Sometimes fractal art is just an afterthought.  It’s the snapshots we take not because we want to impress an audience but because we want to remember what we saw.  Snapshots, like the button in any fractal program says, is “saving.”

Saving is recording but before Recording comes finding and before Finding comes just wandering around.

There’s a lot of far-out stuff in Dan Wills’ ultraMeta Picasa gallery.  It’s a reminder that fractal art can be just as much about exploring a fractal world as it is about that strange, fickle and formal thing called “art.”

~Click on any image to view full-size on its original website~

jovaNuliaTwo...moonset_probe_pancake_openclose by Dan Wills

All of Dan’s images here were made with Ultra Fractal which surprised me.  Of course, UF is a widely used fractal program but these are not widely seen fractal images.  But then, I think Dan’s approach to fractals is different; he’s looking to what the formula can make, not we he can make with the formula; the artist as scavenger and collector.  Maybe that’s why his images have a more “natural” look to them; they’re not tweaked all over, they’re found all over.

alanTIsVeryHelpful...tennar_quont_slimap_arge_other by Dan Wills

Glass panes and frost-like invaders.  Note the wild variation in the structures.  This is not the usual sort of fractal with self-similarity.  It’s more like the way frost grows on a window pane or how crystals take shape in natural rock formations.  This formula is very creative –algorithmically creative.  Where would you zoom into next?

alanTIsVeryHelpful...tennar_quont_slimap_smimap_kroma by Dan Wills

“Kroma,” the last word in the (long) working title or rather, simply the filename.  I hesitate to say that this is the best one of all but it sure shows the magnificent unpredictability in these fractals.  One could spend a good deal of time investigating all the places on this “map.”

alanTIsVeryHelpful...tennar_quont_slimap_arge_illness_larque by Dan Wills

What a change from the spectrum-ness of that last one.  But here the monotone environment seems to accentuate the details as much as the various colors of the previous one made them stand out in uniqueness.  In some fractal places you just can’t lose when you’re looking for something that will amaze you.

jovaNuliaTwo...out_tone_blum by Dan Wills

Subtle coloring, like the very first image, but rather than being dull it serves to shine just enough light on the fractal structures to show their natural wonder.  Less is more and here’s a good example.  Why should such a well known fractal structure be this interesting?  Maybe because we never really knew it.

alanTIsVeryHelpful...terminal_deposition_ununique by Dan Wills

From the fiery spirals to caves of ice.  It’s a good thing Dan took all these snapshots, otherwise who would have believed such things existed and how would anyone describe them?  The best way to tell people about fractal art is, as we all know, to show them some.  You’d sound crazy if you had to describe fractals with just words.  Again, notice the intriguing lack of similarity.  That’s algorithmic creativity.

alanTIsVeryHelpful...stonk_let_tennar_quont by Dan Wills

The only one that bears a strong resemblance to any other image, this one looks to me like a bright, starry night sky; frozen, broken, and then put back together creatively.  Look at the very top right corner; doesn’t that look like a puzzle piece from something completely different?  Even fractal formulas make mistakes.

alanTIsVeryHelpful...tennar_quont_slimap_arge_illness by Dan Wills

If you find these images astonishing, then you should view the entire sequence of them in Dan’s ultraMeta Picasa gallery as well as some of this other Voyages of Sindbad galleries.  You may find some of them even better than the one’s I’ve included here, but you will certainly get a better grasp of Dan’s “exploring style.”  Like a series of vacation snapshots or the sequence of photos depicting a volcanic eruption, you feel a story unfolding of which you are only looking at a few selected points along the way.

alanTIsVeryHelpful...tennar_quont_slimap_smimap_pients by Dan Wills

Can you believe this comes from the same group of images?  It’s not just a great image because of the color and apparent sunlight effect; the red structures have wrinkles and veins like real leaves do.  And they recurse into their own little triangular neighborhoods and window frames like they were grown, cell by cell, into this massive sailing ship of a tree.  I’m guessing, but I’d say this image comes from zooming into that “map” (Kroma) we saw in the third image.

If you’re looking to make a New Years resolution how about taking a little time from your busy fractal art routine and just go on a fractal walkabout.  You’ll see fractals and fractal art differently; maybe even for the first time.

From time to time while browsing fractal art on the internet I’ve seen images that greatly impressed me and yet when subjecting them to a second, more critical evaluation, found myself unable to defend them as anything more significant than just eye-candy.  What all of these images had in common was exceptionally good color.

Upon reflection, over numerous years, I’ve come to the conclusion that color is an element of visual imagery that is best described as a fourth dimension because I think the role that color plays in the “architecture” of an image can be just as great as all the other fundamental parameters that, taken together, constitute the “length, width and depth” of an image.

There are artists who consistently make images that draw heavily on the subtle but effective properties of color.  Artists who concentrate on color are what I would describe as “visual musicians”.  I call them that because I don’t know how to relate what they do to what other artists do and like a great tune, it’s an undeniably pleasant thing.  It’s a wonderful thing, even if I don’t understand it.  Call it beauty, but I think  the term, beauty, is often just a word for when we run out of words.

In the digital realm color can easily seen as an independent aspect of an image because we can easily change it independently of everything else in the image.  Color is a global property and those are the kinds of properties that are most easily manipulated in computer graphics programs.  The little, detailed kinds of things you still have to work with by hand.  But you can change the entire color gradient or palette of a fractal or rotate it’s hue with just a few clicks in a graphics program.  It’s no wonder then that some artists chose to put the emphasis on color: digital tools give them “color-powers”.

Anyhow, nothing talks about color better than color itself; here’s a few images to illustrate the point:

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

Super Color from FractalWorks

Indescribable by Schimkent (Flickr)

What better example could there be of the effect of color in fractal art than a super-rich color spiral like this.  Made by Schimkent (Flickr screen name for Kent Schimke) using Duncan Champney’s Mac program, FractalWorks.  The turning of the spiral places colors that would otherwise be farther apart in the gradient/palette right beside each other.

How is this spiral different from the many Fractal Universe calendar spirals which I think I once said reminded me of patterns on disposable party plates?  Well, that’s the challenge of evaluating works “of the fourth dimension;” you just have to look at the image and see for yourself what the difference is.

3D view of Apr02wma1b by Schimkent

It’s all about that Blue in the top left corner.  The colored loops come close to it and challenge it, even holding Blue in their center.  The outcome is harmonious yet that subtle gray window screen texture shows that there’s more to Blue than they realize.

What I’ve chosen here are images whose color properties contribute enormously to the overall impression of the image; they’re examples of the effect of color.  They’re not just “nicely colored,” the coloring has a powerful effect on the rest of the image and magnifies the  it.

Subdued and Sophisticated Color

20090716-1 by Samuel Monnier

It’s not all about saturated color.  This one here by Samuel Monnier from his website, Algorithmic Worlds, shows how a less saturated, more subdued color can be just as expressive.  Of course there’s more to this image than just it’s subtle coloring, but the coloring compliments the quiet, ancient and weathered patterns in the ground and sky.  Every time I look at this I think of ancient Egypt and the Pyramids.  The wind carries away the sand, filling the sky with yellow dust and leaving bare the ancient workings underground.

20090715-1 by Samuel Monnier

Such colored details.  Details are the hallmark of Samuel Monnier’s images which is why almost all of them are presented in zoomable fashion via a flash applet on his Algorithmic Worlds site, as we’ll see in the next one.

20100924-1 by Samuel Monnier

See the top left “planet?”.  In the image below I zoom into there and take a screenshot of the resulting detail.  This is a fabulous example of color as well as algorithmic color (he didn’t paint this by hand).  Every planet is different and even in the deepest zooms there’s still more planets below.  It’s a bit like real astronomy: the more closely you look at one thing, the more things you notice around it.

20100924-1 (detail) by Samuel Monnier

The colors are not so subdued in this detail as they are in the other images.  Compare this detail view with Kent Schimke’s spiral image shown at the very beginning.  They are quite different and yet each one thrives on color.  Monnier’s is a very detailed color while Schimke’s is broader, thicker, smoother color.  Of course, they’re made differently: Monnier’s uses his trademark “pattern-piling” while Schimke is using, I assume, a fractal formula rendered in FractalWorks with it’s exceptional, and very smooth, 3D rendering features.

