  (Assuming, of course, you find these hyper-saturated shimmering gifs as interesting as I do.)

This image really has some style to it.  Maybe it’s the gif palette that forces aparks45 (Amy Parks ?  who owns a 45?) to step into the retro color world of 256, 8-bit  color with it’s special dithering tricks that has been all but forgotten in today’s fractal art world of millions and millions of colors.

Read the fine print, you can call it a Hanukkah contest if you prefer

Off We Go Then by aparks45 (DA)

Neat, eh?  It’s “lake effect” in a photo of a “lake”.  Just add water…

Artists sometimes make interesting work by accident.  It actually happens all the time in the fractal art world.  Artists look at their work differently than their audience does.  Aparks45 has made some really freaky stuff but I don’t think that was her intention.  I think she was just exploring the technology of these video loops and getting a grasp of how to use the GIMP, her graphics program.  Here’s a good example:

Swim thru the planets of life by aparks45 (DA)

I think it’s a hand drawn image.  Here’s what the gallery page notes say:

The lake effect is actually drawing something new instead of being just a cheap digital way of imitating a natural phenomenon.

Aurora Borealis Out In Space by aparks45

You need to see the full size to really appreciate this one, although it’s not bad as a thumbnail.  The “Jupiter” up in the top left is a nice touch.  When was the last time you ever saw real color like this?

A gallery note:

Mother Mary Angels Jesus by aparks45

That one there has a story:

Here’s a screenshot of the Ebay listing:

Click to view full listing on Ebay

Well, I said it was an odyssey and just like Ulysses, it’s time for me to set sail once again.  I’ve genuinely enjoyed browsing aparks45’s animate gif gallery.  I know it’s not the sort of fractal art or digital art most Orbit Trap readers are used to looking at or expecting to see reviewed, but if fractals are anything they’re a place of surprising wonders and the realm of the eccentric.  I like eccentric things.  Maybe eccentricity is what art is all about.  One thing I’ll say in closing; doing what everyone else is doing is a waste of time.  And no fun either.

A collection of uniquely rendered fractal things.  And a few that are just traditionally intriguing.

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

Elevenish by LucaGN (Deviant Art)

I almost skipped by this one while browsing away on Deviant Art.  I think the icy-blue fruit chew wafers caught my eye and stopped me.  Most people use Earthly colors for their mandelboxes but LucaGN must have asked, why? and came up with something wild and avante garde.  If you check out the full size view you can see some nice Martian imagery out the “window” in the center.

For Eva by LucaGN

Primitively fractalic.  Must have been baked in a square pan as it fits the frame perfectly.  LucaGN has a good eye for this sort of strangely stylistic imagery.  I still can’t figure out what I like about this one but maybe LucaGN saw the same thing too.  According to the image comments on DA “Eva” is Xantipa, the Fractal Queen of Color.

Boleslawiec Delights by Timemit (Deviant Art)

“Ducks”  Next to the whole 3D thing, the “Ducks” formula or whatever it is, is the most exciting thing to happen this year.  Samuel Monnier on his Algorithmic Worlds Blog explains it better than I can.  I just look at “Duck” pictures and see that Ducks is a creative and surprisingly unpredictable thing full of variation.  Timemit adds something more and has captured an almost Art Nouveau kind of geometry/organic fusion thing.  …silkscreen, batik, it’s just very captivating and really surprised me.  Maybe Deviant Art is more than just a playground for socially disturbed people?  I’m beginning to think so.

What the War Lost by Timemit

Top left area is my favorite in this one, but the whole thing is a treasure trove of fractal gems.  You see?  You don’t need to know anything about “Ducks” to spot it instantly.  There’s the theory of Ducks and the practice of Ducks.  Do you see any of the “self-similarity” or boring repetition of the old time fractals here?  Ducks is usually a wonderland of shape and color but this one by Timemit is an exceptionally good example.

Fractal_Years_by_misterxz (Deviant Art)

Since I’m on the topic of Ducks, here’s one by the (allegedly) Ducks Master, Misterxz.  This one is a fantastic image on it’s own right but especially as an example of the Duck-ian method.  It doesn’t really look “fractal” at all, except, I guess for the tree things at the top and the Koch snowflake things near the bottom…  I guess what makes it new and exciting is that there’s so much variety in what is a formula generated image.  Ducks is a whole new world and Misterxz’s image here makes that pretty obvious.  Ducks adds something categorically new to fractal graphics even if it’s not a huge break-though in fractal theory.

Ultrameta 731 by Dan Wills (Picasa)

Dan’s in a rendering category all his own.  He manages to find really weird stuff and capture it in an eye-catching way.  This one is actually about a year old (Dec. 2010) so I must have missed it or something last time I checked out his Picasa Web Album Ultrameta gallery.  Dan’s galleries are a voyage into the fractal unknown.  You can’t view stuff like this and not want to grab your own “ship” and sail off yourself.  Sometimes the renders are rough but that just seems to add to the “natural” authenticity and archaeological atmosphere of Dan’s collection.  Ultrameta is an unexplored ancient tomb filled with intriguing artifacts that decorate its ghostly walls.

Balancing Act by Actionjack52 (Deviant Art)

Maybe this one isn’t so strangely rendered but it’s got a unique look to it.  It’s just so perfect and exact and yet still lively and interesting.  I like how the blue background seems to “stick” to the subject –or is that just an effect of the unsharp-mask?  Actionjack52 has some other very nice images but in keeping with my offbeat theme let’s just look at his Deviant Art avatar:

World's greatest avatar by Actionjack52

A marvel of graphical engineering.  Just 5 animated gif frames for file size 6.92 kb!  I can’t stop staring at it.  Where does all that energy come from?  Doesn’t he ever need to rest?

2011-07-27_00-30-11 by Daniel (Picasa)

A delightful accident?  Incomplete rendering?  It’s a Mandelbulb 3D image that’s come out looking like an old Victorian hand tinted engraving.  The actual structures and underlying parameters aren’t all that unusual, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this.   Sometimes I think fractal artists try to make things look too good and they miss out on a lot of cool looking oddball renderings (and oddball fans).

Ice Arena 3010 by Actionjack52

Would you believe it?  This foggy, frosty image is also by Actionjack52 who made the ultra crisp wheel up above.  Here’s a good example of how the stranger renderings can really create innovative stuff; it’s resulted in this very panoramic “winter” landscape.  The curved “road” in the bottom right almost seems to exhibit tire tracks in the packed snow.  Smoke drifting up from chimneys.  Full moon lighting up the snow…  Is this the Hunters in the Snow of our fractal times?

Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel (1565)

It ought to be titled: Dogs in the Snow.   Why so many dogs to go hunting?  I guess if you don’t catch anything you can eat a dog instead.  Just say it’s rabbit.  This scene looks incredibly modern to me.  I must be getting old.

Dabbling in Color by Dsynegrafix (Deviant Art)

How can something so square look so exotic?  So many fractals display smooth curves and anything but sharp angles and simple lines but here is something fresh and refreshing.  I guess the color contributes a lot to the artistic impression here also.  It’s 3D and made in Mandelbulb 3D.  There’s some sort of wiry, metal rod parameter set floating around DA that makes things like this.  I suspect Madman’s (Fractalforums) Gluon Glitch video I reviewed uses a variation of it.  Dsynegrafix has added her own special touch to it though with unique, and colorful results.

In Lieu of Circles 4 by Dsynegrafix

I love the orange/gold structures in the right and left foregrounds.  You really need to click on this one and view it full size to appreciate the “electronic” plastic-y feel to it.  Reminds me of Jock Cooper’s Mechanical series of images.  And Tron, the Disney movie, too; Electron Temple.

Pyropus by Eccoton (Deviant Art)

It’s almost 2D at the bottom and gives the image a collage look.  Coloring is really exceptional and also the variety of fractal structures.  There is a strong symmetrical structure to this and yet it’s not a simple mirror image but rather exhibits more of a natural, organic symmetry.  Click and look at the full size which is about 10 times larger and you’ll really be impressed with the professional look of this image by Eccoton.  But then Eccoton, if you browse his gallery, you’ll see is a quite accomplished graphic artist of the hand drawn photoshop variety (the hard kind of art).  Perhaps he touched this one up?  Anyhow it sure looks polished and perfected.  “Mandelbulb 3D/Photoshop” the gallery page says.  Nice combination.  I keep thinking he’s cheated a whole lot in making this image; it’s just too good.

Ancient Sun by Mehrdadart (Deviant Art)

Nobody makes these sorts of golden renders like Mehrdadart does.  The classic black frame, as often abused as it is used, actually looks nice with an image like this.  There’s so many metalic colors in this image it’s almost suitable as a test image for color calibration.  If you like this one you’ll like a lot of Mehrdadart’s other images.  He makes a lot of 3D fractals and always gives them that something extra in the way of rendering and coloring that says “grandeur” if you will permit me to speak in the language d’art.

Sunrise in China by Mehrdadart

They look like windows.  The full size is much more impressive.  As the artist says, “Try the full size, please!”  And the full-size is 1800 x 1665 (is that big enough for printing?).  This one is actually a year old and has that classic square mandelbox look.  But even still it’s got a unique, energetic quality to it that is not even close to its expiry date.  Nobody ever made something like this back in 2010 with the mandelbox.

Connections by Actionjack52

Actionjack52 again?  Well, this one’s not really offbeat rendering but it is a sort of extreme rendering because I’ve never seen such hyper-machined metalic-a surfaces before.  This is the sort of thing many people will want to copy, I mean learn for themselves, that is.  I like the bird’s foot aspect to this.  One often sees resemblances to natural forms in fractal art, such as this bird’s foot structure, because, I assume, somewhere in the internal structure of natural things or in the DNA of living things are codes that result in fractal looking (natural) renderings.  A three toed foot is inherently stable.  Rhinos have them.  Of course they’re not birds.  Not even close.  They probably eat birds.  Could mutations occur through ingested DNA?

Mandelbubbles by Jimmie (Fractalforums.com)

BMFAC 2011 Retro Collection winner?  Alright, forget I said that.  From the Fractalforums.com gallery page: “Description: Inkblot… (Postwork in PSE…)”.   (Inkblot Kaos?)  Some sort of edge-detection filter and maybe a texturing thing too to give the leathery look.  An old “trick” perhaps and not nearly as eye catching as the latest 3D rendering techniques but Jimmie has accentuated the simple shapes and patterning in this humble 2D fractal and made them interesting and resembling paper cut collages.  The sharply defined mandelbrot man in the center is elegant in a simple way.

Speaking of “papercuts”, here’s one recently unearthed from a storage room at the University of Michigan.  Created originally by a small art academy in southern China back in the early days of the Cultural Revolution and acquired by a UofM professor via a source in Hong Kong back in the early 70s and subsequently forgotten until just recently when someone cleaned the storage room:

Translation: "Chairman Mao is the Reddest Sun in Our Hearts"

China’s a far-out kind of place.  These pictures are actually made of white cut-out paper pieces mounted on a red (very, very red) background.  Check out the whole collection of 15 if you find these sorts of things as bizarre and sci-fi-ish as I do.  The authors are unknown but they were certainly very skilled at this rather ancient art of chinese papercut artwork.  News release of Nov. 1, 2011 for the collection.  History is a kind of science fiction.

Let’s not end this posting with images of communist propaganda or with harsh, political speeches exhorting the fractal proletariat to Eliminate the Four Olds (The List; The Contest; The Program; The Leader).  Even I denounce myself as an enemy of fractal art and plead to be sent to the countryside for reeducation.  Here’s something dramatic and considerably less political by Mehrdadart:

Aborning by Mehrdadart (DA)

I like the simplicity to this one and how it accentuates the very simple fractal image.  It’s “dramatic” but not sentimental like most “dramatic” fractal images are.  It’s ironic that Mehrdadart who generally makes such rich, ornamental images could have produced something so different and yet equally engaging.  It’s the connection with the little white dot on the right hand edge that “leverages” the rest of the image.  Ultimately, fractal art is all about art, not fractals.

There’s more.  There always is.  Especially now that I’ve found a more effective way to browse the labyrinthine passages of Deviant Art.  My great discovery?  I check out people’s “favorites” section.  Oddly enough while fractal artists will endlessly promote heaps of their own garbage they are much more discerning when promoting the works of others.  All the DA artists I’ve featured here were found because someone else (who probably wasn’t featured here) had “faved” them.  It’s interesting how well the system works even though it’s routinely abused and manipulated –even as we speak!

I hear shouts! It's Prince John's men attacking our good forest folk again!

As the Robin Hood of the Fractal Kingdom, I feel compelled to take up the cause of our fellow countryman, “Fitz” and right the wrongs of the evil Prince John and his minions, the various Sheriffs of Nottingham known in today’s Sherwood Forest as “The Selection Panel”.

Fitz’s claim is that –well let’s let Fitz speak for himself:

Screenshot of Fractalforums.com thread, "The BMFAC 2011 results..."

“Reflecting sphere hovering over chess board…”  Ouch!  You know what he means by that, right?  Cliche shiny stuff that comes from safe, elementary choices.  But let’s consider his claim for a moment, not whether it ought to be in the winner’s circle or not, because my review of the 11 “losers” in the winning circle shows that Fitz’s entry is certainly better than any of them; but rather lets ask something much more radical, something Fitz probably would not even have suggested himself: Was it not in fact one of the best entries?

Here’s Fitz’s entry that he’s referring to as “my best entry” in the screenshot above which forms a hyperlink to this image:

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy on Deviant Art)

In Fitz’s comment he was comparing his image with another which he referred to as “this” which is a link to MarkJayBee’s (Mark J. Brady’s) winning image:

CupreousComplex II by Mark J Brady

Judging art always has a subjective aspect to it because we don’t all “like” the same sorts of things (i.e. taste) but I’d say that Fitz’s image is superior to Marks simply by virtue of the complexity and variety of imagery found in it.  Mark’s is still a good one and he makes a lot of good images like this, but I think Fitz’s is just more interesting and presents much more “fractalness” in it.

Note the top left area in Fitz’s image shown here in a detailed screenshot from the high res version on his Deviant Art site:

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

Fitz’s image is really detail-rich and the details have quite a variety to them.  Here’s another detail from the bottom left corner:

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

Then, taking a closer look I discovered this subtle detailing in the left mid-ground:

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

Mark’s image is one which features perspective and fine metallic/glass surface texture and as such wasn’t intended to be (I’d guess) a “rich detail” type of image.  So in that sense we’re comparing apples and oranges, which is a pretty common occurrence in fractal art since there is such a wide variety of imagery with a similar wide variety of characteristics.  In short, it’s not fair to compare Mark’s image to Fitz’s with respect to fine detail; one ought to simply compare them on the basis of general artistic impression.  That is, which one do you like –more?

I like them both! –but I’d agree with Fitz that his Biomass image (he entered more than one image) is a “stronger” entry than Mark’s.  But Mark’s entry is still light years ahead of the”losers-eleven” group I posted about but it’s a little too plain and offers only the effect of panoramic depth to make an impression.  Fitz’s works on many more levels although Mark’s is still a good example of 3D fractal art.

But could Fitz’s image be the best?  This is a somewhat difficult thing to say, but since the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contests in general have majored on selecting minor artwork, it’s not hard for anyone to question their choices and rank a non-winner above all of the winning selections.  Besides challenging Mark’s image, what other good images are close to being as good as Biomass that we should compare it with?

Here’s one, Fractal Wasp Troll by Johan Anderssen:

Fractal Wasp Troll by Johan Andersson (Mandelwerk, Kraftwerk)

I like Johan’s artwork in general and like I said in a previous post, he and the other really good 3D fractalists didn’t submit their best works to the BMFAC.  On the other hand, I happen to know from hanging around Fractalforums.com (the Arc de Triomphe of fractals) that this image has been particularly popular there and those folks are a tough crowd with Parisian standards when it comes to art.  Well, c’est dommage, I agree it’s good but I think Biomass is better.  I don’t care for the smeared, wispy look and prickliness of the image but a lot of other people seem to.  Mind you, the coloring is pretty good and the detail is almost as good as Biomass’ making it a good example of that graphical aspect of fractal art.

What other winners can compete with Biomass for top spot?  Oh yes, Hal Tenny’s famous metal works.  Undoubtedly one the the best images in the contest:

Gordian Twist by Hal Tenny

Well this is a tough one.  Who isn’t amazed when they see one of these ornate metal tube and sphere marvels for the first time?  Totally fractal and yet it looks totally like a photograph of some wild metal sculpture.  And lots of intricate detail; a virtual fractal pipe maze.  Coloring is nice, too.  Hal Tenny really is a great fractal artist even if he does hang out with complete jerks on Deviant Art.  I’d say Biomass is tied with this one.  I really can’t say it’s better because Gordian Twist is such a masterwork and such a unique variety of 3D fractals.

Alright, a tie for first-place?  Or second?  Is there any other winner that Biomass needs to contend with?

Underwater by Jeremie Brunet ("bib" on Fractalforums.com)

Nice one, eh?  Jeremie is putting on a show in Paris as announced here on Fractalforums.com from November 24-29, 2011.  He made this very professional looking poster to advertize it which shows how eye-catching this image of his is in a different context:

Jeremie Brunet Fractal Art Exhibition, Nov. 24-29, 2011, Paris, France (not Paris, Texas!)

What can I say?  It’s a great image and it has something that many fractal art images often lack: focus.  The multicolored deep sea base is the intended subject of the image and it just naturally works that way.  The color couldn’t really be better.  The overly bright yellows and reds fit in with a undersea scientific base (I’m guessing that’s what Jeremie was thinking).  The use of fog and just about everything else at the artist’s control has been used to maximum effect.  It’s no wonder they chose this one for the exhibition.  Another tough decision.  I’d like to rank Biomass just above this one because the bright coloring is just a little too much for me, but I think I’ll give it a tie with Biomass just like Gordian Twist by Hal Tenny.  A three-way tie for first place, so far.

Who else in the BMFAC winners can challenge Biomass for the top spot?  If you read my post on the “losers” of the BMFAC you’d already know that I’d picked Aztec Flying City by Bernard Bittler as my top choice.  Dave Makin, a BMFAC judge, thinks it’s junk, or as he says, “bog-standard/run-of-the-mill“.  Let’s take a look:

Aztec Flying City by Bernard Bittler

It’s panoramic; nice use of color; great perspective; variety of 3D fractal imagery; excellent use of Photoshop cheating.  Cheating?!  Well, look at those clouds dragging and snagging on the “flying city” thing on the right side of the image.  I don’t think any of the 3D fractal programs, including Ultra Fractal added those clouds (did you know UF can make mandelbox images?).  I don’t want to start any fights or anything, but the use of graphical “post-processing” in the 3D fractal world is pretty obvious.  But I guess after years of in-house UF post-processing it’s a little hard for the UFers to complain about guys like Bernard adding clouds to their “fractal” images or combining three different fractal formulas into what is really nothing short of a “collage”.  But let’s not go there right now.

Sorry.  Bernard wins again.  It’s the best.  That puts Biomass in three-way tie for second place with Hal Tenny’s Gordian Twist and Jeremie Brunet’s Underwater.

But of course this is all simply my opinion and not that of the official Selection Panel.  The official Selection Panel, made up of, –what does the BMFAC rules say the Selection Panel is composed of? “The selection panel is composed of fractal experts, prestigious fractal artists, and sponsor participants.”

Sorry Fitz.  The experts have spoken.  If Bernard’s great image is “bog-standard/run-of-the-mill” according to just one of the “experts” and still placed in the top 25 to make it a winner, then I guess the judges must have really thought yours was trash to place it even lower than those 25 winners and even beneath the 10 “honorable mentions”.  Personally I think Biomass was one of the top 4 but I’m neither an expert nor particularly “prestigious”.

I think there’s a good possibility that Biomass was the victim of politics.  The organizers didn’t want the exhibition to be completely taken over by 3D fractals and so they let in a lot of (relatively weaker) traditional images and that’s what bumped out such strong images such as Biomass.

Most of the good fractal art being made today is of the Mandelbulb/Mandelbox/Hybrid something or other/3D variety.  The BMFAC despite my earlier concerns certainly didn’t shut those kinds of images out, but did they really go far enough and give 3D fractals (like Biomass) their rightful portion of this year’s contest winners?  They couldn’t.  It would require passing over the old veterans (has-beens) that the BMFAC alone considers “prestigious” and “representative”.

The contest has changed with the times, but it hasn’t changed as much as fractal art has –it’s not contemporary fractal art anymore.  The 2011 BMFAC has chosen a lot of fractal art that is old style and no longer impressive and certainly not representative of the art form today.  2D images made with complicated layering in Ultra Fractal belong in the last decade.

I wonder though; have folks like Fitz changed their mind about the BMFAC?  I’m sure he’s not the only one who’s been left scratching his head wondering what on earth the judges were thinking when they chose so many mediocre entries and passed over so many good ones.  In a thread on Fractalforums.com back in August, 2011 about the BMFAC 2011, Fitz seems to treat Orbit Trap’s criticism of the BMFAC as a rather trivial matter.

Screenshot of Fractalforum thread "International Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2011"

“Hilarious mental image”  Well, that was back in August.  Here’s his response to the actual judging two and a half months later in October, 2011:

Screenshot of Fractalforum thread "International Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2011"

“Pretty weak”

Ha ha! Prince John, you rascal!

Yes, my fellow countrymen of Sherwood Forest, Prince John’s Fractal Art Contest (PJFAC 2011) is not worthy of great fractal artworks like Fitz’s Biomass.  But now “methinks” his Sheriffs of Nottingham on the Selection Panel aren’t so much a “shady board of fractal art” so much as they are just plain bad judges of fractal art.

Fresh and only recently uploaded to Fractalforms.com, the Times Square of Fractalville, comes this modestly named image, Stable Wormhole.  Created by none other than the author of the famous Mayan-something images, Reallybigname…

~Click on images to view fullsize on original site~

Stable Wormhole by Reallybigname (fractalforum.com)

It’s part of the ever enduring mystery of art that images like this rarely seem to receive the sort of online reaction that I think they deserve.  Or is it simply that most viewers don’t see what I see in this image, or see it but don’t get as excited about it as I do?

First is the powerful circular symmetry and majestic structure to the image.  Fractals are particularly good at creating both simple structures and complex detail at the same time.  I can’t think (at the moment) of an image that demonstrates that as well as this one; it’s like a cathedral dome ceiling…

Interior dome of Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (aka Florence Cathedral)

Actually, it’s even more ornate than this cathedral dome ceiling, although the cathedral dome is full of symbolism and tells a detailed biblical narrative.  But both images draw on the “energy” of highly organized geometric design.  On the other hand Reallybigname’s image is completely anonymous and as suggestive of mysterious things and powers as the similarly geometric religious images called mandalas:

Mandala_of_Vajradhatu from Wikipedia

You see how “cosmic” such mandelbox creations can look?  Such imagery is both ornamental and at the same time powerfully symbolic, as if it was a religious diagram or text book chart as well as a piece of artwork.  And fractals often create very similar looking types of imagery (even if they’re not always appreciated right away).

It’s an interesting overlap between mere “beauty” and mystic symbolism.  I could go on: the theme of geometric order and strange, mystical symbolism is one which has always fascinated me about fractals.  Fractals are so simple and “harmless” and yet the multiple mathematical arms that draw them are something of a cosmic wonder themselves if you think about them.

Perhaps math is the one aspect of fractal art that can give it a greater value than that of being mere decoration and ornamentation.  Of course, one needs to be able to identify the mathematical “code” of the image and thereby know what they’re looking at.

(Back to Reallybigname’s image.)

I didn’t like the subdued coloring at first especially in the upper part, but I came to see it as very tasteful and sublime the more I studied the enormous amount of detail in the image.  The outer corners are rock like and stoney while the center is almost a hazy, glass like material, a bubble of something undefinable.

There are forests, islands, caves, smooth expanses and little scratches containing mysterious treasure troves that only the parameter holders can know of (the parameters are included on the Fractalforums.com gallery page).

The central parts along the edges look like animal bone cross-sections, but then as one moves towards the center we come across something like a crystal ball sitting in a miniature landscape of mountains and trees.

There have been a number of other mandelbox images like this.  A few I’ve even reviewed here on Orbit Trap before in the early days of the 3D rage, but this one by Reallybigname is a definite refinement of this particular 3D fractal art form.

More Reallybigstuff by Reallybigname:

• Reallybigname’s YouTube Channel
• Reallybigname’s Fractalforums.com bio page
• Reallybigname’s website, Reallybigname.com!

Sometimes I just like to share interesting things that I find online that I think will be of interest to Orbit Trap readers who are “on the same wavelength” as me.  Perhaps that’s only one or two people but so be it.

Lindelokse, an established Deviant-artist decided to join the gang at Fractalforums.com and announced it, as is the tradition at Fractalforums.com, in the Meet and Greet section here.

Nothing scandalous or anything.  I just found the responses rather amusing and a further example of what distinguishes places like Deviant Art from Fractalforums.com.  Deviant Art is a place where social silliness (for those who don’t know this…) is the order of the day.

Nothing wrong with that!  I just mention it because the development of online culture is an aspect of fractal art that is very relevant since fractal art is almost entirely an online art form.

Also, I heartily encourage everyone to visit Lindelokse’s Deviant Art page in case they’re curious as to what kind of artwork could evoke such a warm, back-slapping (blooming) welcome as this!

Screenshot of Fractalforums.com thread

It’s not often I click on fractal videos these days.  Video is just tricky with fractals, especially when you’re trying to combine it with music or some sort of meaningful sound.

But when I saw Madman’s posting on Fractalforums.com today, when he said, “This one took 10 days to render @HD quality, no anti-aliasing.” …I thought no one spends 10 rendering something for nothing.  So I took a look.  And you can too, right here, thanks to the embedding powers of YouTube:

The intro is amazingly well done and syncs with the music like it was made in movie studio.  The spinning spokey top thing transforms in the weird way that 3D fractals often do and it usually looks distracting and disorienting but in this case it works wonderfully well.  The small wire elements which make up most of the imagery look good all the time.

Screen capture at 25 second mark

This is right were my mind went “wow”.  I thought I was in a new Star Wars movie landing on an updated Kamino Cloning Center or in Bespin Cloud City.  The best “shining” part of the video in my opinion.  But there’s more I liked:

Screen capture at 1:05

At this point I felt like I was flying as well as in a dream.  In addition to watching it at 360p on my laptop I also downloaded the 1080p HD version (114MB) and watched it on my newly aquired 40″ HDTV.  Yes, that is a step up in venue, but everything good about the video is still there at 360p and small screen.  The “action” in the video alone makes it impressive.

Screen capture at 1:16

The color goes hyper and wild at this point and I really liked it.  Rather than look broken or overexposed it was stylish.  Even the golden flash added something.  It took on a real Tron like look, the original version.

Screen capture about 1:35

Someone on Fractalforums said the best part was at about 1:30 and they’re certainly right that it’s one of the best.  We shoot suddenly out into space enroute to this ornate structure.  There’s a lot of very nice still images to be found in this video.  Just like one of those European art films.

Screen capture at 1:49

Here, almost at the end of the 2:11 video I get the Stanley Kubrik 2001 feeling.  Maybe a few too many stars in the background, but they do help for perspective and showing movement.  Nice orbiting space station.

A few general comments:  Firstly, what a thrill.  I was genuinely dazzled in a couple places and I’ve seen my share of “wonder-filled” mandelbox videos this year.  Madman has really accomplished something with this video.

Secondly: he kept the length of the video short and tight.  There was always something happening in the video and not just something moving or transforming, there was always something captivating going on.  I think that’s the hardest part along with syncing the audio with the video.  Making video seems to require juggling several things at once.

Thirdly:  The graphical picture looked unique and fresh to me.  I’ve never seen this sort of “steel staple” formation before and it transforms well during the spinning, zooming and rotating.

Fourthly:  I don’t know if zooming into little tunnels is always the best thing to do when you’ve got so much spectacular and panoramic other things to look at, but it does balance those “big” scenes with an alternate, close and confined experience.  And the last tunnel zoom fit with the music exceptionally well.

Fifthly:  It takes great graphics, good planning and just the right selection of music/sound effects to create a good fractal video “experience”.  That’s a lot of work and maybe it takes some real talent for this sort of thing, too.  Video is a different medium than still image work and simple fly-throughs in and over otherwise interesting imagery just aren’t enough to keep people’s attention anymore.

Sixth:  Let’s all watch it again…

Or: Why the Offline Promotion of Fractal Art is a Waste of Time

Here are 6 reasons:

There is no such thing as “Great” Fractal Art

This is the key problem, really.  I didn’t understand this myself until just this past year.  Fractal art is a limited medium and it just can’t make the kind of visual imagery that evokes great ideas or makes people stop and reconsider the nature of art itself.

The hopes of the contest organizers is that they will “wow” the offline crowds with something they will recognize as “real art” and start people and the media to take a serious look at fractal art.  But they won’t because such works don’t exist and never will.  There’s a ceiling to how impressive a piece of fractal art can be and that ceiling is well below the artistic stratosphere of Warhol, Goya, Picasso and even Pollock (yes, even those drip paintings).