Spherical Feedback by Syntopia (Flickr)

Another fine example of subdued coloring.  The structures in the image are quite plain and as the title suggests, are repetitive like feedback.  It’s color that takes the lead role in this image turning what would otherwise be a mere technical example of the features of the program Structure Synth into something much more creative and noteworthy.

Kleinian Kolors

indra611a by Jos Leys

If you’re at all interested in color you could not possibly have missed the Kleinian images by Jos Leys, some of which are almost seven years old now.  It’s hard to imagine these things rendered in grayscale.  The above one is a special example, although typical of the way Jos uses color to compliment the Kleinian structures: it’s been designed in Ultra Fractal and then rendered in POV-Ray, a very sophisticated ray-tracing program.  The result looks like a photo of a real sculpture but is in fact just a very sophisticated digital rendering.

indra277 by Jos Leys

Here’s a perfect example of Jos Leys’ exquisite, jewellery-like, Indra’s Pearls images.  The color seems so natural and inseparable from the underlying mathematical “architecture.”  Could you adequately describe this image in words only without referring to the color?

Color World

The Junkyard, by primitive mind (Deviant Art)

Keeping with my theme of the power of color, here’s something similar and yet quite different, too.  This image, I’m going to make a guess, was created by some very careful layering of a number of 3D mandelbulb/mandelbox images.  The result is not just a blending of the 3D structures but also a blending of the colors.  With the possible exception of Samuel Monnier’s “planet” image, these images by primitive mind (Deviant Art screen name) have what I’d say is the most sophisticated range of colors both in hue and saturation.  Look at the bottom of the one above and you’ll see in that little patch of “sunlight” in the bottom left saturated color while in the rest of the image it’s mostly more subdued colors and a very wide range of them.

Under the sea by primitive mind (Deviant Art)

Images like these could not be saved as 256 color indexed pngs without changing them enormously or using complex dithering.  They simply have too many colors to do that very well.  They almost look like paintings, really.  And from a technical perspective, I’ve never seen mandelbulb/mandelbox images with such creative color.  Like all the others, if you click these you’ll see the larger size image on the site where I found it.

Seriously, just color?

Is color a serious thing?  I guess it depends on what you think is serious.  Some think the life and death world of social and political issues is serious subject matter while others might find that a painful distraction from their study of water lilies. The work of some famous artists seems to revolve around careful choices of color.  Andy Warhol, in his famous silk-screen images experimented with unique color combinations.  Silk screening allows for this kind of experimentation just like computer graphics programs do; you can quickly see what different inks look like by switching them and making a new print.

Marilyn, by Andy Warhol, who for many years could not walk without the aid of Color Crutches

Is there an art form that is nothing more than a language of shape and color?  Should we call it “Lego-land” or “Visual Philosophy?”  The graphically simple things like shape and color I believe can sometimes leave a very sophisticated impression in our mind.  Stephen Ferguson, the well-known fractal programmer, once made a profound statement –about a sphere– that it had infinite points of reflection.  The ultimate mirror.  Something to think about next time you look at “a shiny ball.”  Seriously.

He's angry because he can't cross his eyes like we can and he feels left out

3D-art freaks (circa 1860) groovin' to the third dimension. Detail from a painting by Jacob Spoel (1820-1868)

How old is 3D imagery?

In case you’re wondering, and you’re also stupid, 3D imagery has been around as long as humans have had two eyes.  It’s pretty common actually and goes under the generic title: see-ing.

In fact, if you think about it, the usual flat, 2D kind of imagery seen in most artwork, like the two above, is actually something of an abstraction and employs all sorts of technical tricks to give the impression of natural depth in an unnaturally flat medium; 3D imagery is natural imagery.

Natural?  Yes, that’s what I’d say is the impression I get when I look at 3D stereograms and other 3D imagery: I feel like a doorway to a little world has opened up on my computer screen.  3D is more than just a cool trick, it’s virtual sculpture and a visual reality –it’s as real as real can look.

I mention this because you may have noticed that people who make this sort of artwork often become obsessed with it.  I think it’s that “little world” effect that fascinates them.  Even apparently mediocre images still contain that exciting substance that transforms anything flat into an eternally effervescing wonder.

My first encounter with artificial 3D imagery was the View-Master.  Peering into it’s tiny worlds, no matter how dumb or childish the subject matter, was intoxicating.  I remember that not everyone was like that when it came to the View-Master and so I suspect not everyone experiences the same thrill intensity when it comes to 3D stereo fractal art.

Rathinagiri Rules!

There’s a number of people making 3D stereo fractal images but the most prolific one I know of goes by the name Rathinagiri on Fractalforums.com.  According to his Flickr page, his full name is Subbiah Rathinagiri and he lives in southern India.  I first came across his work on Fractalforums.com (FFs) the place where true enthusiasts gather these days.

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

fractal20100701 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

fractal20101020 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

FractalWorks

Duncan Champney, author of the free Mac fractal program, FractalWorks, gives these instructions for viewing “cross-eyed” 3D images on a site displaying several examples:

To view it, sit at a comfortable distance from your monitor and look at the dividing line between the images. Then hold your finger about halfway between your eyes and the screen so it appears just at the bottom of the image. Then look at your finger and slowly move it closer to your nose. This will cause you to cross your eyes. As your finger gets closer to your eyes, the left and right images will cross over and at some point you should see a stereoscopic view in your field of vision between the two images on the screen. It takes a little practice. Once you are able to see the stereo image, you should be able to hold your eyes in position and remove your finger.

Here’s an excellent image by Duncan using his own program, FractalWorks:

Mandelscape cross-eyed stereogram by Duncan Champney

Note how natural the 3D effect is:  once you’ve got the image focused properly, cross-eyed, you can look all around in the image and the 3D effect never falters or is diminished.  Duncan says he prefers to make the red/cyan”anaglyph” type images as the cross-eyed ones tend to give him a headache.  But you need the special red/cyan 3D movie glasses to view those.  FractalWorks makes both and as you can see, it does it well.

If, however, you do have a set of red/cyan glasses, here’s a great one by Don Whitaker:

4657682138_d4c1a8a605 by Don Whitaker

In case you can’t view it properly, it looks like glowing mandelbulb planet floating in sinister light in hole on your computer screen in a vintage 50s sci-fi style (where everything was glowing and sinister).  You know, if you’re really serious about fractal art these days you should have a set of 3D glasses beside your computer at all times.  Amazon.com sells them for a couple bucks.  “Tools of the trade” as they say in bankruptcy court.

How is it made?  Aircraft cameras create “stereo-pairs” by taking a picture of the ground below them with a single camera.  They then take a second picture just a few hundred feet afterwards.  The two images taken with a single camera from slightly different positions imitates the offsetting of your two eyes and the two aircraft positions become the left and right eyes you see with (Godzilla-vision).  The use of stereo glasses just makes it easier for each of your eyes to look exclusively at the single photo directly in front of them instead of doing the natural thing your eyes do, which is to intersect on a single point ahead of them and just look at one photo together.  Cross-eyed images are the same thing, just with a different name.  (Stereoscopy on the Wikipedia.)

Designed for a Stereoscope but works as a Cross-eye image: Boston Common (date uncertain) by John P. Soule (1827-1904)

More of Rathinagiri’s work

fractal20101023 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

He’s got so many of these stereo images, and not just fractal ones, either, that I’m just showing a few that cover the range of imagery he has.  This one is a great example of a soft metallic texture.  It’s so much more impressive as a stereo image than a “one-eyed” one.  It looks as if the program (Jesse Dierk’s Mandelbulb 3D, I think) has actually made something real  and tangible.

fractal20101019 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

Carved plaster or stone is what I see in this one.  If there was a fractal temple, this is how it would look.  Watch out that you don’t poke your eye on the needle-like thing in the middle.

fractal20101017 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

I like this one even as just a 2D image; the color, symmetry and design elements.  But of course, as a stereo image we can do more than just look at it, we can go there.  I find the mandelbox takes on a whole new dimension, no pun intended, when viewed in stereo vision.  Things that simply merged into the background are now floating and quite distinct.  I think we perceive the image differently when it’s a stereo pair.  Perhaps the effect is somewhat distracting and we want to go, “Wow!” at everything.  It’s certainly a whole new way of looking at fractal art, or any kind of art.  The stereo pair of Boston Common, above, has a life to it that it’s “one-eyed” version alone doesn’t have, although obviously good photography doesn’t have to be 3D.

fractal20100923 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

Every wonder what it would look like to go visit these “egg” covered mandelbox places?  Now you can.  Leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back.