Pollock’s drip paintings have historical value and are largely respected for playing a part in freeing the minds of the art world.  Pollock was like Columbus discovering the last parts of the world.  Covering the same territory today with digital tools doesn’t accomplish the same thing.

The greatest fractal art collection won’t move critics or even the average art fan to suggest that all galleries need a fractal room to be complete and up to date with today’s advances in art.  It will catch people’s eye for a little while.  That’s what decorative, design artwork does.  No one’s going to write a Master’s thesis on a piece of fractal artwork the way many have about Picasso’s Guernica.

Fractal art is too eccentric to appeal to most people

I didn’t use to agree with this until I heard Paul Lee say it once somewhere online.  Unlike most people in the fractal art world, Paul is trained and experienced with both sides of the fractal art genre; the technical side and the art side.  I thought about it more seriously when I heard him say it.  Actually he said “too abstract” but I think eccentric is a better term.

Sure, we’ve all heard stories of how appreciative people are when they see fractals for the first time and how they marvel at its (genuinely) freaky mathematical origins.  If all those people were connecting with fractal art work in a really meaningful way instead of in a merely superficial way then the fractal art world would be enormous by now.  To most people fractal art is just eye-candy and it melts in their minds as fast as chocolate does in their mouths.  The real aficionados are a statistically small group; weirdos like us.

Fractal art is an attractive but shallow art form that is best appreciated by being exposed to hundreds of works

Fractals are a world to be explored and to look at, not a few masterpieces to be studied and “understood”.  To have this happen in an art gallery you’d need to have an exhibit of hundreds of images, not a mere 25.  And without animation you’ve missed a feature of fractal art that leaves it incomplete, especially in the 3D area.  Suffice it to say that printing and framing fractal animations is both financially as well as technically challenging.

Ideally the audience would get to fly the spaceship themselves and not just stand on the ground and look at the pictures.  Again, this is not something that an offline gallery is best at, although digital works can be displayed –digitally– in galleries.  Of course, seeing how easily fractal imagery can be made might cheapen the masterpieces hanging on the wall in the audience’s mind.  But maybe making fractal art is more exciting than viewing it?

Fractal art is created on computers and that is the most natural venue to view it in

What a thing to say!  But really, sitting in front of a computer is the context in which we make our fractal discoveries and also the venue in which we polish and perfect them.  Printing them out can be produce spectacular results but we’d never get to that place if they hadn’t appealed to us in a big way on the computer screen.

As for the rich detail of high resolution printing, so what?  You want a closer look?  There’s a number of solid technologies for displaying zoomable images on the internet.  In fact, I think Damien Jones, one of the BMFAC organizers produced one of his own.  Ironic, I’d say.

Printing can produce rich images that the computer screen can’t match.  It’s almost as if printed images are a genre all their own.  But that’s going a little too far.  There’s nothing second rate about “monitor art” it’s just a lower resolution and smaller, but that’s the “canvas” on which fractal artists work.

The notion that fractal art is a young and relatively unknown art form with the potential to “go viral” is an old and exhausted excuse that has been repeated over and over again since it really was a young and relatively unknown art form with the potential to “go viral”

Fractals aren’t a new thing anymore.  Look at all the old people who talk about seeing their first fractal back in the 1980s on the cover of Scientific American.  Look at all the people who claim to have been making fractals for 20 years!  Self-programmed on Comodores or Amigas with monochrome monitors and hammered out on dot matrix printers.

Me, I’ve only been around since 2002 but I’ve seen a few things come and go and I can tell you that even the recent 3D fractal surprise has only taken us to new places, no one has found anything categorically new there.  The fractal world gets larger and larger with the addition of every new formula, type of formula and rendering method but it doesn’t really go anywhere or advance to a higher level.  It’s the same old awesome but strictly ornamental type of imagery all the time.

People know about fractals, they just don’t care.  There’s plenty of fringe art forms around; will they captivate you and change your life if one day they have an exhibit in your city?  We couldn’t care less about them and they feel the same about us.  It’s the law of the conservation of apathy.

Offline art resides in art galleries because it’s not digital, not because that’s the apex of art

I can’t help but think that many fractal artists see art galleries in the same way that small town athletes view the Olympic Games.  In the words of Frank Sinatra  “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere, It’s up to you, New York, New York”.

Anyhow, there will be plenty more Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contests in the years to come once someone figures out a consistent sponsorship method.  The real question is how long will it be before fractal artists realize that they’re already in “New York” and the only place the BMFAC will take them is offline and out of town.

The only thing fractal art lacks today is creativity.  The artwork is too tame and domesticated.  Contests have never been able to change that.  In fact, they seem to encourage it.  Institutionalized and anemic artists that seek approval rather than innovation.

And another thing…

If you’ve only got one or two judges then there’s nothing that really needs to be explained.  But when you’ve got 12… one would naturally wonder how a much more complicated scenario like that would actually work.  How do a dozen people from all over the globe select a group of 25 images out of 345 entries?  Dave Makin says the Honorary Presidents aren’t “actually” judges and yet they are listed on the official site as part of the Selection Panel.  If that’s the case then how much does an individual judge know about the judging if such a basic fact about who is and who isn’t a part of the Selection Panel can be in dispute?

Just taking a glance at all those names on the Selection Panel makes me wonder if they all have equal roles.  Just like a chairman of a board of directors, someone has to initiate the judging and organize everything.  I would assume either Damien Jones or Javier Barrallo (or both) perform that role.  Makes sense, doesn’t it?  Someone has to organize the group.  But this begs the question of where does simple clerical organization and direction become the more executive function of control and manipulation?

Discussions take place, electronically I would assume, because the group is geographically spread out.  When there’s a stated mandate for the contest to create an exhibition that “represents” fractal art rather than just pick the best works, and we now know that a considerable amount of discussion goes on to accomplish this because simply counting votes won’t work when you’ve got to make sure no artist “wins twice” (or three times) and the many inevitable ties have to be broken… it suggests that there’s an enormous amount of influence and direction required by the organizers.  Aren’t the organizers acting as editors of the judging?  That is, they’re judging the judging.  What I’m saying is that they’re going to have to do that even if they didn’t intend to when they created what is essentially a committee in need of direction.

I think it’s an absolute necessity and that means that despite the big list of judges and the wide influence one would expect the actual result is one or two people exercising a disproportionate amount of control over the whole process in order to arrive at a decisive result that reflects a view of fractal art that can only be a subjective one because in who’s opinion has the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest ever been “representative” of the state of fractal art?  (Of course the judges aren’t really that diverse.)

It’s never really been a contest because from the very beginning it’s always had this huge group of judges and such groups never create clear decisions even when voting on just a few things.  How much more so when their tasked with selecting 25 entries out of 345.  Unless they’re “helped” that is.  I think anyone can see that the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest judging is not straightforward and simply can’t be.  12 judges and 345 pieces of art: how many more variables do you need to produce a circus?  Oh, and remember each name associated with a work can only appear once in the final results.  No wonder nobody has wanted to explain the judging of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest all these years; its an irregular and informal thing.

For those who can’t understand why their artwork wasn’t part of the “winning” selection I would say they need only to look at chaos theory itself and remember that unpredictable results often occur in circumstances that are “highly sensitive to initial conditions”.  The old Butterfly Effect thing.

If they’re going to…

• not consider a second artwork by any artist
• rearrange the judging results to include a “wider range” of styles
• declare in the rules they don’t want “garish” art
• let the Honorary members influence the results
• have a discussion to decide the final winners

…then why do they have all those judges in the first place?

And what exactly does this mean?

From the BMFAC 2011 site, rules section

Apparently the Honorary Presidents aren’t “judges” and yet they are considered to be Selection Panel Members? But they “did express their own choices”.  How?  To whom?

I would expect the Honorary Presidents to be judges.  Isn’t that what the above screenshot from the Rules suggests?

My point is: if they’re going to do so much adjusting of the judging then why bother having 12 people vote.  Wouldn’t that just create a great deal of noise rather than clear results?  Wouldn’t it simply create the need for one person or a few senior people to step in and break ties and chose which image by a popular artist becomes their only winning one?

Dave Makin, (a judge) in a recent comment here has shed some light on the judging process and for that I really am grateful.  But I question just how much any one judge really knows about the actual selection since there’s so many of them and the expressed need to show “diversity of fractal styles” and a whole bunch of other rather subjective things stated in the official rules makes it a task that necessitates some strong oversight and direction.

Personally, I think that big list of judges is nothing more than a smokescreen to justify a whole lot of “adjusting” to go on.  Call it a “discussion” but it defeats the entire purpose of having 12 people judge if the results aren’t going to be honored and a whole lot of negotiating is to go on afterwards.  It creates a situation where each judge really has very little say in the final outcome and their votes cancel each other out.  And where the final results can be claimed to be a group decision when in fact no group that sizes is capable of coming to any clear decision on 25 pieces of art.  You end up with an exhibition that no one voted for.

From that sort of “judging” comes the sort of “winners” we’ve seen this year.

In case you haven’t seen them, the winning images are all here.  Of the 25 winning images which will make up the entire exhibit shown sometime within the next year, there’s only really one good one: Aztec Flying City by Bernard Bittler.

They messed up his name on the official website.  I know because this image of Bernard’s and subsequently him as well is quite familiar to me; I reviewed it here on Orbit Trap over a year ago.  He’s known as “arias” on Fractalforums.com where he posted the image in September of 2010.  Even still, the image is an excellent example of state of the art 3D fractals and certainly not stale.

I wouldn’t have reviewed any of the other 24 “winners” here on Orbit Trap because I don’t think they’d be of much interest to anyone.  In fact, looking over all the entries left me feeling a little sorry for the judges.  They can only chose from what is submitted and many of my favorite fractal artists, whose work like Bittler’s I’ve reviewed here: Johan Anderssen; Jeremie Brunet; Mark Brady; and Hal Tenny; submitted works which weren’t what I’d say were their best.

None of them are in the “loser’s circle” however.  But I’ve identified a number of works that were chosen that I don’t think belong in any fractal art exhibition and certainly not one that hopes to introduce people to fractal art.  Let’s start with the best of the worst:

Janet’s a legend in the fractal art world but as I posted just recently her work expresses a cheap sentimentality and cliche style that has come to characterize what’s dull and boring about fractal art these days.  Even Louis Markoya, a winner in the contest, agreed with my comparison of her with Thomas Kinkade, that great “Painter of Kitsch”.  “Revelen” or any of her other works with such pompous titles belong with the also-rans and not with the winners.

This one wouldn’t even make it into the deceased Fractal Universe Calendar.  Shiny flowers arranged on a string over a textured background layer?  It’s almost childish.  There’s a mistake with the name, maybe there’s also a mistake in placing this one as a winner?

Conveniently placed together for a screen-shot, here’s two more “winners” who ought to have shared a common destiny buried away in a Deviant Art gallery.  You can’t see much from these thumbnails but take it from me, they look even more trivial when viewed large scale on the contest site.  More cliche fractal “art”.

Yvonne Mous is a previous BMFAC winner.  I don’t think that’s much of a compliment anymore.  Jessica ought to be ashamed for trying to connect her multi-colored spiral party with Vincent Van Gogh’s art work.  Of course she’s not guilty of elevating it to the winner’s circle.  All she did was submit it.  You are forgiven.  Go and sin no more!

One other thing: isn’t that the “garish, 70s-style imagery” that the Rules say they don’t want to exhibit?

Carbajo is another artist who was chosen in a previous BMFAC.  While the other “losers” are merely decorative, this one is merely disgusting.  Yes, it looks like a tissue slide.  But why would we want to look at it?  Or exhibit it?

I first saw this one just a few days ago in the recent gallery uploads page on Fractalforums.com.  I didn’t click on it there but I did click on it when I saw it on the winners page of the BMFAC 2011 site.  Another shiny thing from Ultra Fractal.  Even Janet doesn’t make shiny stuff anymore.  The Fractal Universe Calendar would have made this a cover image.

Bill is a veteran BMFAC winner.  He’s tied with Dave Makin for the lifetime achievement award.   Dave was a judge so he couldn’t enter the contest this year.  If they want to be fair about things they should make Bill a judge next time so Dave won’t be penalized for his pit stop as a judge this year.  Bill’s work is sharply rendered and very fractal but so is a broken window.

Come on.  What were they thinking when they chose this DESKTOP WALLPAPER as one of 25 images for an art exhibition?  I will acquiesce and say that maybe Janet Parke’s artwork is a matter of taste and I just don’t care for it, but this glassy tree on a mirrored surface by Pasternak looks like a User Contributed Aero desktop theme for Windows Vista.  They’re going to print this out the size of a door and hang it on a wall?  It’s nothing more than a cellphone background.

Ewa’s another long time competitor in this World Cup of Fractal Art.  I was a little hesitant to label it as one of the losers because I looked so long into that fuzzy sandstorm expecting to see something.  Ewa’s learned a thing or two about “artistic” fractals.  Make them fuzzy and highly textured and people will see things in them.  It would be interesting to hear what the judges saw in this one.  I’ll bet it would be more interesting than the actual artwork.

Let me end off on a positive note.  One of our “biggest fans” here on Orbit Trap has been hard done by in this year’s contest.  I’ve listed here 11 images that I think are worthless examples of fractal art out of the total of 25 that they chose as the winners.  That’s almost half the winning entries.  Those images have taken places that other entries could have filled.  Think about that.

One of the entries that I think beats all 11 of these losers is by Esin Turkakin.  Here’s a screen-shot from the entries page:

Decide for yourselves:  Isn’t Esin’s Metropolis better than all these losers?   And yet, it won’t be exhibited because the judges thought those 11 were better than this one.  I can’t blame the judges for not picking works that weren’t submitted, but I can accuse them of incompetence when they chose bad ones over better ones.  I’m not saying it’s great, I’m just saying it’s better.

The Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest needs a better system of judging.  Better art submissions won’t matter until they fix a system that is both dysfunctional as well as shrouded in secrecy.  This year’s herd of losers really begs that point.

Oh, and give Bill a chance, too.

Why don’t I ever seem to get better, Dr. Jones?

[Image seen here.]

I feel strangely unmotivated to write about the 2011 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest (BMFAC) "winners" this go-around.  I’m tired of BMFAC as a topic — maybe because while the competition makes changes that should improve it, it never really improves.  BMFAC will always be sick at its core as long as Damien Jones is in charge.  Like the art form itself, as Tim recently so eloquently argued, the contest needs a complete reboot. Jones insists upon displaying only craft-based ornamentation, and his aesthetics strictly determine what kind of work gets submitted.  In fact, his rules are consciously designed to crimp off anything other than stale decoration because fractalness, not art, is valued. 

But it’s not an art contest if no art is exhibited.

I do believe a decent fractal art exhibition is possible — but not under Jones’ heavy-handed prognosis.  It’s true that 3D works got through the door this time and are proportionally represented.  One wonders if 3D fractals will do so well in the next iteration once the novelty has worn off.  We’ll see.  And how many of those 3D selections were chosen precisely because they seemed refreshing by comparison?  And how savvy are BMFAC’s judges if they can’t tell the visionaries like Johan Andersson and Jérémie Brunet from the coattails posers like Iwona Fido and Louis Markoya?

And until BMFAC sheds the notion that fractal art must spring from a computer for self-expression rather than embracing a broader fine arts “Phase Two” model, the contest will remain constricted and narrow-minded. 

What’s saddest of all to me is that the 3D artists who entered appear to have fully invested themselves in Jones’ pre-codified aesthetics.  If 3D images attempt nothing greater than to comply with Jones’ fractal art template and seek only to replicate Janet Parke’s ornamental embellishments using new forms, then the revolution is over before it even begins.

I liked only one piece — “Worn Out” by Therese Aasrud.  And not because I thought it was great art.  But because it wasn’t just another take on (supposedly) lovely organized imagery.  "Worn Out" wasn’t worn out — wasn’t “the fractal according to Damien Jones.”  The rest neither moved me nor made me think.  Ramon Pasternak’s piece is probably seen by many as innovative.  I thought it was simplistic and retro.  I saw more vivid tree-like, “river basin” imagery back in the late 90s while using Tiera-zon.  Frankly, some the winning work is as embarrassingly smaltzy as the gunk imagery that formerly polluted the Fractal Universe Calender (FUC).  And, candidly, once more propping up Janet Parke and her faux-Zen titled confections to a perfunctory, musty pedestal (throw in an Honorable Mention, too, why don’t you) borders on pathetic — a desperate maneuver to insure that Jones’ inner circle maintains its preeminence and relevance.  One hopes that even the most hardcore Fractalbooker can see through such a transparent ploy.

It’s true that BMFAC has made some improvements over the years, and OT has charted and even acknowledged the progress.  Anyone being fair will grant that such changes would never have been made without the pressure OT brought to bear on the contest.  Ironically, even though our patient (fractal art) is receiving better treatment, the prognosis for recovery never truly improves.  As long as Dr. Jones is the presiding physician, the patient will remain ill (if not comatose).  Fractal art desperately needs a second opinion.

The problem, I think, is that OT has affected BMFAC about as much as we can.  We helped clean up some of the jaw-dropping excesses — like overtly displaying judges beside contestants and the more obvious conflicts of interest — but, unfortunately, we can’t euthanize BMFAC like we did FUC.  Jones is nothing if not driven, and he consistently cobbles together the time and resources (but still no sponsors?) to bring off BMFAC.  Moreover, it seems the community remains blissfully content to let him get away with it — even to the point of presuming that placing in his “art contest” is somehow a meaningful achievement. 

My point is that Orbit Trap has pointed out all there is to point out.  We can continue to speak out if the contest regresses back into its previous bad habits, but we cannot wave a wand to magically mitigate Jones’ continuing stranglehold on our discipline.  Now, it’s up to you — you, the fractal artist currently shackled with BMFAC’s craft guild approved eye candy handcuffs. You have to be fed up with such arbitrary restrictions and find the resolve not to buy into Jones’ limited vision as to what your art should and must be.

If the fractal art community continues to accept Jones’ rubric of fractals as being merely decorative designs, then, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, we will all get the contest we deserve.  OT has already shown the community why such a road is a dead end — or, more accurately, is an unending stay in a hospice where one faces terminal illness without the option of either recovery or death. 

But like the proverbial horse that is led to water…

By looking at all these weird fish images my hope is that you’ll stop seeing them as fish and start seeing them simply as objects of shape and color.

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

Opisthoproctus_soleatus by Augustus Brauer, 1906

Eurypharynx_pelecanoides by Goode and Bean, 1896

By Eric Zugmayer, 1912

Saccopharynx, 1887

Winteria_telescopa by Augustus Brauer, 1906

They have no need of being real, we can relate to them entirely as manifestations of shape and color.  Shape and color then, become real things, or rather, they become their “own reality”, their own little world with its own characteristics.  Which is ultimately what I’ve been saying about fractals: they have little in common with other things (like fish, Tim?) and like fish out of water (forgive the metaphor) they are a disappointment when flopped down at the feet of a land animal.  They can’t really be compared.  Underwater, of course, the land animals look equally out of place.

Scopeloberyx robustus by Emma Kissling, 1911

Scopelogadus_mizolepis by A. Brauer, 1906

Poromitra_crassiceps by Emma Kissling, 1911

Cottunculus_microps by A. Mintern, 1887

Bolinichthys longipes (Brauer 1906)

Challenge: imagine a deep sea fish you’ve never seen before.  It’s got eyes, a mouth, tail (an end) and some fin-like structures somewhere in between.  In your mind, add some colors, give it some brighter ones in places and some more subdued ones in others.  Change the numbers of it’s parts; two tails, one eye (or three).  Stretch some part of it and compress some other part.  Give it some new kind of pattern for fish scales, say car-keys or bottle caps, or sewing needles.  Lastly, change the outline of it, it’s profile.

Now look at that fish and ask yourself if it’s really something completely new or just a variation of other ones you’ve already seen?  It’s probably a variation, a synthesis of other images you’ve already seen, but a fractal program will come up with shapes and colors that you’d never imagine.  That’s the strength of fractal algorithms, they work in ways our human minds don’t.  But then that non-human “painter” doesn’t come up with the sorts of things that a person would paint.

Coccorella_atrata by A. Brauer, 1906

Regalecus_glesne, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

Cryptosaras_couesii by Gilbert and Jordan, 1905

Platyberyx_opalescens by Emma Kissling, 1911

Malacosteus_niger by Emma Kissling, 1911

-Lobianchia_dofleini by Emma Kissling, 1911

I just say that fractals are a completely different medium and that you’ll never find creatures from our human domain in theirs.  Just as you won’t find fish living on dry land.  They’re two different environments and they produce two different –but equally interesting– kinds of art work.  Interesting, though, for different reasons and in different ways.

The question is not, “Are fractals art?” but rather, “What kind of art are fractals?”  They’re not the kind of art that human artists make.  And for that reason they’ll never do what the works of Picasso, Dali, Da Vinci or other artists like that have done.

We make fractals with a different kind of machine and machinery; that’s the “medium” we work in.  We get a whole new category of results from working in that new medium.  Comparing it with other, more traditional mediums like painting or photography is a mistake because all the audience will think is, “Those aren’t good paintings” or “Those aren’t good photographs.”

But what I’m saying is that fractals aren’t a digital subset of those other visual art forms, they’re a whole new category because they’re made in a totally different medium.  If you regard fractals as something new and unconnected to any other preexisting art form or medium, I think you’ll be able to work with them much better and appreciate them much more and also to deal with any criticism they might receive better.  You no longer will have to defend fractals as paintings or photographs before painters and photographers.  Like the deep sea fish, fractals are strange new things to look at; fresh examples of shape and color that could never have been imagined.

Is that art?  Of course it’s art, but it’s not the kind of art that Picasso made or Ansel Adams made or that any human in the future will ever make.  Fractals as an art form are on a completely separate trajectory and path than the “human” or hand-made arts because where they come from and what forms them isn’t human or done with the hand.  The real winners in fractal art are those who are content with fractal art existing in a separate, alien domain.  The losers are those who want to be painters and photographers.  You can’t get there from here.

Made in Sterlingware

Made in Xaos

Made in Sterlingware

Made in Xaos

Made in Sterlingware

Made in Fractal Vizion

Made in Tierazon

Fractal “objects” composed of little more than a shape with some simple coloring has been one of my favorite themes over the years.  Most of what I see other people making are much more complex “scenes” with very “deluxe” coloring.  But for me the ability of a program (and the formula it’s using) to create a variety of shapes is intensely interesting.

15,500 year old flint tools from Texas (Michael Waters, Texas A&M Univ.)

Is this art?  Cave-man tools?  Yes, it too is an art form of shape and color.  Shown together they are even more powerful as examples of mere shape and color.  I made some things in Terry Gintz’s quaternion program, Hydra.  All they had going for them was their shape and their coloring.  There was nothing else to the images.  Shape and color were their only characteristics.

Fractals (and rocks) are good at this kind of thing.  It’s a simple genre that works with only shape and color and so it’s not capable of doing the sophisticated things that something like sculpture, for instance, does.  There’s more to a Henry Moore sculpture than there is to those flint tools in the picture above.  On the other hand, I find the stone tools more attractive and pleasant to look at (and hey, probably more useful too).

Fractals are an interesting art form just like weird fish drawings and rock collections.  I wouldn’t say fractals are a lesser art form because they lack the capacity and capability for higher expression (above the level of a rock or fish).  They’re just a different kind of art.

I can just see the old sage, Master Po, from the Kung Fu TV series saying to Kwai Chang:

“The greatest art is found in the common objects around us.  We see art in a painting because we look for it.  We do not see the art around us because we do not look for it.  Art is nothing but a frame.  It says, look!  Every man who looks is an artist.”

“But Master, you are blind.”

“Can you see what I see, Kwai Chang?”

“I do not know what you see, Master.”

“Well then, shut up about it!”

It had to happen sometime.  Fractalforums.com is a wide-open, free access forum that allows image uploads.  And many fractal artists subscribe to the old belief that if you throw enough “stuff” at the wall eventually some of it will stick.

Well, 65 clumps on the wall in one day was just too much for the folks at Fractalforums.com.  Maybe I shouldn’t advertise this, but they’ll still let you get away with hurling three a day.  Frankly, I’d say that even one a year is too much.  Why allow anyone to use a community forum as a personal gallery?  –community space as personal space.

I’ve smiled a few times while following the discussions about this on Fractalforums.com.  The moderators over there are wrestling with the same thorny questions that we did here on Orbit Trap when we finally decided to moderate comments and not grant carte blanche to anyone who wanted to spit on us or preach ad nauseum from the comments section.  Say something relevant or shut up.

Interestingly, the term ad nauseum has been used in the English language since the early 1600s.  It seems that overwhelming and unwanted content is nothing new.  It’s just grown legs and sprouted wings since the internet came along.

Now, in defense of people who want to dump a pile of their artwork right in the middle of everyone’s way…

There is no defense for people who do this.  It’s a deliberate attempt to hijack a venue known for better content and use it, briefly, for the completely futile purpose of showing people stuff that they don’t want to look at.  Nice people don’t do this.Unfortunately it’s the nice people who have to respond to it and come up with a policy to deal with it.  What it really is is unpaid advertising.

So what exactly should be done about image spamming on a place like Fractalforums.com?  Glad you asked.  I’ve been thinking about this, and like I said before, it’s much the same sort of situation as has been encountered here on Orbit Trap with respect to comment moderation.  So I feel like I’ve been through this before.

#1 Don’t punish the innocent

It’s always just a few people who do this.  Try to focus your attention on fixing them.  Forcing everyone to stick to some arbitrary limit in the interests of “fairness” isn’t fair because all those other people are not the problem.  In a similar sense good dogs don’t need to be put on a leash (or muzzled).  You don’t have to treat good members the same as bad ones.  In fact, why would you?

#2 Punish the guilty (with zeal and abandon)

Kick ’em out!  Kick ’em wa—-y out!  And throw rocks at them while they run off.  Get everyone involved and celebrate!  Have a deletion party.  Use blinking text and marquee messages.

#3 Don’t give newcomers a door key

Spammers usually register and dump a load of junk right away.  They’re usually strangers.  They don’t make any attempt to “get to know anyone”, because they’re just there to use the facilities, the web space.

If it’s possible, don’t allow anyone to immediately upload anything.  Give them 30 days or something to show their good behavior and just join in the forum discussions.  The probationary period will pass soon and then they can have full access.  But for spammers, the probationary period will never end because they’ll never stick around that long.

#4 Public forums are not “Public” places

The place belongs to whoever started it up and pays the fees (if any).  If you want it to be a place to discuss fractal software development where images are only posted as examples, illustrations or test-renders… then don’t apologize to people who want it to be an online art gallery.  Suggest they sail away and found a vibrant new online colony, far (far) over the horizon.

Whatever preferences the owner or moderator may have for the site may drive some people away but the one’s who are looking for what you’re attempting to establish and maintain will gladly cooperate with you because they share your vision for the site, too.

You can’t be all things to all people and if you try the whole site will just descend into fiery spamnation.

#5 The New, The Trusted and the Ugly

Three classes of members (if the software allows it).  Don’t set any posting limits, just tell everyone to stop before they post an image and ask “why will anyone on this forum want to look at this?”  If you can think of a reason then go ahead and upload it.

Posting limits turns moderators into policemen and spoils the mood of the forum (for them as well as the others).  They also force moderators to punish members only because they’ve stepped over a (possibly forgotten) line.  It’s all about quality, not quantity.  If someone drops in with some exciting snapshots from their Voyage to the Bottom of the Fractal Sea, then they should govern their uploads by the same principle that everyone else is using: “will it be of interest to other members?”.  Sometimes you need a series of images to make your point.

#6  Keep your list of rules short

The comment policy on Orbit Trap was slowly boiled down to a single sentence: “Comments are moderated, but only to weed out the harassing ones.”  What exactly does “harassing” mean?  Well, for starters it’s a relative thing, but the essence of it is this: irrelevant and unpleasant.

Contrary opinions aren’t irrelevant although they might be unpleasant.  But when people people repeat the same things again and again, they quickly become both irrelevant and unpleasant.  But that’s what “trolls” are all about: they want to irritate you and discourage you from continuing.  To them, freedom of speech means having the freedom to heckle whoever’s giving the speech.  In other words: harassment.

#7 Marked for Destruction!

Image spam is the posting of irrelevant images.  Images that don’t have any connection to what the forum postings or the general theme of the forum is all about.  If a moderator isn’t sure that the images being posted by someone are irrelevant just wait for someone to say so.  In an open community, annoyances are self-limiting things that everyone is eager to “fix”.

News sites allow anyone to flag a comment and then label it for the moderators as: 1) spam; 2) hate speech; or 3) obscenity.  If the software allows this, Fractalforums could include a “Flag this image” as part of the gallery posting template along with the “rate this image” 5-star option.