One last one…

fractal20100919 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

This one’s another cool image even in just 2D.  In it is displayed the great range of imagery produced by the mandelbox.  This really reminds me of the old ViewMaster panoramas where you could come back again and again to walk your eyes around in a little world.  3D stereo imagery can be a powerful medium when the subject matter is as interesting as it is here.

More (much more) of Rathinagiri’s 3D stereo work can be seen here on his Flickr page.

Just one more:

fractal20101015 by Subbiah Rathinagiri

And a video!  A cross-eyed video.  You can do it.  Get cross-eyed first and then hit play.  [update: you might have to alter the “3D” settings that YouTube displays with to get “side by side” instead of “colored glasses” and a few other things…]

Illusion is the final frontier and nothing does it better than 3D stereo imagery.  My head is a spaceship and I go places.  At least that’s how it feels when viewing 3D stereo fractal art.  Sometimes it feels that way just walking around with two eyes.

3D stereo fractals are a natural extension of the new 3D fractal software.  I’ve just presented here some of the best examples that I’ve been able to find by Subbiah Rathinagiri, Duncan Champney and Don Whitaker.  I’m sure this is just the beginning, because as Rathinagiri’s work has showed, the results magnify and multiply the effect of the mandelbox imagery by allowing us to perceive it, literally, in a deeper and more profound way.

Fractal Art (Jean Marais) becomes famous in the film Orpheus (1950) by Jean Cocteau

In addition to the fractal art world, I also try to follow events in the Linux desktop world.  I’ve noticed some similarities, particularly with respect to the perennial question asked by both fractalists and Linux-ists:  When will the rest of the world discover what we’ve discovered?

You all know something about Linux; probably as much about Linux as the “rest of the world” knows about fractals.  I am not about to start ranting about why you should “switch to Linux” because you don’t care what operating system you use and I don’t either.

But the Linux zealots care and they feel (strongly) that if only the “restoftheworld” could just find out how great Linux is and how easy it is to use, then Linux adoption would take off and this year… would be… The Year of the Linux Desktop!

Lately, for the last year or so, there have been rumblings (minor blog posts) suggesting that maybe there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop.  The reasons are simple: Windows works just fine now (it has ever since Xp arrived); and “therestoftheworld” doesn’t care about the things that Linux people care about.

The fractal art world is much smaller than the Linux world; it also lacks the social activism upon which Linux (Gnu project) was founded.  For those reasons there are much fewer rumblings in the fractal world because there are much fewer commentators and bloggers in it.

There isn’t going to be a “Great Fractal Awakening” in the “restoftheworld”.  Neither 2011 nor any other year will be the year of the Linux or “fractal desktop”.  This is it.  It’s just us and the little trickle of newcomers who wander into town every now and then.

Why will there be no year of the fractal desktop?  As it is with the Linux desktop, the reasons are simple: While most people may go, “Wow!” when they first see a fractal, it doesn’t resonate in the very core of their being like it does with fractal enthusiasts.  It’s not the sort of thing “therestoftheworld” goes for.

There’s nothing wrong with fractal art or how it’s being “presented to the world”.  The restoftheworld is a bunch of losers and fractal art just isn’t for them.

Consider how much the restoftheworld is a “bunchoflosers”:

• The Mona Lisa is the most popular art item in the Louvre
• Jean Cocteau is not a household name

Is it any wonder that those kind of people aren’t as excited about fractal art as we are?

Or is it because they just haven’t been “exposed” to it like we have?  Or they haven’t been “exposed” to it in a real art gallery in some other mainstream (i.e. loser) venue?

How about fractals on footballs?  At the Olympics?

I don’t think we need any more contests, exhibitions, press coverage or celebrity endorsements to get the fractal message out there to the masses.  The masses really do know what they like and it’s not fractal art.  (And it’s not a whole lot of other really cool things, too.)

The internet gives more exposure to fractal art than any offline medium could ever hope to.  Presenting fractal art offline is a great way to hide it from the restoftheworld.

Fractal Art (Jean Marais) is caught in a computer monitor: Orpheus (1950) by Jean Cocteau

My advice is, and I actually have heard rumblings of this in the fractal world:  make artwork that genuinely appeals to you and declare your audience to be people who like what you like.  When scoring your work, people who don’t like it don’t count (unless you’re one of them).

Do that and 2011 will be: The Year We Stop Expecting Mass Insanity.

Add the following two links to your bookmarks/favorites and visit them every day and you will stay up to date with 80% of all that’s interesting in the fractal art world today.  Recent Uploads to the gallery and Recent Posts to the forum at Fractalforums.com:

Recent uploads

Recent Posts

One of my favorite posting themes here on Orbit Trap is directing the attention of readers to what I think is the more interesting and more significant fractal art works out there on the internet  –a fractal art “digest”.

Contests don’t “work”

My main criticism of fractal art contests is that they seem to do very little in the way of presenting what is really the best of fractal art.  Contests are:

1. too small
2. too infrequent
3. too narrow in scope
4. disappointing
5. all of the above plus poorly judged

What the fractal art world needs, or what every other area of interest in the world needs for that matter, are a few critical venues unconstrained by the characteristics of contests that I’ve just mentioned and which in my mind condemns them to be trivial, over-hyped events .

Blogs are a good way to do this, but since early 2010 most of what I consider to be the more interesting fractal artwork has been gleaned from just following those two links on Fractalforums.com.  It’s gotten to the point that I sometimes feel readers would be better off just keeping an eye on those two pages of updates to Fractalforums; that’s all I’ve been doing lately.  The more interesting stuff is easier to find now and that’s all due to the crystallizing effect that Fractalforums.com has had in this new area of 3D fractals.

Just stay tuned to Fractalforums.com

I mention all this because I’ve found that this year, unlike all of the previous years I’ve been observing fractal art online (since 2002), there is just too much good artwork around to deal with.  I have about 200 links to good stuff that I’m just never going to get around to posting about along with keeping up with the daily increasing output resulting from more practitioners moving into the realm of 3D mandelbulb/mandelbox fractals.  When I see something really interesting I just have this natural urge to talk about it and generally share it with a few other like-minded true enthusiasts but there’s just too much of it.

But you can find most of it via those two links.  Not only that, but both those pages have rss/atom feeds which practically makes them websites or blogs on their own.

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

Zongo!

hd_2010_013 by zzzzra (on Deviant Art)

Zongo is his FFs screen name.  His real name, according to his Deviant Art page is Alexandre Lehmann (France).  He makes this comment about the image:

You HAVE to see this in full definition !

He’s right; in full definition it’s even more vivid and the lighting is much more impressive, too.  Nicely rendered; I’ll bet it took some time to produce something this large and smoothly finished.

This is not just another amazing mandelbox, although technically it may be; I’ve never seen these sorts of shapes and polished silver rendering before.

Madman!

The Castle of Erignea by Madman (on Fractalforums.com)

Lately there’s been something called a “hybrid” mandelbox which seems to incorporate new formulaic structures and producing images, like this one, that have so much variety in their details that it’s hard to believe anything as mechanical as a fractal formula created them.

The  title immediately made me think of Montezuma’s Castle, a cliff dwelling in Arizona:

Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona, USA

Interestingly, Madman himself started a very thought-provoking thread on Fractalforums entitled, “Is there a limit in exploring 3D fractals? “.  In it he asks the question:

Do you think that there will be a time when every new picture will look like one that has been rendered previously or at least has the same “feel” as something rendered previously?

To avoid the possibility of misquoting him…

Rereading my post, I guess you could interpret it as a (rather pathetic ;-)) call for help, but that’s not what I intended. So let me try to rephrase and see if I can synchronise my writing with my thinking . I guess that from a mathematical point of view, there’s no end to the variety you can achieve by zooming more into either mandelbrots, -bulbs or -boxes, but if you look from a more artistical view I tend to find that at a certain point you get to a level where “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Am I making sense here?

Let me put it another way: If you google “fractal art”, you ‘ll find that 95% of the hits show spirally thingies. Some of them are quite beautiful and have probably taken hours to render, but you know that with a little work, you can make something close to it yourself or at least something with the same “feel”.

So let me rephrase my question: Do you think that there will be a time when every new picture will look like one that has been rendered previously or at least has the same “feel” as something rendered previously? Something that you will immediately recognise as, say, a scale -1.34 Mandelbox, rotated x,y and z degrees, scaled and then sphere folded? Something that can no longer surprise you?

Hmmn… Isn’t that the ultimate question in fractal art?  I would reword it as, “Don’t fractals eventually become just fractals?” and, “How do you produce new and interesting work from a medium that has ceased to be new and interesting?  Madman’s responders naturally assume he’s run out of technical options and provide him with many more and also with the observation that there are even more than that yet to be discovered as folks explore all the remaining combinations and permutations of 3D fractal formulas and rendering methods.

But what I think Madman is getting at is that he feels close to running out of creative options, of which more formulas and rendering methods will only delay the inevitable creative collapse and infinite entropy “when every new picture will look like one that has been rendered previously or at least has the same ‘feel’ “

How to stay creative?

Here’s one of my many links I thought I’d never get a chance to post.  I think it fits in very well with the question of pursuing creativity within a well-trodden and heavily picked-over medium.

Dragonfly by The Rev (on Fractalforums)

What could be a more uninspiring subject than a Newton fractal?  (I think that’s what it is.)  And yet, I have never seen a Newton like this.  This looks like a hand-drawn image from one of those very classy full color graphic novels, those thinking-man’s comic books.

The Rev is clearly thinking outside the box, that is, the creative box.  Technically, he’s working with what would be considered ancient artifacts in the fractal world.  But I think the Rev has grasped the fact that fractal art is more than just fractals –it’s art.  And art is what you see, meaning, an image.  There are technical parameters to be be explored in fractal art and there are artistic parameters to be explored.  Fractal art is the combination of these two visual forces.

Sierpinski's Planet by Buddhi (on Fractalforums.com)

Sierpinski pyramids made of bricks?  What could be more technically uninteresting than a Sierpinski-anything?  And yet, I’ve come back to this one so many times just to:

1. Look at
2. Look through
3. See the shadows
4. At the top of a swaying Sierpinski pine

I think the advent of 3D fractals has marked the beginning of a new era in fractal art and Fractalforums.com is the place where it all started –and continues to start.  It’s the place to watch and read for the true enthusiast.

Deviant Art is just an image hosting service now and  I have no idea what happened to that Rendercity place.  The contests come out once a year to look at their shadow…  Most of the traffic on the web rings is just members checking their stats cause they thought they heard someone at the door this morning… the Googlebot is the only thing that drives down the road these days… Spirally thingies turn in the wind… looks like weather’s on the way… winter’s comin’…

We recently received an inquiry here at Orbit Trap; an email requesting where the Fractal Universe calendar featuring the work of Cornelia Yoder could be bought.

I was flabbergasted…

But I Googled the title, found it on Amazon.com and sent off a reply anyway.  Strange, I thought, but many people find hunting for things on the internet to be a challenge, and add to that the Christmas shopping season, and many of us are busy, so I just shrugged it off.

…And decided to take a second look at fractal calendars.

There’s more than one calendar out there using the title “Fractal Universe” so here’s the one made by Cornelia Yoder:

• Printed by Avalanche;
• Owned by Perfect Timing;
• Listed on Amazon;
• Sold by GrandmasGiftware.

~Click images to view on original site~

Fractal Universe calendar by Cornelia Yoder on Amazon.com

Backside of Fractal Universe calendar by Cornelia Yoder from Amazon.com

You can see clearly on the back the Avalanche logo and on the front “by Cornelia Yoder”.  Cornelia previously referred to Perfect Timing Inc. as the company behind this calendar and that’s probably because Perfect Timing owns Avalanche Publishing now.  She also mentioned she had a two-year deal with them to produce the artwork for the calendar.

I’d say Cornelia has done an excellent job maintaining that Fractal Universe style we’ve all come to know.  This could in fact be considered a “Tribute” album for the old Fractal Universe days.  Let’s change the subject…

Fractal Universe Calendar 2009 –a runaway cult classic!!!!

Well, what would you say if back issues of your wall calendar were selling for almost $1,500.00.  And that’s used copies!

I have a screenshot in case you think I’m making this up:

From Amazon.ca (Canadian site) Click to see if it's still there

No way?  Yes way!

(Notice that you still have to pay $6.49 for shipping)

Vintage fractal art calendars are becoming hot collectible items.  Alice Kelly’s Fractal Cosmos back issues are skyrocketing too!

Search results from Amazon.ca for Fractal Calendars

I am not a Lawyer and I am not an Investment Counselor, but if the tingling sensation in my funny bone means anything I’d say we all ought to go out there and buy up every copy of the 2011 Fractal Universe calendar we can because next year, or the next, they might be worth hundreds, if not thousands of dollars!

But which one?

The stock on the left is worth more, but you'll be able to buy twice as many shares if you buy the cheaper one on the right

Even you diehard supporters of the Fractal Universe calendar (either one) will have to agree that when a calendar can’t even come up with a new name that it’s not surprising it can’t come up with new artwork either.  But then, diehard supporters of these two calendars probably think the artwork is new.

But now how about this one by Orange Circle, which apparently is where the original Avalanche Fractal Universe editors (not the “editors”) went and started up their own version of the Fractal Universe style of calendar.

Infinite Creations, a fractal wall calendar by Orange Circle

Backside of Infinite Creations, a fractal calendar by Orange Circle

Note how well Infinite Creations has mastered the original (classic?) Fractal Universe style of kitchen (not kitsch) fractal art.  And what’s that?  Zoomin’ Mandelbrots!  Used copies are already selling for almost 3x their original public offering price!  $34.17 –Used!

How come no one told me about this one?

By any chance did you catch the odd thing my search results screen from Amazon.ca brought up when searching for Fractal Calendars?  I’m referring to the “Fractal Spirit Wall Calendar” whose title doesn’t mention “fractal” at all and instead says, “Our Lady of Guadalupe”.

Fractal Spirit Wall Calendar as seen on Amazon.ca; Click to view listing

Here’s a few images that might help you spot the apparent fractal connection:

From Amazon.ca

From Amazon.ca

From Amazon.ca

An interesting use of fractals: religious ornamentation.  What’s even more interesting is that there has been no attempt on the packaging (i.e. front cover) to market it as fractal or even as a special kind of graphical calendar; it’s just several ornamented versions of the Mexican madonna.  The front cover art doesn’t appear to have any fractal ornamentation at all.

Oh.  I just looked at the back cover again and saw the name “Fractal Spirit”.  I guess that’s the company that produced the artwork.  Here’s a slightly larger version of the front cover.

More Googling… I found this gallery of Our Lady of Guadalupe images which appear to be the ones from the calendar.  That would make “Fractal Spirit” Timothy Helgeson from northern California, USA.

Step into the Cosmic

There’s still one of the “pro-calendars” left to talk about and that’s the venerable (since 2000!) Fractal Cosmos published by Amber Lotus and featuring the art of Alice Kelley (not to be confused with Linda Allison).

Fractal Cosmos 2011 by Alice Kelley, Published by Amber Lotus

I’m sorry to say this, but there’s absolutely nothing weird or scandalous about Alice’s Fractal Cosmos calendar, although you will see in the Amazon.ca search screen up the page that a 2009 edition is selling for $158.34 in that Bermuda Triangle of used calendars (maybe Alice autographed that one?).