Anyone can mischievously click on that flag as a prank (sounds like fun) but the news sites don’t say they’re going to remove flagged comments, they just allow you to flag them in order to “alert a moderator”.  What this flagging thing really does it remind commenters that every comment they post can easily be flagged as garbage if someone thinks it is.  When you post stuff that people don’t want to see they’re doubly motivated to alert the moderators and get you punished for it.  But they also know that if there’s nothing wrong with what you’ve posted then it won’t do anything and may even make them look bad.  (Oh no, another form of online vermin to be eradicated: false complainers.)

It’s easy to skip over 65 mediocre images in an online gallery, I do it every day!  But it’s strangely soothing to click on each image, one at a time and flag them.  It’s that vengeful aspect of human nature that makes the task of moderation so much easier.  People like to punish wrong-doers.  That’s what keeps comment sections going: the urge to correct others.

#8 Deep discussions about math and graphical programming…

Deep discussions about math and graphical programming are toxic to image spammers.  I actually think that’s what has kept the art dumpers away from Fractalforums.com for so long: it shrivels them right down to the roots like a good old systemic herbicide.

Linux forums have the same effect on the link spammers.  They take one look at what’s being discussed and they’re no longer even sure what language the forum is using.  “Who on earth is going to read this stuff?”

I noticed a few months ago a number of unrepentant Deviant Arters dropped in on Fractalforums.com, posted images and began doing “deviant” things like posting inane comments to make theirs and their friends images stand out.  Surprisingly, these people just drifted back to Deviant Art and abandoned their conquest of Fractalforums (itching skin, headaches, tired all the time…)

One reason was that they didn’t get much attention.  Probably because most members on Fractalforums weren’t interested in images that only look nice and didn’t have some technical relevance, but also I believe because the heavily technical atmosphere of Fractalforums drove them away.  I think they finally found a potential audience that didn’t interest them.

One of the best ways to keep any online site from being hijacked is to simply be so extremely different that outsiders suffer from culture shock.  If you aren’t interested in fractal programming and the optimization of graphical systems then what is there for you at Fractalforums?  Even nerds would call these guys nerds.

#9 Censorship!!!

I almost forgot about this.  Funny, because even today it still comes up.  You block someone from commenting after weeks or months of steadily growing annoyance and within hours they suddenly appear in your referral stats on another site telling everyone in the world how they’ve been “censored”.  I thought censored meant you were prevented from speaking?

But no, to blog trolls it means they’ve been forced to set up a brand new blog!  This kind of New Censorship could the greatest boost to self expression ever seen.

There is no such thing as censorship on the internet.  Users finding themselves “censored” (the Che Guevaras of our time) can go to Blogger (popular), or Deviant Art (even more popular) or WordPress.com (good comment moderation options!).  Add in Google Adsense advertising and they might even make money at being “censored”.

And for the fractal art Che Guevaras who find themselves exiled from Fractalforums.com, there are even trendier options available from which to “show the world” how they’ve been censored.

Flickr is nice.  Deviant Art is your best bet if you’re looking to recruit a battalion of berets and counter attack (on Deviant Art).  Picasa… Renderosity (does anyone go there anymore?).  They’re all free of charge, but for a few bucks a month you can (literally) own your own domain and expose the evil squelching of anyone (or everyone) who’s blocked you from accessing their site for reasons you may start to better understand if you actually attract an audience and start receiving the same trash you once dished out.

Don’t cry “censorship” online.  It just shows how superficial and phony you are (and probably were all along).

Anyhow

Anyhow, Fractalforums.com is a special part of the fractal world and I’d like to see it stay exactly the way it is.  Hopefully the moderators will have the conviction to stand by their reason for being and tell people who want to do other things to go to other places.

I believe it was probably that need for a new and special venue that gave birth to Fractalforums.com in the first place.  That’s how Orbit Trap got started.

If you’ve been following my recent revolutionary thoughts about fractal art you may have noticed a few comments posted by readers here and in other venues relating to emotional experiences and feelings triggered by fractal images.  Such things are important from my revolutionary perspective because they appear to refute my theory that fractal art is mentally empty.

One the the main tenets of my artistic uprising is that fractals alone, “raw fractals” computed from parameter settings, are such a rigid graphical medium that they don’t allow the artist enough involvement and direction in the creative process to produce works that express feelings and ideas in the way that painters and even photographers can.  The fractal medium frustrates human expression so to speak, rather than facilitate it.  Fractals are a completely different kind of imagery, completely artificial and best appreciated for its weirdness and supreme alien character.

In fact what I’m saying is that the fractal medium is for all intents and purposes dead to such things as human expression and commentary.  Things which have been the main themes in (finer) art up to this point in time.  Attempts to use fractals to convey human feelings, thoughts, ideas and just about anything else that originates in the experience of being alive is a waste of time and the source of innumerable pieces of bad art.  And so I say… it isn’t going to work, give it up!

But in the interests of fomenting creative insurrection in the fractal art world, or at least more enlightened thinking about fractal art, I think I ought to respond to these suggestions that fractals have already been doing the sort of emotional expression that I (boldly) said they will never be able to do.

I will start by disqualifying most of what my critics are claiming to be works of “emotional expression” by saying that sentimentality is not the sort of higher art material that I was talking about in the first place.  Sentimental feelings, although nice and pleasant and definitely a type of emotional expression, are not substantial or important enough to be the subject of “fine” art (the good stuff).

Dictionary time…

Sentimentality

bleeding heart A person of excessive and emotive compassion; one of undue sentimentality, whose heart strings quiver at the slightest provocation. This figurative phrase is of relatively recent origin:

You want to think straight, Victor. You want to control this bleeding-heart trouble of yours. (J. Bingham, Murder Plan Six, 1958)

hearts and flowers An expression or display of cloying sentimentality intended to elicit sympathy; sob stuff, excessive sentimentalism or mushiness; maudlinism. This American slang phrase was originally the title of a mawkishly sad, popular song of 1910.

sob story A very gloomy story; a sad tale designed to elicit the compassion and sympathy of the listener; a tear-jerker. This common, self-explanatory expression often applies to an alibi or excuse. It also frequently describes the narrative recounting of the trials, frustrations, and disappointments of one’s life.

How anyone could heed such a sob story is beyond me. (Los Angeles Times, June, 1949)

~from thefreedictionary.com

Fractals that give you that “Christmas Tree” kind of feeling, or ones that remind you of a cat sleeping in front of a fireplace are just sentimental.  A well stocked cupboard or a reupholstered couch can do the same thing.  Joy amidst defeat; dark victory; the futility of everything; irony; heart of darkness… –these are the kinds of emotions I’m thinking of when I speak of fine art vs. decorative art.

Sentimentality I would say, following my decorative vs. fine art dichotomy, is “decorative” emotion as opposed to the “fine art” emotions that I just listed.  How does one express dark victory, a sense of great loss amidst the reality of success with fractals?  In Goya’s greatest scenes we seem to see… nothing that you’d expect to find in Ultra Fractal!

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

A plate from the Disasters of War series by Francisco Goya (c1810) Tr. "What more can one do?"

Not even the most carefully crafted bifurcation fractal can come close to expressing what Goya has done here.  These are the powerful, complex emotions of fine art works.  (It’s also part of a larger series of works.) Here’s an example by an equally talented skilful painter that evokes and expresses plenty of emotion, except it’s all sentimentality (maybe even cheap sentimentality?).

“Cinderella Wishes Upon a Dream" by Thomas Kinkade

If Thomas Kinkade is the “Painter of Light”, then Goya is the Painter of Darkness.  (To be honest, I’d rather have the kitschy Cinderella picture hanging in my dining room, but there’s a very enlightening lesson in Goya’s grim ink sketch reminding us that war gives opportunity to evil things.)  Goya’s work is fine art while Kinkade’s is sentimentality at it’s “best”: emotion as decoration.  Fine art is sometimes ugly to look at while decorative art, as its name suggests, is always pleasing and beaut-i-fying.

Les Coquelicots a Agenteuil by Claude Monet (1895)

How about Claude Monet?  The water lillies guy.  I actually bought a print of this painting here and hung it up in my residence room in university (years ago).  Have you every seen a fractal image that expressed such a peaceful, soothing and joyful feeling as this?  Maybe you think you have.  But can I call this “fine” art, or finer art, or is it just simply my own personal preference in sentimentality and decoration?  Was Monet simply the Thomas Kinkade of the last century?

Sentimentality is superficial emotion.  It’s shallow, trivial experience.  So I guess fractal art that expresses emotion can’t be considered fine art if those emotions are shallow and trivial.  “Cute” is shallow and so is anything that elicits a mild response.  Fine art deals with emotions of substance and complexity.  The Mona Lisa, for example, almost qualifies as sentimentality except for the fact that the famous smile is complicated and nuanced.  If she had a typical smile (or no shirt on) it would be a great work of sentimentality not art.

If it’s any comfort to those of you who feel hurt that I’ve dismissed all of fractal art as decorative art/design then you may be delighted to hear that Monet’s Coquelicots (Poppys) has just been tossed into the same category as you.  I don’t put all of Monet’s work there, and I should add that I really like his Poppys painting (I bought a print, remember?) but it’s nothing more than just a really beautiful image of nature.

If someone was holding both Monet’s and Goya’s images over a fire and asked me to chose which image was was more worthy of being spared destruction I’d say Goya’s because it’s a rare and powerful artwork of great moral merit rebuking our illusions of what war is.  What Monet has captured in his painting can be recaptured on any nice summer day by going for a walk in the country.  (As for the Kinkade one, I’d say “Hey, don’t forget this one!”)

Fractal artists work with formulas and their parameters and so you can’t expect such imagery to depict the same sorts of themes as painters do because painters form all of the image themselves and make the image do and be whatever they imagine (and have the talent to render).  We can’t expect fractals to portray the products of the human imagination, or even the the complex human emotions we ourselves experience everyday.

Some fractal images do, however, portray emotion it’s the shallow kind of emotion which I call sentimentality.  I suppose I really ought to show a few examples of this fractal sentimentality to complete things, but I’ve insulted enough people for one posting already.  On the other hand, if you really want to see “good” examples of this type of lower-class emotional expression, in the spirit of Thomas Kinkade, I can’t think of anyone better than this Prestigious Fractal Artist.

It’s been a rather heavy week in science.

An international scientific team in Italy claims to have recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. And just when you were finally getting comfortable with the fabric of the universe. Rip up that old model — because, according to Reuters:

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

Uh-oh. Somebody better call the Mending Apparatus from E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops.

But hyper-accelerated quantum shape-shifting particles exceeding the cosmic speed limit was (unbelievably) not the weirdest and most jaw-dropping geek achievement this week.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), scientists at Berkeley have successfully decoded the brain signals of three individuals and transformed those signals into watchable movies. Wearing those 3-D glasses is now more than just retro. You obviously need the latest flat screen feature: Telepathy.

The left clip is a segment of a Hollywood movie trailed that the subject viewed while in the magnet. The right clip shows the reconstruction of this segment from brain activity measured using fMRI.

To my eyes, some of these internally reconstructed images look muddy but still somehow recursive. Those elephants and birds appear neurally re-mapped into blotchy fractal landscapes. I think fractal tracking shots might be physiologically hardwired into our brains:

Naturally, I could be wrong. This post, like everything I write on OT, is only my opinion. You might see something else in these images of what could be considered the ultimate in cinema verite. You might instead think these skull screenings more closely resemble the tone of the surrealist, murderous, crawl-through-the-flat-screen film in The Ring.

All I know is that I signed up for the Berkely Brain Movies Low Residency Program*. And now, every time I surf over to deviantART, over to its Fractalbook Swamp of Mass Ornamentation, my brain consistently records the same reoccurring movie. This:

Yeah. I admit it. I pretty much identify with Ricky. I must like to picture myself in his place — pitting my hard skills against the soft skills of the Bad Hair Hulk wannabe better-off-as-sausage Fractalbookers. But hey. A man’s gotta dream. And, of course, record it.

*Fictional. For the sarcastically challenged.

~/~

In an unrelated matter, here’s a glimpse of Beyond Infinity, a massive installation by Serge Salat placed inside a mall in Shanghai. I was struck by the inherent correspondences to mandelbox forms in Salat’s piece. Imagine being able to reflectively stroll through such fractalscapes instead of the often less satisfying quick fly-bys and loopy deep zooms. How wondrous would that be:

~Click on images to view full-size on original site~

Synthetic made gold crystals by the chemical transport reaction in chlorine gas. Purity >99.99% Photo by Alchemist-hp (Wikipedia)

Why do people make fractal art?  Well, actually they don’t make it so much as they find it, steal it, dig it out of the dirt.  Some of the best pieces of fractal art are things just picked up off the floor of the gold mine.  The fractal miners don’t call them art.  They don’t call them anything.  They’re named by where they were found or with a date.

Fractal art is warehouse full of rocks and boxes of rocks.  Seen as “test renders” many of the really interesting fractal works are known by just a few because they never make it out of the goldmine and into the bigger world.

The “miners” have just seen too much gold to realize how valuable their finds really are and how much they shine when compared to the artificial stuff that clutters the big cities of fractaland.   Although none of it is worth anything they keep going back to look for more.  If that’s not a good description of gold fever I don’t know what is.

Knini by Bib (Jeremie Brunet)

Made way, way back in April of 2011 in Mandelbulb 3D this was a single render, meaning (I guess) it comes from a single image and not a series of layers.  When you find a nugget like this you don’t try to fit it into the usual 4:3 or 16:9 frame, you let it have its own aspect ratio.  You’ll need to take a look at bib’s treasure map if you want to find another one like this.

Rotated "Mandelbox surface" by Kali (fractalforums.com)

The full size is worth the view.  I like the humble name.  This is probably one of the best examples of panoramic lighting and haze I’ve seen in the 3D fractals.  There’s no mention of any processing but can Mandelbulb 3D make something that looks this polished and complete all on it’s own?  I don’t think it could have been painted or drawn better than this.  And the monochrome palette makes it look even more impressive instead of plain.  But to Kali it’s just part of a conversation about mandelbox “folding”:

Rotated “Mandelbox surface”

Then added 90º rotation on y axis

There are many possibilities using this method with different params and rotations

These folks are so low-key.  This is an awesome 3D fractal rendering that would make a spectacular poster: “Fractal Mt. Kilimanjaro” or “Eiffel Tower of Babylon”.

Burning Ship Close-up by HPDZ

HPDZ is High Precision Deep Zoom which (as you may have guessed) is the name of a program of whom the author (I believe) is Michael Condron of hpdz.net.  Not exactly cutting edge fractal art these days, but some themes like the Burning Ship (and the Phoenix formulas) just never lose their shine and this is a good reminder of that.  The site is dedicated to deep zooming and contains animation downloads ranging from 7 to 739 MB (for the true enthusiast).