There’s a wider range of imagery in Fractal Cosmos and even more than one piece of software was used.  I think I saw an Incendia image in there.  For those who hold that commercial, wall calendar fractal art has to follow the Fractal Universe kitchen-ware style, Fractal Cosmos is a real challenge to explain.  Or perhaps it isn’t?  Amber Lotus, if you take a look around their site, is clearly not the same sort of outfit as Avalanche publishing is.  I found this on their About Us page:

Amber Lotus Publishing was founded in 1988 by students of a Tibetan Lama living in exile in Berkeley California.

For those of you who prefer to make your own gifts, I would like to remind you that although the titles Fractal Universe and Fractal Cosmos have been taken, Fractal Galaxy is still up for grabs.  In fact, Fractal Galaxy is feeling lonely and ignored, having been passed over by Avalanche Team A and Avalanche Team B and the unofficial Avalanche Team C who have set their sights much lower and decided to simply become “A fractal world” albeit one of “Infinite” creativity.

But since there’s already two Fractal Universes out there (parallel universes?) maybe we can all use that title, too.  Or at least a few more times.  Just don’t copy the dixie-cup style.  Fractal wall calendars can be creative and still be commercially successful.  A handful of harmonious humans in Oregon have been proving that since the year 2000.

Yep.  They sure are!

See if you can guess what fractal program made this one:

U.S. shot MIKE of Operation Ivy, 31 Oct 1952

Oh.  You guessed wrong.  But that’s understandable.  You see, the entire fractal generator that made the explosion was destroyed in the making.  Fast rendering time!  –but it only works once!

The Ivy Mike "Sausage" device before detonation.

I think they called it “Ivy Mike” because they weren’t sure if it was going to be a boy or a girl.

Sunsets are a cliche, aren’t they?  It’s the sort of art that beginner painters and beginner photographers make on their summer vacations.  Well, at the beginning of the Atomic Age, we were all beginners.  Here’s a nuclear sunset:

U.S. shot KING of Operation Ivy, November 15, 1952

This one reminds me of Monet.  Maybe it’s better than Monet.  It could sure blow Monet’s lilies right out of the water!

So hot and yet so cool!

Painted on black velvet; I love it! This one's going in the living room.

We don’t think of atomic weapons testing as fractal art because it’s not made with a computer.  But there’s been as much tweaking done to them as anything on the Ultra Fractal mailing list.  The early artists wouldn’t recognize today’s nuclear weapons.  They don’t look anything like the fractals made on the old Amigas.  Things have really changed.

The Past is sending signals

I like to go back to the old days and ask, “What if?”

What if… the biggest fractal ever made left a radioactive hole so deadly that even today we can only look at it from Space?

What if… I showed you a sunset so huge and fiery that it just blew you away?

...bet you'd say, "Wow!"

~photos from Wikipedia Wikimedia Commons Operation Ivy

~Click images to view on original site~

Textile Cone Snail (Conus Textile)

Doesn’t this just freak you out?  I’ve actually held a few seashells like this in my own hand and seeing that computer art pattern on such a natural and living thing is just deeply weird.

We’ve all seen fractal patterns in broccoli, pine cones and spiral snail shells but for some reason those things just looked natural.  I guess fractals patterns are just plain natural looking while cellular automata is quite distinctively artificial and machine made in appearance.  Except for these seashells, of course.

Some living things use naturally occurring cellular automata in their functioning.

Patterns of some seashells, like the ones in Conus and Cymbiola genus, are generated by natural CA. The pigment cells reside in a narrow band along the shell’s lip. Each cell secretes pigments according to the activating and inhibiting activity of its neighbour pigment cells, obeying a natural version of a mathematical rule. The cell band leaves the colored pattern on the shell as it grows slowly. For example, the widespread species Conus textile bears a pattern resembling the Rule 30 CA described above.

-from Wikipedia, Cellular Automaton

Here’s what that “Rule 30” CA looks like:

Rule 30 CA pattern generated from Kidojo.com's online generator

Here’s a whole family, a taxonomic family called conidae, with other CA rule 30-ish patterns:

Conidae family reunion sporting characteristic CA-30-ish patterns. Photo by "Pet" on Wikipedia CC-SA

In addition to Cellular automata, these seashell patterns also remind me of those old dot-matrix printers that back in the old days would have been used to print really cheesy looking graphics (back when ascii art was cutting-edge stuff).

But hold that thought for a moment; that’s the way these CA patterns are made: one line at a time.  Or rather, one row of cells at a time.  The shell pattern is the printout from the row of pigmentation cells and thus the shells display a matrix of dots –dot matrix CA printing.

Conus bengalensis

Conus aureus

Maybe you have to be as excited as I am about CA patterns to feel the enormity of all this.

You know, if they ever drop the bomb and civilization as we know it disappears and there’s no more electricity and computers and internet, we can still have computer art galleries made of Cellular Automata from these kinds of seashells.  In fact, considering how durable the material they’re “printed” on is, they may be the only kind of computational art around in the distant future.

~Click images to view on original site~

Professor Trafassel leads the way

A new and wondrous discovery in the land of 3D fractals has been made by a veteran Fractalforum member, Erp Trafassel (trafassel).  You can read the soon to be famous thread on Fractalforums.  Daniel White (twinbee), who sparked the original 3D fractal quest for the “Holy Grail” that resulted in the Mandelbulb had these remarkable words to say about Trafassel’s recent discoveries:

Amazing stuff trafassel. This is surely much closer to what I originally envisaged for the real 3D Mandelbrot than we’ve ever seen before. We’re seeing all kinds of designs, giant 3D connected networks, tunnels, arrays of tentacles, intricate satellites, foamy materials, shapes we’ve never imagined, and of course, the return of the spine also! (closer to what I thought the 3D spine should look like). I love the zoom near the end of your video too.

If I were to give the Mandelbulb rating of how close I thought it was to the holy grail, say, 5/10, I would give yours perhaps 7 or maybe 8/10. I still think there are subtle and not so subtle things which prevent it from being the holy grail which I’ll try to elaborate on soon. In particular, there’s a feeling that many of the shapes have a somewhat IFS feel to them (over-smooth or chopped up spherical surfaces etc.), and of course the overall shape is not what we might expect.

“…which I’ll try to elaborate on soon”  Sound like the game is “afoot” as Sherlock Holmes often said when discovering an intriguing new challenge.  Trafassel posted two YouTube videos in which he conveniently compiled a series of images documenting his latest discoveries as a video slide show.  This is as much a scientific and technical discovery as it is an artistic one, so look carefully for new structures and imagery.  It’s just like a space voyage or the photo stream coming back from a probe sent off to explore a distant planet.  Like Tom Lowe’s (Tglad) initial Mandelbox images, many of Trafassel’s images here are quite spectacular to see as well as to appreciate for their technical achievement.

I quoted Daniel White just to give you a quick idea of the great significance of what Trafassel has achieved, but it seems to me from reading the thread that Trafassel stumbled on all this entirely on his own while exploring various new parameter settings for the Mandelbox formula.

It all started on September 21st, 2010 with Trafassel’s very brief and humble opening post to his new thread, Inner view of the Mandelbox:

The Mandelbox, but seen from the Inside. This means a voxel is visible, if and only if its coordinate is no element of the Mandelbox set.

Screenshots from Fractalforums.com tell the story better:

From Fractalforums.com

From Fractalforums.com

From Fractalforums.com

Trafassel then goes on to share the parameters and explain them.  Which raises the obvious question in most readers’ minds,  “What program is he using?”

Much or all of the 3D fractals currently are being created using Krzysztof (buddhi) Marczak’s Mandelbulber and Jesse Dierk’s Mandelbulb 3d, and also Ultra Fractal with Dave Makin’s MMFwip3D formula.  I can’t really tell by just looking at the images to say what they were made with and I don’t actually use any of them myself, either (I’ve been too busy watching what everyone else is doing, lately).

Maybe I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me that Trafassel’s Journey to the Center of the Mandelbox has been made exclusively in a machine of his own design and manufacture?!  Yes, there seems to be even more software spinning off of the Fractalforum’s talented group of developers: Gestaltlupe 0.9 available for Windows developed by Herr Trafassel himself.

He describes the program, hosted on GitHub.com, as “Representation of tomographic data. This tool can be used to explore the mandelbulb fractal. Sounds rather scientific but then this is a machine that’s just gone where no one else has gone before.  I feel like I’m living in a vintage pulp sci-fi story or, of course, a Jules Verne novel.

Greater sights than this await you in the Inner View of the Mandelbox

In the past the pictures illustrated the text, but now the text is merely footnotes to the pictures.

Yes, as many of us know, fractals can be just as much voyages of discovery –computerized voyages– as they can be a way of creating interesting graphics.  There’s no better example that I can think of than Trafassel’s recent discoveries here of “inside” the Mandelbox.

Fractals are still a growing and expanding realm of imagery and science.  A place where fresh parameter strings can open the door to another world.

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

From Fractalforums.com, where "Cheers!" is more than just a digital signature and "Prost!" needs no translation

I actually got a good look at the (new) Munich airport back in 1993 when I was on a British Airways flight to Istanbul.  The pilot announced that passengers were welcome to come up and look around the cabin (pre-9/11 days),  it was a clear day and when I was up there one of the pilots pointed over to the left and said,  “That’s the new airport at Munich”.

He's not joking; Eching is just down the road from the airport

Well drown my sorrows!  Hermann is none other than the Hermann of Wackerart.de.  I’m familiar with Wackerart because I bookmarked a particularly nice example of the Burning Ship formula a few months ago from that site.  It’s a special image for a number of reasons.

Burning Ship by Hermann Wacker

The burning ship formula is nothing new, but I find in today’s fractal art world it’s all about style now and not technology.  This image has a special style to it.

You can see the ship in distress on the horizon and how the “flames” reflect the windows and woodwork of the stern of an old sailing ship.  The top of the flames is even a chimney-like shape.  It’s a glowing, LED-red seascape and in dreamlike fashion the smoke from the ships rises up as surreal towers forming a forest of bare trees on a winter’s night (or maybe that’s just me).

The other reason this image is special is because it links directly to a java applet where you can explore this actual image by clicking on it.  Hermann’s fractal gallery is actually an interactive one; the images are just starting points for your own exploration.  (There’s an enormous amount of work on Hermann’s site including watercolor paintings.)

This is “java gallery” is a very nice way to introduce people to fractal art.  It shows not just how it’s made but also where it’s made.  The interactive image becomes merely one snapshot of the fractal “camera” and an example of how the final image is derived from the raw source of fractal imagery created by the software.

The coloring is fairly simple, but as I was saying, it’s not about technology so much anymore as it is about style.

Here’s another very stylish and yet deceptively simple image:

Spikebar 04 by jwm-art (on Fractalforums.com)

Pretty simple fractal image in some ways and yet the bright but plain color scheme really makes the fractal patterns and structures become electric.  It’s like something out of a circus, but a very stylish circus like Cirque du Soleil.

Here’s another one by jwm-art:

Spobar 01 1000 by jwm-art

Simple shapes and simple colors again, but like all little things when they’re multiplied instead of added, the results are huge and categorically different.  That’s the difference (no pun intended) between the effects of technology compared to the effects of style on artistic impression.

I like the little Space Invaders shapes and especially, like in the previous one, the round, eye-like shapes in the central part of the image.  Also there is a certain phosphorescence to some of the elements in the image like the blue outer background and the green little shapes sailing on it.

Jwm-art had this to say about these two images of his in the original thread on Fractalforums.com:

I’m quite pleased with how these two turned out. I’m trying to familiarize myself with tuning with zooming into the M-set. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time over the past few days exploring these things and am starting to see the patterns so to speak. I want to discover new constructs but am not sure it’s possible – I recently came across a page of Mandelbrot constructs created around the year 2000 which blew me away (sorry I can’t recall how I got to them).

(Unrelated to all this is an interesting and extremely realistic rendering of a mandelbox detail here on jwm-art’s site.)

Jwm-art is, if I’m reading the threads on Fractalforums.com correctly, currently writing his own fractal program, MDZ.  I believe these images I’ve shown here come from prototypes of that program he’s developing.  I just can’t get over how many multi-talented programmers have congregated over on Fractalforums.com.  It’s like the Athens of fractal art to which I am nothing more than a tourist.  Fortunately for people like me, you don’t have to speak Greek to look at the pictures.

I just discovered from reading the Readme file of mdz-0.0.9 that jwm-art is James W. Morris.  I kept thinking it had some connection with Joe’s Window Manager but no, it’s unrelated.

I don’t know if some of the graphical qualities of James’ images are a product of his program, MDZ, and that MDZ just lends itself to these styles of rendering.

Well, in closing I’d just like to suggest that I think it only appropriate that Fractalforums adds another smiley to their vast repetoire of emoticons in honor of Hermann’s hospitable invitation:

Although some fractals today can look extremely realistic, rendered in three dimensions and having an appearance as photo-realistic as any photograph, I find they don’t usually mix well with photographic elements used as backgrounds or when embedded as repeating pictures in formulas.  There’s no technical reason for this, computer-made imagery like fractals just seems to clash aesthetically with imagery from the real world.

But just recently I discovered a few examples of just the opposite; harmony and synergy in a image mixing fractal and non-fractal imagery.  Up until now most attempts to combine the two haven’t looked so great and even now these images shown here are still quite unique in that they combine two different kinds of imagery with successful results.

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

Cherry Blossoms by BrutalToad (Fractalforums.com)

This is by far the most effective use I’ve ever seen of blending photographic imagery with fractals.  I think this is exactly the kind of sinister, predatory plant that John Wyndham imagined in his classic science fiction novel, The Day of the Triffids.

Note the subdued and sweet “cherry” flavored color in the blossoms on the trees in the background and also carefully mixed into the fractal “blossom”.  I’m assuming that was intended, but even if not it’s a very nice touch, a sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing theme; camouflaged fractal predator.

The mandelbulb object seems to almost have a grimacing mouth and squinted eyes.  The low, worms-eye-view perspective (looking up) suggests a large, looming creature.  I don’t think a professional artist could have done any better with this mandelbulb image than Mr. BrutalToad has.  It ought to look out of place with the photographic background but instead it merges into it naturally and the two complement each other perfectly.

Influence of Close Encounters by Fiery-Fire

Another superb combination, this time of a mandelbox fractal with an image of at least differing origins if not entirely photographic and real.  I’m not absolutely sure if the image of the sky which forms the background is a photo or not but it’s clearly not part of the mandelbox.  On her Deviant Art page Fiery-Fire refers to it as a “beautiful nebula by Ali =casperium“.

The two go together so well I’m sure Fiery-Fire took a great deal of care in selecting and positioning the background to get the great effect it has.  Perhaps that’s what makes mixed media fractals so hard to make: you need multiple skills and multiple programs.  But when it’s done this well it looks easy.

The exploding nebula dust-sky is of course an overcast one and this matches the diffuse light in the fractal image.  Furthermore, the “camera” position in the fractal image is looking up at this towering clump of fractal shapes whose composition leads our eye right up the clump to the one at the top and into the strange, alien clouds.  It’s not a fluke; Fiery very carefully crafted this image.

Many great fractal images are simply found while exploring a vast fractal generated panorama, but if you want to incorporate other kinds of imagery, particularly photographs, into a fractal image then you’re going to have to work a little more and you’re going to have to juggle two often opposing mediums.  Brutaltoad and Fiery-Fire have achieved some really great results in the two images shown here but I think their success is rare and not as easy as it may look.

Guido Cavalcante has pursued a mixed media style of fractal art for  some time now.  I have not one, but four of his images here.  Three of them are 3D fractals like Fiery-Fire’s and BrutalToads.  All of them were made in Ultra Fractal, sometimes with a little help from Photoshop and sometimes just UF and its versatile image importing features alone.  Guido’s style is different but his methods and tools are the same as any fractal artist who pursues mixed media.