Special Sphere by Haltenny

There always seems to be something just a little new in the 3D world, but this is quite a bit new.  It reminds me of the internal parts of an electric motor as well as the lobby of a very ritzy banquet hall.  Haltenny is a master of the metal mandelbox and if you follow these things you undoubtedly have seen either his very steam punkish copper vats and piping or versions by other people using his (generously shared) techniques and parameters.  (What is a parameter file but a fractal treasure map?) You’ll find the best ones on his Deviant Art site.  This is a bit of a departure for him but he’s one of those folks who’s always looking for something new.

Alisss by Fractalisman

Too glassy and brittle to be real gold but it’s still a golden one.  A nice 3D scene with a figure photoshopped in.  I don’t think it’s all that easy to make these scenes look big and massive.  I think one has to have some skill with the lighting and fog effects otherwise the result is something microscopic rather than this Glorious Temple of Golden Glass.  Is that woman standing in awe of the massive monument in front of her, or is she genuinely lost?

Hernando's Hideaway by covertop99agenda5 (Deviant Art)

Well, who else would find such a motherlode as this besides “covertop99agenda5” aka co99a5 aka Kevin from Jacksonville Florida.  I don’t know which name to use, but I will say that he often makes very detailed renders like this one.  I think these take much more time and certainly one has to also find something with worthwhile details to render.  Despite numerous appearance on Fractalforums, Kevin seems to have most of his work on his Deviant Art page.  Which in fact is a goldmine all it’s own.  I’ve just included the most golden one here.

ABoxScale3Start16 by Trawersant

I have no idea who this person is but their Fractalforums bio says they’re from Poland.  There’s a bit of a funny story connected with this one.  Trawersant apparently uploaded quite a few images via the convenient bulk upload function which is something frowned upon in many online art venues (to put it mildly).  In fact I would have avoided them all if it wasn’t for the fact that this one in particular has such an interesting and unusual mandelbox folding pattern to it.  You can really see how complex and amazing the details of 3D fractals can be.  No mention of which program made this one, but I’ve heard that sometimes you can’t tell those things from the final images.

Baroque by Pauldelbrot

Paul is an oldtimer by fractalforums standards having been there since January of 2009.  I believe, but I’m not sure, that his full name is Paul Derbyshire and he’s been active in the fractal world for quite some time.  Paul has a different perspective on fractals which means, using my goldmine metaphor, that he tends to pick up different rocks than most of the others.

The patterning and design aspects of Pauls images are quite captivating despite their humble appearance when displayed alongside the latest sculptural wonders of the mandelbox.  This one is a fine example but many of his other ones displayed on Fractalforums are equally good.  The style is quite different but it’s still golden.

Sketch by trafassel

In case you thought “Professor” trafassel had disappeared on his Journey to the Center of the Mandelbox I present this image to update you with his whereabouts.  This is part of a series of images he’s made with his own program Gestaltlupe that seems to incorporate some sort of ancient dust parameter.  It’s weird, but the images all seem to have accumulations of dust on them like the objects in a pharaoh’s tomb would.  The result, along with the black and white, or greyscale, palette is to give a much stronger impression that one is looking at a photograph or electron micrograph.  In a sense the journey is real and like other fractalists trafassel is exploring  something quite tangible and in his own custom made gold mine.

A flower for you, by stoni (fractalforums)

Stoni adds the note that this is his first fractal posted to fractalforums, made in the Mandelbulb 3D program.  I’d say he’s (she’s?) off to a good start in this prospecting business.  A great example of the varied geometric surfaces and structures that can be made.  Shape is everywhere and the variations are impressive.  I think it would make a very unique Christmas card.  In fact, I’ve always though fractals were a natural theme for such ornamental themes as cards.  Hopefully Stoni will be back (unless he’s actually another Deviant artist with a huge gallery slowly growing over there).

Well, as always there’s more.  And there always will be because fractals are a goldmine, or rather they are *the* goldmine.  You won’t find paper money in the goldmine but you’ll find gold.  It has a value all its own unlike the paper stuff that everyone chases after in the big, bright cities of fractaland.

Made in InkBlot Kaos

I think I’ve found a better way to explain what makes fractal art so different than other art forms.  The differences are there simply because fractals themselves are a different medium to work with.  Fractals are different than paint and canvas or chisel and stone.

In fact, fractals are probably the strangest kind of artistic medium of all.  Consider, for example, the two very dissimilar and but equally well established mediums of painting and sculpture.  The differences between them are actually much smaller than those which exist between them and fractals.  For starters, both painters and sculptors can touch and alter their work with their own hands.  Fractal artists can only interact with their work via the parameter settings of the fractal program.

I would imagine that many people would consider fractals to be very similar to any other kind of visual art medium because the final products look that way.  Fractal artists produce prints just as photographers do.  Fractals are two dimensional images just as any painting is a flat, two dimensional image.  Fractals can even be three dimensional making them appear to be just another way to make sculpture.

But that’s looking at fractal art backwards!  It’s more appropriate to look at how fractal art is made rather than how it appears in its final state.  It’s more enlightening to consider the context the artist works in than the form the finished product takes.  The differences are huge when one regards how the artist makes their so-called “paintings” and “sculptures”.

When one only looks at the end result, they don’t see the deeper differences between fractals and other forms of visual art that are not observable in the gallery.  The differences come from the process by which fractals are made; this is where fractals diverge enormously from other art forms.  The strengths and weaknesses of fractals as an art form are different than other visual mediums because when an artist, even a great artist, works with fractals, they are working in a substantially different artistic medium.  A medium that works differently.

Being a painter matters little in fractal art because a fractal program doesn’t allow for any painting.  One can digitally paint with a fractal image in Photoshop but that’s processing a fractal image, not generating one from a formula and rendering method.  Digital painting has more in common with traditional painting than it does with fractal art, despite their common digital context.

The irrelevance of painting skills is actually a liberating aspect of fractals for those who find painting or drawing to be a frustrating thing.  Those people are not limited by their lack of traditional art skills because the fractal program does the drawing and painting for them.

When a fractal artist goes to work what is most significant about their medium is not what they can do in it but what they can’t.  Like I mentioned earlier, the fractal artist can’t alter the image with their hands like a painter can.  Painters of course generally use brushes to do this but the brush is just an extension of their hand and is controlled by the artist’s gestures.  Fractal parameters don’t understand or compute “gestures”.  Another difference in the medium.

So the fractal artist works remotely, through the parameter options of the fractal program rather than directly on the image like a painter or sculptor.  This makes working with fractals quite a bit different, doesn’t it?  You can’t move a spiral around or make the mandlebrot man look slimmer and less like a snowman.  Sometimes parameter options will allow things like this, or possibly variations that approximate things like that, but those are options the formula and rendering methods make available not something the artist can always control like you can a paintbrush on a canvas.

This lack of control which limits what fractal artists can do is also what gives fractals their greatest strength.  Fractal formulas will run off and generate a huge panorama of imagery that few people (artistic or not) would never have imagined, much less realized, on their own.

The artist doesn’t have to tell the mandelbrot set what to do or where to do it.  Because of this the famous deep zoom animations are possible because the artist doesn’t have to draw all the (vertigo inducing) imagery required.  Not even the most talented cartoon animator could produce one of those hypnotic ten-minute zoom videos.  Or rather, the cartoonist’s zoom wouldn’t look the same and have the same awe inspiring effect.  Just as one can’t paint with a fractal program, a painter can’t “fractal” with a paintbrush!

You see now what I’m getting at, you horde of idiots?

The fractal medium is characterized by geometric beauty and not intellectual expression.  Fractal art is wonderful to look at but unavoidably stupid and empty-headed.  It’s because of the way fractals are made and not because of the people who make them.  It’s the medium!

Now granted, there are a lot of stupid people in the fractal world but (fortunately) that never enters into the equation because, like I said, there are no variables for human gesture or other human-ly things in a fractal formula.

So what can people do to make good fractal art?  What are the artist-controlled variables (if any) in fractal art?  Are we just frustrated painters in digital straight-jackets?

Well, like I said, there really aren’t any directly artist-controlled aspects in fractal art apart from changing the parameter settings.  So this is what fractal artists should focus on and concentrate their creative energies on.  It’s actually the only thing they can work with and if other artists get different results it’s because they’ve manipulated the parameters differently.

Now, strictly speaking layering and masking is processing although programs like Ultra Fractal incorporate these Photoshop functions right into the fractal program.  I’m all for it because I’m all for more (and more) processing of fractal imagery.

But you have to understand that these are not fractal and when you work with these kind of tools you’ve (silently) passed over into a different medium that doesn’t behave like fractal algorithms do because you’re not working with fractal algorithms anymore.  But that’s why people do layering and masking; they’re trying to get their hands on the canvas, so to speak, and paint on the fractal imagery.  It allows them direct control over the final image  and to do things they can’t do with fractal formulas.

Zooming and cropping is one aspect of making fractals that lies to some degree under the artist’s control.  (It’s a bit like photography but only if you’ll overlook the fact that fractals are the only thing you can “photograph”.)  Some creative selections of fractal images are unrecognizable to other artists who haven’t found that special place in the formula’s output.

Color is something generally overlooked in the creation of fractals.  Sometimes it’s hard to work with because, like all aspects of fractal imagery, it’s determined by things you can only slightly alter.  But if you find it’s possible to generate random palettes (like in Xaos) or to cycle or edit the coloring then it’s worth the effort because good color can make anything look appealing.

And don’t forget plain old experimentation.  Experimentation is doing what hasn’t been done and it’s also the most enjoyable thing about fractals, just playing with parameters to see what will happen.  I believe the main reason people get interested in fractals is they’re fun to play with or “highly interactive” as a psychologist would say.  There’s no money in fractals; most artists are here for the graphical pleasure.

But no matter what you do with your fractal parameters you’re not going to produce anything that lies outside the visual domain best described with words like: “design” “ornamental” “decorative art” and, the perennial, “beauty”.  The intellectually expressive, reflective and works that make social commentary are things that require a degree of interaction and artistic control that the fractal medium just doesn’t support and can’t provide.

But if you’re willing to accept such a limitation in a visual art form, then you’ll find fractals to be the greatest of all visual mediums for the easy creation and exploration of graphic design works, rivaling the ornamental and decorative genius of any human artist.

Those are the strengths and weaknesses of the fractal medium.

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

Closer by Jesse (Fractalforums.com)

Mayan Trickster by reallybigname was a great piece of design but this one here by Jesse Dierks is what I would call a great landscape –a fractalscape.

It’s a classic sci-fi vista complete with a rich, city of the gods in the distance.  Buildings that look like statues surrounded by a lush expanse of rich agricultural land around it.  And what’s with that weird temple like thing at the cross roads?

On the other hand it has a passing resemblance to the fire bombed cities of WW2 Japan.  A strange place indeed.  This is not the usual geometric scene made from Jesse’s own program, Mandelbulb 3D.  I guess all fractal programmers are artists at heart.

Julia Island 2 by Alexis Monnerot-Dumaine (2007)

This one I found on the Wikipedia.  An interesting example of post-processing.  The author give its story like this:

Julia set rendered as a landscape with Terragen. Fractal previously created with Ultrafactal (coordinates around 0.28 + 0i) and saved as a terrain with Terraformer. Boat added and level adjustments made with Photopshop.

The realistic context (all computer generated) is quite intriguing.  Someday UF may have a rendering option that does this with one click?

The Flood by Taurus66 (fractalforums.com)

Oops.   The Mandelbulber v 1.08 by Krzysztof (buddhi) Marczak already has it, or at least a lake effect feature.  It’s an old effect, but it still looks neat when used carefully.  This fractal thing, although somewhat fantasy-like, steps into reality with the water effect.  At the very least it dips its toes…  But now it’s become an island fit to illustrate a new voyage of Sindbad.

Secure Beneath My Watchful Eye by Madman (Fractalforums.com)

The eye thing looked so natural I first thought it was just a reflection.  Madman is living up to his name here by turning this happy fractal scene into a laboratory nightmare.  But again, the eyeball addition fits nicely reminding me of the fine mixed media images I previously reviewed by Brutal Toad et al.

The Scapegoats Udder by Kraftwerk (aka Mandelwerk)

This is quite recent as well as being fresh and innovative.  Am I the only one that senses a Dali-like style to this?  What are they and what do they mean?  There’s something quite compelling about this image.

From the Fractalforums.com gallery page:

Description: Inspired by the painting by William Holman Hunt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Holman_Hunt_-_The_Scapegoat.jpg
Having a fever… is good for creativity…

Higher quality: http://MANDELWERK.deviantart.com/art/The-Scapegoat-257662850

Mandelbulb 3D
Photos of clouds in background and reflections + birds my own stock, added in photoshop.

Photoshop.  Why does that seem to be popping up so much?  Johan Andersson has really done a great job on this.  It’s stylish and most important: not overdone.  He’s added touches that only accentuate the image.  Such restraint and tastefulness is uncommon in the fractal art world.  But then, Johan’s not your average fractal artist.

Well, time to roll the movie credits.  Like all bank robbers, I wish I could grab bigger handfuls.  I might just return, For a Few Fractals More…

The only place  I ever go on a regular basis to see fractal art is Fractalforums.com.  I don’t pay much attention to the names only the artwork.  So when a name like reallybigname becomes familiar to me it can only be because he’s been consistently uploading interesting work.

~Click on images to view full size on original site~

Mayan Trickster #4 by reallybigname

It was the colors that caught my eye, but on viewing the larger image I was genuinely shocked to see the incredible detail and stunning 3D depth to the image.  This was apparently made with Jesse Dierks’ Mandelbulb 3D but I’ve never seen anything like it from that program or any other.

As the title suggests, this is one of a series of images uploaded to Fractalforums.com and here’s an even more recent one:

Mayan Trickster #6 - Shambhalaya by reallybigname

Everything is just great; the color, the lighting.  And like the first one the incredible detail is …incredible!  Really crisp, high-quality rendering too.  This is a new benchmark for Jesse’s program and the 3D fractal category probably too.

Reallybigname must just have a flair for fractal “piloting” because he’s been making these sorts of highly detailed, geometric images for a few months now.  This one from May, 2011:

Illuminaughty by reallybigname

Reminds me of the crisp, detailed and very stylish images by “blob” I reviewed in a post a year ago.  This is the geometric engines of fractal art working in high gear; who could ever make artwork like this by hand?  And could they do it better?  The best any hand made artist could do to approach this sort of thing would be to copy something like this.