Archimedes 5 by Guido Cavalcante

Wouldn’t you rather live in a computer than the real world?  Of course there’s more than one real world to chose from.  Here’s a golden mandelbox with a third world slum in the background.  It’s not an image that requires a lot of explanation; the golden computer temple is contrasted with the bleak, B&W misery of the slum world.

There’s more: each is a highly detail edifice; the individual slum houses merge into a single, organic-looking multi-celled organism.  The mandelbox is equally detailed and yet the expression of just one formula with three dimensions: length-width-depth; food-clothing-shelter.  It’s a very clever contrast and done so simply.  Golden fantasy vs. concrete reality (no pun intended).

The Hanging Garden by Guido Cavalcante

It’s the cow that “makes” this one for me.  But perhaps the movement of the tangoing couple accentuates the simple pastoral calmness of the grazing cow.  I don’t know about the airship, but it does give some depth and perspective to the great, mossy mandel-palace.  Old dance halls used to be distinguished by their many pillared rooms.  They were built at a time when the strength of structural materials was not as great as it is today and therefore had many more vertical supports.

One can make up a million stories for images like this but to me it’s instantly a palatial dance hall in decay like a wonder from the ancient world.

The Fall of Syracuse by Guido Cavalcante

Alright.  Where’s the mixed media?  All I see is a mandelbox overlayed with a texture and given a torn paper drop shadow border.  But together, mixed together, they create a papyrus fragment depicting the fall of Syracuse, an ancient city thought to be impregnable (secure) but conquered by some sly ancient Greek (better check that).

I like the coloring too.  Looks like a hand-tinted engraving out of a Victorian book (ripped out of a Victorian book).

No Way Out (9) by Guido Cavalcante

Fractal?  Where’s the fractal art?  I know what you’re thinking: it’s all made with Photoshop.

“No way out” is an entirely UltraFractal processed image – the astronaut was rendered with the the image Importer “Sprite” (Mark Townsend´s freeware). The image belongs to one of my obsessions, which is death in space

And the space station, grey cylindrical thing? A quaternion?  The planet in the center looks like a fractal image mapped to a sphere.  UF is the photoshop of fractal art and Guido’s image here is a great example of those features.

I like the space theme; fractals often lend themselves to fantastic, extraterrestrial contexts.  It’s like a graphical voyage or graphical exploration of space: not a real, but a mythical space.

You can see more of Guido’s work on his blog, Fractalmix.

Mixed media fractal imagery can be very expressive when done well like it has been in these six images.  It’s a graphical twilight zone where the virtual meets the real.  But some just call it digital art.

From Last Week’s Episode…

If you’ve been reading the comments to my last two postings:  Can you really copyright an Ultra Fractal parameter file? and;  Is it too late to patent your fractals?; you will have probably come to the conclusion that Ultrafractalists see no essential difference between a parameter file and the resulting image file that it creates.

Samuel Monnier thinks so and he’s a veteran Ultra Fractal user and very familiar with the way the program works, especially how it creates imagery using various techniques, many of them pioneered by himself.  Sam said:

There is absolutely no conceptual difference between a parameter set and a jpg image. Both contain data, that a certain algorithm can use to display an image on your screen. Displaying a parameter file just requires more computations from the computer, yet there isn’t any difference in essence.

Jock Cooper, another veteran Ultra Fractal user and pioneer in pushing the parameters of the program agreed with Sam’s categorization of parameter files as well as disagreeing that Ultra Fractal parameter files (UPRs) are patentable processes and said,

As the comments have pointed out, the UPR is a alternate form of the image…

And as far as the UPR being/defining a process, actually it doesn’t. No process is described by the UPR–those processes are described in the formula files. The UPR defines which processes to use (by naming them) and what numeric inputs to use.

Lessons Learned

So how has this expert advice changed my view on the copyright status of Ultra Fractal parameter files?  A UPR is probably something that can be copyrighted because it’s really no different than a computer script.  But even with the roaring search power of Google at my fingertips I couldn’t find a single legal case of copyright infringement of a computer script or even someone –anyone– on the internet who would say you can copyright a computer script.  But isn’t a computer script a subcategory of computer software?  And computer software can be copyrighted… so there, I guess the question is answered and done with.

Besides, isn’t a parameter file more of a creative work than even the image it renders?  What do fractal artists really do but adjust and explore fractal parameters?  When one works with Ultra Fractal they work with parameters; the image comes later, just like a print artist creates a printing plate and then only afterwards –after all the real work has been done– creates the print, the thing we call the image.  The fractal parameter file is analogous to a printing plate –a fractal printing plate.

No, that’s not right.  It’s a little different.  Let me put it in very cerebral, philosophical language: The parameter file is to a fractal image what the printmaker’s creative choices are to the printed image.  Ultra Fractal provides all the mechanical support: the expert engraver; inking; and pressing of the plate.  (Fractal artists never get dirty or lose fingers.) The artist’s creative “authorship” is contained entirely in its choices of: what formula; what rendering method; what coordinates to zoom to; what boxes to tick off; what numbers to key in; and of course, as a multi-layered program, what layers to include; how to merge them; and as you can see, choosing whatever can be chosen.

The Answers to Everything

A parameter file is a whole bunch of answers to a whole bunch of questions.  Fractal images have a whole lot of variables; parameter files define those variables.  I think this is what Jock Cooper was getting at when he said, “The UPR defines which processes to use (by naming them) and what numeric inputs to use.”

Anyhow, if you’re an Ultrafractalist you know all this already.  That’s why you may find all this copyright stuff somewhat pointless and of no practical importance.  But copyright is all about practical matters –all about what are you going to do?

For instance, speaking of Ultra Fractal parameter files, what are you going to do when someone makes something with your copyrighted parameters?  I don’t mean copies your parameters verbatim, I mean they make another image based on your copyrighted parameters.  I believe “tweaking” is the popular word.  Is it infringement when someone does this?

z_n² + c + mustache + beard

One small step for U-P-R; One giant leap for J-P-G

You see, as my co-contributor, Terry Wright suggested in his comment, image files (or sound files) react very differently to “tweaking” and it’s this difference –the way derivative works are made– that is the real practical difference between image files and parameter files with respect to copyright.  Un-tweaked or simply copied verbatim, parameter files and image files have, as Samuel Monnier said, “no conceptual difference”. (Assuming, as Paul N. Lee added, that they’re used with “the same version/release/mod-level of that application… each time, and the formulas and other criteria (transforms, gradients, etc.) not changing from the original coding”.)  If you copy a parameter file without any alteration, then copyright infringement is a very simple matter to decide.  Of course, the resulting, identical image would make the matter pretty easy to judge, too.

But what if someone changes something in your parameter file just a little bit? What if I take a “1” and make it a “10” and then start selling prints of the image online?  Are you going to send me a harsh email or see a lawyer about it?  Like I said, what are you going “to do”?  Copyright is a practical thing.  If you don’t care about infringement and protecting the commercial value of your work then there’s no reason to care about copyright or bother with it; that’s all copyright is good for.  That’s what I was getting at when I said the copyright notices in parameter files on the UF mailing list were “a little weird”.  What possible infringement scenario could they be hoping to protect their work from?

As every fractal artist who has ever inputed julia coordinates or any kind of number into the dialog box of a fractal program knows, tiny parameter differences can produce huge graphical effects.  Of course, sometimes tiny parameter changes produce tiny graphical differences and sometimes huge parameter changes do nothing at all to the image.  Derivative works are a violation of copyright unless you get permission to use the copyrighted material from the original artist.  You’re copying their work without making substantial, transformative changes to it.  Therefore, that portion of your new work that is their work, is protected by the original artist’s copyright and can’t be copyrighted by you because it isn’t your work.  Derivative works incorporate the copyrighted work of others and create works with dual, or even multiple copyright owners because there are dual, or even multiple –authors.

Unwritten laws of Fractaldom

This is the nightmare scenario that Gumbycat (alias Linda Allison) is hinting at in her online article, “When is it yours?“.  Well, maybe not exactly a “nightmare” or “doomsday” scenario, but if fellow UFers start to feel like you’re exploiting their work by using their parameter files and they see a pretty straightforward and simple legal recourse, i.e. an infringement lawsuit, then I’d say that’s a pretty grim environment to be caught up in.