Wooden Ruins by reallybigname

The first genuine all wood 3D fractal image.  Wooden fractals?  Doesn’t it look like wood to you?

This reallybigname guy has too much talent.  Who is he?

I did some link clicking and quickly discovered his real name is Forest Walz, hailing from San Jose, California (or Costa Rica?).  He has a website, REALLYBIGNAME.COM where it tells me that he’s… well, a screenshot is easier:

Now you know who reallybigname is

I knew this guy was talented.  I’ll bet he has a YouTube channel.  Could it be called “reallybigname”?  Let’s try that and see:

He wrote the music, too.  Notice the nice, clean rendering and the… oh no…the temptation to embed YouTube videos has me in it’s power… can’t… stop… it…

Slideshows seem a little tame compared to 3D flythoughs, but this serves as a nice portfolio of reallybigname’s work and suggests, I believe, that discovery is a big part of making interesting fractal work.   There’s a wide range of imagery here but his recent Mayan Trickster series are the best.

In fact, I think the Mayan Trickster images are a good example of the graphical designs strengths of fractals that I talked about in my Rebooting Fractal Art series of blog posts.  Reallybigname’s Mayan images may not be Picassos or Rembrants, but they are very good at what they do.  And what they do is excel at complex graphical design; something Picasso or Rembrant in fact could not do as well as reallybigname here has done.

We need to start thinking of fractal art as the domain of geometric design and rich graphical wonders like these.  Baseball players don’t make good swimmers, but when they stick to playing baseball they really shine.

Reallybigname has just hit a homer with his Mayan series.  There’s nothing speculative or subjective about that; anyone can see how fractal algorithms excel at this kind of artwork.  Fractal art is in a class of its own and this is some of the best of it.

Some time has now passed since Tim posted his thoughts on "The Fractal Art Manifesto" — basically arguing that Kerry Mitchell’s document glorifies the artist’s role and downplays the computer’s contribution. Mitchell, in a cut-and-paste epic-length response, half of which was merely quoting Tim’s original post, rebutted — and then called in reinforcements from the Ultra Fractal Mailing List. A flash mob, virtual torches and pitchforks in hand, quickly gathered and — surprise!! — supported Mitchell en masse. Mitchell then claimed that I "lowered the discourse" in my follow-up post and wondered if OT would ever get around to addressing his "relevant points."

OT, of course, has no obligation to respond to comments. Comments, in fact, are responses to our "relevant points." Tim already said what he had to say about Mitchell’s manifesto, and Mitchell (and accomplices) had their chance to respond. OT’s readers, presumably, can now read both sets of views for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking for over a week as to how I’d like to respond, and my views haven’t really changed from my last post when I said that

Very few of the protesters actually engage with Tim’s expressed observations. The gist of most of the comments fall into 1) I disagree without showing any supporting evidence, 2) You’re a fool (or variation of that insult), 3) I am an artist because see here’s my art I made stuck somewhere on Fractalbook, or 4) some variation of the “art is in the eye of the beholder” platitude (which apparently means that no one, especially Orbit Trap, can ever say anything about art at all).

Tim laid out, in a series of six posts, an exhaustive treatise on why fractal art needs a rigorous do-over. He was quite specific in his claims, questions, and examples. Among them:

–Why has fractal art failed to produce recognized masterworks, like the Mona Lisa, found in other artistic disciplines?
–Interacting with fractals is a more creative experience than is presenting them in a static format.
–What fractal "artists" produce are "really the results of publicly owned, mathematical formulas."
–You can’t make art with fractals because "fractals don’t tell stories because they don’t speak any of the visual languages, that being: the human form and gesture, or landscape."
–Fractals and photography cannot be seen a comparable art forms because "photography has the richly expressive world of real life to draw on and that makes all the difference."
–You cannot draw with fractals. You can only enhance them, and "the creative scope gained from such features doesn’t make up for the limitations that fractal imagery already imposes."
–Fractals are "parameter art" that is "rigidly deterministic and we interact with them only in those aspects of which the parameters are adjustable." Therefore, "working solely with parameters is also an aspect of fractal art that limits its creativity and homogenizes its style."
–Fractal artists have no identifiable styles. Why? "Because they don’t post-process their work [thus creating "pixel art"] and avail themselves of the thousands of weird and not so weird graphical effects and filters that transform images much differently than the standard ways fractal programs do."
–Consequently: "Pixel art is a natural extension of fractal art for the graphically creative, while parameter art is satisfying only to those who are technically creative."
–Unless you post-process, you are merely a technician. "Artists crave novelty and are inherently drawn to create; and ‘to create’ means to make new things, not polish the old stuff up or tweak to perfection imagery that lacked style in the first place and only possesses technical merit.  Fractal programs are the comfy home of the technical ‘artist’."
–Then Tim answers his opening question: "I believe the reason why fractal art has failed to attract any serious artists or art talent is because any reasonably skilled artist can see how rigidly deterministic the process of creating fractal art is."

There’s much more, of course, but I’ve encapsulated enough to make my point. Which is: Did any of the commenters ever get around to addressing any of these claims — addressing them and refuting them with the same breadth and depth that Tim argued them?

It is my belief that they did not.

~/~

So, what did they say? Here’s a sampling.

LadyGrey asks:

Isn’t everything we perceive a “geometric construction” from the macro right down to micro level?

To a physicist, maybe. To the rest of us, no. I’ve yet to see, say, a newborn infant that looks exactly like a Menger sponge.

Elaine makes a mistake common to many of the commenters who, incomprehensibly, believe that expressed feelings or stated opinions hold the same status as facts. She says:

Design and ornamentation are still art. Saying that someone is wrong for calling something art in their own perspective is the same as telling someone their opinion is wrong.

I put up an OT post two years ago explaining why lovely ornamentation is not automatically art. And is Elaine suggesting that no expressed opinion, however farfetched, can ever be considered wrong? So if I express an opinion that Sarah Palin rode dinosaurs sidesaddle 6,000 years ago when the earth was flat, no one can question my perspective because "opinions are in the eye of the beholder"?

Madelon Wilson says:

I love making my fractal flowers, and in that sense, I have mastered that form within the realm of fractals.

Tim already explained why such an accomplishment is more technical than artistic.

Paula Nyman says that

Yes, the computer does the rendering but the artist has to input so much to really make it an outstanding piece.

but without explaining away or accounting for Tim’s points about the deterministic nature of "parameter art" and its inherently homogenized style.

Buddha Kat wants to know if we’re artists and can she see some of our "works of art" (even though links for other sites of OT’s contributors have clearly been available on the blog since its beginning) and then proclaims that

but no one has the right to tell me I am wrong to describe/define what I consider to be art, art…

because

artists have feelings too…

although Buddha Kat doesn’t seem to mind hurting our feelings with the insults she sprinkles throughout her comments. Since she wants to see our art, let’s have a quick look at hers:

CrossRoad by buddhakat9

Alelujah by buddhakat9

Although, according to Buddha Kat, I have no right to "describe/define" anything at all, I’ll risk venturing an opinion (which Elaine claims is "in the eye of the beholder" anyways). The two images above, made with different programs (according to their creator), illustrate Tim’s claims about "parameter art" being prone to rigid determinism, if not exhaustion. Moreover, I do not think these particular works rise to the level of art. They are ornamentation — decorative (and common) fractal forms that, in my view, are not even especially well crafted.

As for Mitchell himself, let’s look at several "relevant points." Here he is on why all fractals look alike:

I don’t argue that there’s a lot of similarity in images created with the same program, but I do argue with the idea of that being inherent in the process. The application of paint to canvas is an inherently limited process, but yet, artists have found ways to communication thought and emotion through their paintings. Communication requires a receiver, so perhaps, over the hundreds of years that folks have been painting, viewers have learned how to become effective receivers of the messages that the painters were sending.

But Mitchell has turned around the process. Painters are free to put whatever visions their skills can transcribe to the canvas. The canvas itself does not restrict the painter to a limited number of visions. What Mitchell is describing is more analogous to Tim’s outline of "pixel art" — not to "parameter art." And did humans really need "hundreds of years" to receive the communications of cave paintings? Or did those stick figures with spears chasing an animal shape look like a hunt from the moment they dried? But, in contrast, what thought, exactly, is being received here

Untitled (Test 3) by Kerry Mitchell

other than, at best, an aesthetic response to viewing a decorative object? Mitchell has yet to make a convincing case that the "organized imagery" of fractals can be just as meaningful as either painting or photography.

Mitchell goes on to equate fractals with photography because "artists" in both examples "capture a scene." But a scene captured by Ansel Adams (one of Mitchell’s favorite examples) is generally of a recognizable facet of nature. What, though, is the scene captured in Mitchell’s image above? That’s what Tim meant when he noted that Mitchell appropriated other disciplines, like painting and photography, and compared them to fractals "only in very general terms so that they will be broad enough to qualify fractals for membership." Mitchell has shown only spacious similarities (like "capturing a scene") but never demonstrates that fractals (parameter art) deliberately use the elements of design in ways that painting and photography (and pixel art) can and do.

~/~

Mitchell also accused me of "lowering the discourse" with an analogy that the UF troopers rushing in to prop up Mitchell were like dogs following the instructions of their master. He said:

What’s next? “Yo mama’s so fat…” Or maybe, you’ll reach the pinnacle of internet discussion and just call us all (Fractal)Nazis.

In the end, I think it was his side that went down that road. Here’s Cornelia Yoder bottoming out the discourse on the UF List:

Re: [ultrafractal] The Fractal Art Manifesto Revisited
From: Cornelia Yoder <yodercm@earthlink.net>
To: Ultra Fractal Mailing List <ultrafractal@list.ultrafractal.com>

Kerry, there is a certain class of people in this world who cannot create anything themselves, so they try to make themselves feel important by tearing down what others create. They can then feel more powerful than those who do the creating. Their value system behaves as if blowing up a building was of more value to the world than building it. Since they have no self-worth themselves, they have to try to destroy something to prove their power over those who can and do create.

People like that are not convincible of anything. Because they cannot create anything worthwhile, they have to destroy. Comments on that post only give them more to tear at. Ignoring them is (in my humble opinion) the most powerful thing you can do to shut people like that down – sort of like not giving terrorists free time on TV. Arguing with them only encourages them.

The Fractal Art Manifesto was a brilliant piece of writing that has stood the test of time, at least so far. It doesn’t need defense against idiots who (1) obviously don’t even understand it, and (2) distort carefully selected portions of it.

When someone who can create really good fractal art and sell it or get it hung in a serious art gallery critiques the FAM, I’ll read that person’s comments. But when someone who has never created anything worth looking at tries to drag others down to their level …. well ….

Everyone here should read the FAM, but imagine if no one ever read the OT blog, how long would they keep writing it?

Cheers,
Cornelia

That’s right. We’re worse than Nazis. We’re terrorists. Throw us in the same police line-up with Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden. No difference.

We don’t create anything? Like establishing this blog, running it for five years, without advertising, without self-promoting our own work, and in the face of "lowered discourse" like this

The Orbit Trap bloggers are
(a) insane
(b) retards
(c) fucking morons
(d) terrorists

is not creating something worthwhile? Personally, I’m not…well…"convincible."

~/~

Oh. Incidentally. I’ve had a few shows in "serious art galleries" — for whatever that’s worth. And we both manage to find the time to create our own artwork, too — that is, in between escapades like dragging others down to our own level and blowing up buildings.

How dare you? Really, really, really…

[Image seen here.]

It seems a flash mob of Fractalbookers has lowered the drawbridge and surged out of their virtual fortress. Upon hearing Kerry Mitchell’s clarion call on the UF List to defend his sacred manifesto (and legacy?), they’ve amassed in OT’s basement to pour their burning oil on our blasphemies. It’s too bad they won’t light their own torches brightly enough to see what the rest of us can see. Those that have come forward to testify are the very people who are currently privileged by a status quo that favors Ultra Fractal and is actively engaged in codifying the aesthetics of the likes of Kerry Mitchell and Damien Jones and the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest (BMFAC). Of course, they will yowl in protest. They have the most to lose should Tim’s fractal rebooting and post-manifesto observations prove true.

One wonders why Mitchell wasn’t content to simply defend his manifesto on his own. Does anyone seriously believe an outcry to his friends and supporters at the safe house of the Ultra Fractal Mailing List would lead to a barrage of unbiased critical thinkers intent on objectively weighing both sides of the issue? No, Mitchell’s plea was a chickenshit move — a conscious attempt to drown out Tim’s post with a din of orchestrated outrage.

But outraged about what? Very few of the protesters actually engage with Tim’s expressed observations. The gist of most of the comments fall into 1) I disagree without showing any supporting evidence, 2) You’re a fool (or variation of that insult), 3) I am an artist because see here’s my art I made stuck somewhere on Fractalbook, or 4) some variation of the “art is in the eye of the beholder” platitude (which apparently means that no one, especially Orbit Trap, can ever say anything about art at all).

I’m sure Tim will have more to say about all of this, as will I. There are enough giant egos spewing hot gas in OT’s recent comments to take Jupiter’s place in the Solar System.

But, for starters, I’ll just take a request…

~/~

Louis Markoya has been quite vocal on OT lately, sometimes making sense and other times appearing confused. He left a string of remarks on my recent post about Jock Cooper. Markoya was critical, and that’s fine. It seemed like a we-agree-to-disagree thing. Then, on Tim’s last post, he added this:

PPS; I am still awaiting a retort to my On Style 3 comments

Are you? Why? Orbit Trap is a blog — a private publishing venture. We don’t have to respond to you or even publish you in the first place. This isn’t Usenet or a discussion forum. You aren’t inherently owed a rebuttal for the privilege of posting a comment.

And all the more so after the way you behaved. You burst into my home here at OT and scream in my face that Cooper’s work is NOTHING (and, by extension, that my post is worth NOTHING) and then turn around and demand “a retort”? What, exactly, do you want me to say — other than something like: I think you’re rude? What did you think would happen? You’d show up all huffy and puffy, and I’d wilt and stammer, “Gee, I guess you’re right.”

But, okay, since you asked so un-nicely…

First, do you even know who you’re talking to? It may have escaped you that Orbit Trap has two contributors. You say, at one point, that

You stated in a previus [sic] post you do not get the same feeling from a fractal as you do looking at the Mona Lisa…..and, that it will take post processing to personalize and make art of fractals.

No, actually, it was Tim who said that and not me. Although Tim and I agree on many things, we do not have identical brain wave patterns. In fact, we sometimes even openly disagree [start here and go forward] with one another. I notice that Cliff Tolputt made the same mistake addressing Tim in his last post as me. As Woody Allen once said: “Don’t you guys rehearse?”

Second, Orbit Trap is a niche blog about fractal art. My claims about Cooper’s series and my belief in its success and worth were made strictly within the context of the history of fractal art created with computer software. I never said that Copper’s “Mechanicals” were unique in all of art history. I’m very well aware that straight lines have been used by somebody somewhere at sometime (uh, Stonehenge anyone?). It was you who falsely blew my claims way out of their original context and applied them to all art ever made. I’d prefer you respond to what I actually said. If you can offer a better example of an artistic post-processed computer-created digital art series made using straight lines with fractals as its base before Cooper made his then bring it here and put up the link. Then, and only then, would you be responding to what I actually said.

Third, would anything I say really matter to you anyway? I get the impression that unless art is made by Salvadore Dali or connected to Dali in some way, you have little interest in it. It’s all just boring “pseudo-intellectualism and banality.” So what’s the point in arguing with you? I’m sure you’ll be returning to this thread soon to champion your superior credentials and inform me what a NOTHING I am compared to you.

This time, at least, hopefully, you won’t be laboring under the false assumption that I somehow owe you a retort.

~/~

Don Berendsen has also been commenting on OT with increasing regularity — if not with increasing clarity. Berendsen likes to paint himself as both a traditional artist and a fractal artist who doesn’t “notice the difference in my artistic process when going from one medium or subject to another” (which, of course, says absolutely nothing about the intrinsic artistic worth of either the physical or the digital work, but that’s another post). Berendsen, as are most of OT’s fresher-faced commenters, is not a disinterested party. He founded and manages the Ultrafractal Wiki on FractalForums, so he most certainly has a stake in seeing to it that UF’s rising star continues to rise. Here’s Berendsen’s remark to my recent post about BMFAC slogging on:

Enough talk already! Please, please organize a fractal art contest where artists can be free of egregious wrong-doings of that other nefarious one.

I suppose I could just as easily turn it around to read:

Enough talk already! Please, please join Orbit Trap in its campaign to convince our only fractal contest to cease its egregious wrong-doings…

but that would be too easy. This line of reasoning borders on the childish level of “I know I am but what are you?” I’m visualizing a film director who stands outside a screening of his or her film and greets unhappy audience members as they exit with a finger in each chest and an admonishment of “Stop frowning and just go make your own damn movie if you don’t like mine!”

Besides, we’ve heard all of this — this and the other endless, tired, BMFAC defenses — as well as the insults like those over on Chris Oldfield’s DA journal where a past BMFAC winner calls Tim and me “retards” and other similar gems of high discourse — we’ve heard it all before. In fact, I answered this same line of reasoning (if it can be called that) in 2008 on deviantArt when ever gentle WelshWench suggested I just make my own calendar instead of criticizing the Fractal Universe Calendar (FUC). What I said then applies to Berendsen’s remark now:

Why should I go to the trouble to reinvent the wheel by having to create and manage my own contest? Isn’t it just easier to fix the ones we have and run them fairly and professionally using conventional operating procedures?

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?

Berendsen should try to keep up with semi-current events — or at least try to come up with more lively counter-arguments.

That’s enough to digest for now. I’ll be back soon to examine some of the illogic of the angry villagers currently storming OT’s ramparts — villagers who insist that a superannuated manifesto somehow can transform all of them into artists while they produce work that is merely decorative ornamentation.

While it may not be as well known today as it has been in the past, The Fractal Art Manifesto, written back in 1999 by Kerry Mitchell, is one of the very few attempts to formally define fractal art.  If you visit the Wikipedia page for Fractal Art, you’ll see that quotations from The Fractal Art Manifesto make up half of the introductory section of the article.  The point of view expressed in The Fractal Art Manifesto is something that needs to be addressed by anyone challenging the current state of Fractal Art since that current state today reflects much of the thinking in that singular document.

In a nutshell, my disagreement with the Fractal Art Manifesto (FAM) is that it over exaggerates the role of the “artist” and minimizes the role of the computer program in the creation of fractal art.  Furthermore, it grossly generalizes what art is and subsequently blurs the boundary between simpler kinds of graphical work like design and ornamentation with that of the more complex, expressive works that engage the viewer on higher, more thought provoking levels.  It’s just this kind of view of fractal art that leads so many fractal artists today to view fractals as just another artistic medium and themselves as just another kind of artist capable of producing work of similar status once they “master” their fractal art tools in the way other artists of the past whose own mastered their medium and tools to make their great art.

From the FAM:

Fractal Art is not:

Computer(ized) Art, in the sense that the computer does all the work. The work is executed on a computer, but only at the direction of the artist. Turn a computer on and leave it alone for an hour. When you come back, no art will have been generated.

“Executed…at the direction of the artist…leave it alone…no art”  Well, that “direction” the artist gives is what?  Choosing a formula, a rendering method, zooming in or out; it’s more like “placing an order”, like choosing menu options than directing the actions of a digitized paintbrush.  The balance is off; the computer does more of the work, much more, not less of it.  The fractal program draws the entire image, we just choose the options and chose only from the options.  “Direction” is an overstatement.  “Initiate”, “select” or “adjust” is more appropriate.

The fractal program is the major contributor while the operator’s role is trivial.  Adjusting parameters is not a terribly difficult or demanding thing.  The fact that the process can’t be automated and left for the computer to do on its own doesn’t mean it’s a difficult one.  Parking lots have attendants and supermarket checkouts have cashiers to scan bar codes and take payments.  Both of these functions need human supervision, but neither of them are hard to perform.  Adjusting fractal parameters is actually a fun thing to do and all one has to do is pay attention to what works and save the results.  I’m not sure such “work” qualifies one for the label (and role) of “artist”.  The role of the fractal artist is minimal because the work the fractal artist does is minimal.

In keeping with the theme of The Artist, rather than the more humble computer term, “user”, the FAM goes on to speak of Mastery, that great and glorious status in the fractal art world that says, “You’ve Arrived”.  It’s a common theme (and myth) in today’s fractal art world to talk about “prestigious” fractal artists.  The concept was found in the FAM too.

(Fractal Art is not:)

Random, in the sense of unpredictable. Fractal Art, like any new pursuit, will have aspects unknown to the novice, but familiar to the master. Through experience and education, the techniques of FA can be learned. As in painting or chess, the essentials are quickly grasped, although they can take a lifetime to fully understand and control. Over time, the joy of serendipitous discovery is replaced by the joy of self-determined creation.

Techniques of fractal art?  “As in painting or chess…”   That’s a pretty lofty comparison, which again reinforces my opinion that what’s wrong here is not so much whether the term “artist” is appropriate or not, but that the contribution of the artist (or whatever) in fractal art has been exaggerated and that this overblown role once accepted leads onwards, logically, to the assumption that fractal artists can be classed into novices and masters because what they do is so complicated and challenging.  And note the extension of the comparison between the two classes of novice and master into “serendipitous discovery” and “self-determined creation”.  Novices, like prospectors go wandering around looking for gold, while The Masters make themselves it by transmuting lead using their advanced skills.

There’s more…

(Fractal Art is not:)

Something that anyone with a computer can do well. Anyone can pick up a camera and take a snapshot. However, not just anyone can be an Ansel Adams or an Annie Liebovitz. Anyone can take brush in hand and paint. However, not just anyone can be a Georgia O’Keeffe or a Pablo Picasso. Indeed, anyone with a computer can create fractal images, but not just anyone will excel at creating Fractal Art.

The FAM makes another reference to photography but again it simply takes everything too far.  After all: just how much is fractal art like photography?

Fractal Art is a subclass of two dimensional visual art, and is in many respects similar to photography—another art form which was greeted by skepticism upon its arrival. Fractal images typically are manifested as prints, bringing Fractal Artists into the company of painters, photographers, and printmakers. Fractals exist natively as electronic images. This is a format that traditional visual artists are quickly embracing, bringing them into FA’s digital realm.

“Sub-class of two dimensional art…”  Meaning what?  It’s flat and you can look at it.  There’s some very subtle reasoning going on here, Mitchell is trying to connect fractals to all of visual art.  The categories are described in very general terms so that they will be broad enough to qualify fractals for membership.  But what exactly do fractals and photographs have in common?  Better still, what does fractal art and photographic art have in common?

This the core issue in understanding fractal art’s position in the larger art world.  Fractals are a medium and that medium has limitations that mediums like photography don’t have.  Yes, fractals are like photography in the sense that we “capture” imagery rather than create it by hand, but a camera is not much like a fractal program window.  Photography deals with realistic imagery; people, objects, human drama; while fractal programs are limited to geometric constructions.  Only in a broad, academic sense do fractals and photography have any connection.  And fractal artists are only brought “into the company” of painters and printmakers because they all make prints if they happen to use the same printing store on the same day.  I guess that would also bring them “into the company” of people getting passport photos and picking up baby and wedding photo enlargements too.  “Mom! Dad! I stood in line with Da Vinci today!”

Anyhow, it goes on with the misconceived idea that fractals are just another visual art medium and thereby suitable for the same artistic endeavors (when fully mastered) that artists in any other medium attempt.  I’ve bolded in red further examples of this from the rest of the FAM below to illustrate this:

Fractal Art is:

Expressive. Through a painter’s colors, a photographer’s use of light and shadow, or a dancer’s movements, artists learn to express and evoke all manner of ideas and emotions. Fractal Artists are no less capable of using their medium as a similarly expressive language, as they are equipped with all the essential tools of the traditional visual artist.
Creative. The final fractal image must be created, just as the photograph or the painting. It can be created as a representational work, and abstraction of the basic fractal form, or as a nonrepresentational piece. The Fractal Artist begins with a blank “canvas”, and creates an image, bringing together the same basic elements of color, composition, balance, etc., used by the traditional visual artist.
Requiring of input, effort, and intelligence. The Fractal Artist must direct the assembly of the calculation formulas, mappings, coloring schemes, palettes, and their requisite parameters. Each and every element can and will be tweaked, adjusted, aligned, and re-tweaked in the effort to find the right combination. The freedom to manipulate all these facets of a fractal image brings with it the obligation to understand their use and their effects. This understanding requires intelligence and thoughtfulness from the Artist.

(emphasis mine)

The last paragraph, “Requiring of input…”, makes the act of creating fractal art out to be a process that is as much under the control of the artist as it is with a painter in his medium.  If that were actually the case then fractal art would contain much more variety and personal style that it does because each artist would be literally sculpting the image remotely through the program’s controls with almost unlimited outcomes.

By “every element” I would assume Mitchell is referring to the list of items that goes into the “assembly” of the image in the previous sentence.  But such elements are merely the parameters of a fractal image that we’re all familiar with and they don’t give anyone anything like what I would describe as the “freedom to manipulate”.  What the artist can control in fractal art is limited and this is why so much of fractal art has the same style and appearance.  In fact it is easier to spot the program a piece of fractal art was made with than it is to guess who made it.  It’s the “style” of the program that characterizes fractal art, not the style of the artist.  This is in huge contrast to what the FAM portrays as fractal artists working with in their medium like high tech painters.  Whatever “thoughts” the artist might have in all this are largely irrelevant because there’s little opportunity to work them into the equation like there is when a painter imagines something and then takes up a brush to paint.

Most of all, Fractal Art is simply that which is created by Fractal Artists: ART.

Therein ends the majestic document called The Fractal Art Manifesto.  Notice the emphasis given the word art at the ending –all caps.  Why such an in-your-face kind of emphasis?  Manifestos, especially art ones, tend to be emphatic proclamations, but I think it’s important to recognize another, perhaps historical reason for why Mitchell (typographically) shouts the last word of his manifesto.  And that is the theme of defending the integrity of fractals as a bone fide art form before disapproving (and technophobic) art critics.

From the third paragraph of the FAM:

…similar to photography—another art form which was greeted by skepticism upon its arrival. (emphasis mine)

I don’t know what the situation is today, but ten years ago when the FAM was written, it was at least perceived by Mitchell and others that fractal art was being shrugged off by some artsy folks (curators, critics…) as not being art at all and trivialized by such statements as “that’s just Photoshop” or “anyone can do that”.  Damien Jones, on a web page entitled, Of Fractals and Art, hosted alongside the FAM makes similar allusions to the weak reception fractal art has received by some in the art world:

Probably as long as there has been art, there have been people asking whether this or that qualifies as art. Fractal artists often catch a lot of flak concerning their art. We sometimes have difficulty being included in art shows or in selling our work; we’re not always taken seriously, so to speak. We are treated as dabblers, pretenders, rather than as artists expressing ourselves through a new (relatively unexplored) medium. Since I consider myself a fractal artist, I’m not exactly an unbiased party, but I do at least have reasons for why I consider fractal art a valid art form.

Our art is best received by those who know nothing about it. They simply look at what we create, and their reaction is one of surprise, awe, delight… a range of positive emotions. They don’t ask whether it’s art or not; we present it as art, they accept it as such. No, our problems often seem to come from those who know a little bit about how we do what we do.

(emphasis mine)

“Those who know a little…”  They’re the problem people.  Or is it those who take the time to find out –a little more?  And think about fractal art –a little more?  That’s my problem; I started thinking about fractal art for myself.  But this is another topic for some other time…  If you’re interested, Jones goes on to say in his micro-festo much the same sort of things as Mitchell does in the FAM.

It’s a perennial topic in the fractal art world: we don’t get no respect.  I don’t know if it’s such a big deal anymore because maybe fractal artists don’t care so much what “the world” thinks about them because online it matters much less.  You only hear from people who like your work or want to buy prints.  You don’t get to see the sneering and snickering of art critics and other members of the intelligentsia.  You have to go offline perhaps for those delightful experiences (or start a blog…).

But I don’t think that fully explains Mitchell’s extreme reverential view of the fractal art medium and fractal art.  I think that’s really the way he sees it.  The extreme view of the mocking art critics is matched and countered by his own extreme view that seeks to defend fractals as being everything the sneering critics say it isn’t.  My own view is something in between.  I would describe fractal programs as more than tools and the users of them as something less than artists.  The resulting medium is something categorically new, consisting of powerful tools for creating decorative patterns and designs but having a “creative ceiling” that can only be overcome if one enlarges their toolset and thereby multiplies the graphical options.  Such advanced processing would then result in the sort of freedom to manipulate and tweak every element that Mitchell associates with traditional visual art.

[update 2011/08/26 7:30pm]

It seems Mitchell has sent out a call to all the Ultra Fractal Mailing List to come on over to Orbit Trap and defend the FAM:

Ultra Fractal Mailing List item, 2011/08/26