Nobody wants headaches like that and in the interest of online happiness over the years certain unwritten rules have arisen regarding the proper use of parameter files that many have come to assume (mistakenly, I believe) are supported by copyright law.  Linda Allison (in case you don’t know) is a long-time Ultra Fractal user, so I think what she writes on this matter is worth reading even if it was posted quite a few years ago.  She also explains it quite well.

There are “UPR” files – parameter files. These files hold the data that is the final, sum total of the image you have created. Sometimes we post “UPR” files to the UF Mailing List. That doesn’t mean those images aren’t copyrighted! They are. Nevertheless, we may* expect them to be tweaked (altered slightly or greatly) or picked apart as a learning tool by other List subscribers. Sometimes the tweaks are posted back on the list. When the original images are altered slightly by another List subscriber, the resulting image cannot be claimed by that second person as his or her own image. When they are greatly altered to the extent that in all aspects the new image looks totally unlike the first image, the second person may claim that image as his or hers. When you are unsure whether you can claim the image as your own, contact the creator of the original UPR and work it out with her/him.

Yes, even way back then (I suspect long before that “2005” that appears on the bottom of the web page) the thorny issue of derivative works was anticipated and precisely because of what caused me to start asking these questions myself: posting parameter files to the UF mailing list.  Note that whether the tweak results in a new work or merely a derivative work is a matter judged by what the image looks like.  That makes perfect sense of course; how else would you compare the differences between two parameter files?  What would my suggested substitution of “10” for “1” result in if you can’t see the result?

Courtrooms and complex technology

You see the sort of confusion I’m suggesting will accompany any accusation of copyright infringement of a parameter file?  All a defendant has to do is show a judge or jury how many variables there are in a parameter file and how some of them can be changed from “1” to “10” and result in no changes at all and how others can be changed the same way and result in a total transformation of the original image.  After that a judge or jury (that’s grasped the concept) will most likely conclude that the only kind of derivative work that can really be recognized and argued for is the alteration of images, not the alteration of parameter files.

But that’s assuming you’ve gotten past the first hurdle in any lawsuit: convincing a lawyer that your case is worth taking to court in the first place.  I’m assuming in all these fractal art copyright scenarios that there’s money to be gained in taking legal action because that’s what seems to drive infringement lawsuits.  But currently there probably isn’t any money or at least not enough to attract any interest in a lawsuit.  But even if you were super-rich and wanted to sue someone for the sheer joy of revenge (another frequent, but not nearly as common motive) you’d have to bring the lawyer up to speed with all the intricacies of fractal parameters.  I can just imagine the conversation: “The imaginary values are real things –real numbers– they’re just not the real values, those are different.  You can’t have decimal places in an integer!  I told you already; infinity is the largest number theoretically possible: we represent it with a zero.

It’s in this context of a courtroom or a lawyer’s office and not in the context of an online fractal art discussion that I’m saying an accusation of copyright infringement of a parameter file isn’t going to go anywhere or present any practical legal reaction.  But if the infringement involves an image, then it becomes a simple matter of applying decades of legal precedence to what is just another case of copyright infringement of a visual work.  Viewed from that aspect –derivative works– parameter files and images files are categorically different.  Verbatim duplication of a parameter file, say, in an online repository or reposting without the author’s permission, would probably be easy to deal with too.  And in the event that one published the parameter file for a very popular and commercially valuable work (when there is one) the damages might be far greater than those involved with simply copying an image because with access to the actual parameters, now many people would be able to reproduce the image at any resolution and make derivative works without infringing the artist’s actual image.  Actually, the copies made from the parameter file could be better!

Will any of this ever matter?

It’s hard to say what the future of fractal art is going to be.  But if the creative use of graphical fractal renderings ever acquires real commercial value then these things we’re just discussing as hobbyists might take on a much more serious form and nature.  If you think your fractal art has or ever will have commercial value, then you ought to take a more professional approach to copyright and not just adopt the so-called community standards of the online fractal art folks.  They aren’t the ones who will be judging your copyright infringement case or representing you in court.

In a previous post, Can you really copyright an Ultra Fractal parameter file?, I questioned the validity of copyright protection for parameter files.  I based this on my observation that what parameter files do is categorically different from what  image files do and more in keeping with the types of things the US Copyright Office excludes from copyright protection.

Some of those kinds of things that are excluded like procedures, processes, and methods of operation, are handled by patent law and not copyright law.  The different legal context arises from the differing nature of those two types of things:  for instance, you don’t copyright a procedure, you patent it.

If Ultra Fractal parameter files fall under patent law and not copyright law then anyone wanting to protect their work will have to get it patented –copyright won’t mean a thing because UF parameter files are not “copyright things”.  But acquiring patent protection is quite a different matter from copyright protection.  Copyright protection is automatic and only requires formal (i.e. paid) registration in the event that you actually want to take someone to court for infringement.  Patents always require official registration and most importantly:  fast registration!

After a year of your parameter file being publicly available, the Patent Office will not allow it to be patented.  It is no longer patentable because you’ve waited too long; your opportunity to protect your work has now officially expired!  Copyright is vastly different than this and it simply requires proof that you’re the author should it ever be questioned at some point down the road.  Official copyright registration will probably prevent it from ever being questioned but it’s not necessary and copyright protection now lasts for the life of the author plus an additional seventy years –well over a hundred years in many cases.

But patents only last for 20 years and in the case of design patents (ornamental design of a functional item), the duration is a mere 14 years.  Interestingly, 14 years was the original length of time for copyright protection when it was first created back in the late 1700’s around the same time as patents whose initial lifespan was also 14 years.  Copyright has been extended to almost ten times its original length while patent protection has remained pretty much the same.

Does it change your perspective on parameter files to view them as “patentable things” rather than “copyrightable things”?  It should because it will cost you between $80 to $300 to patent your parameter file and you’ve got to do it quickly.  But copyright, as almost every fractal artist knows, is free, automatic and 24/7.

Internationally, and fractal art is very international, patents are also much different than copyright.  Thanks to Mickey Mouse and his Disneyland gang, fractal artists get to stand under a huge umbrella of automatic and near endless copyright protection held up by the ever-strengthening arm of Mickey himself and whole-heartedly agreed upon by almost every nation via global trade treaties.  Your copyrights will likely still be in force when your grandchildren are around and you’re long gone: “Thanks for leaving us all your fractals, Grandma.  What are they?”

But the one-year window of opportunity for registering a fractal parameter file only applies to a few countries.  In Europe you must patent something before making it public, and in some countries, like New Zealand,  software patents don’t even exist because they don’t qualify as something that can be patented.  Just like copyright exclusions, there are patent exclusions too.

So if you want to patent your UF parameter files, the best strategy I can suggest is to at least register them with the Patent Office before posting them anywhere or even showing them to anyone.  Then you can officially say “patent-pending” when you post them to the UF mailing list.  But don’t say that if they aren’t being registered because it’s an offense to label something as “patented” or “patent-pending” when it actually isn’t.  Patents are a whole different racket than copyright.

So what happens when you don’t patent your work?  It’s a completely different scenario than copyright:  unpatented work automatically becomes Public Domain — free for anyone to use for any purpose they want!

Something to think about next time you get that urge to post a parameter file with a growling copyright warning and the stern words, “On-list tweaks only!”  You just might be giving it all away and it’ll be too late for:

…yeah, you know what.

WHO TWEAKED ME!!!

I’m not an Ultra Fractal user but I do follow the daily exchange of information on the Ultra Fractal mailing list, an email group anyone can join.  Most of the time it’s just users sharing what looks like big long paragraphs of jumbled letters and numbers.  When opened up in Ultra Fractal the scrambled text produces an image.  They call those pieces of text, parameter files.  I just skip over them since, like I said, I’m not actually a UF user, just a curious bystander.

The actual parameter code contained in the emails mean nothing to me and probably can’t be deciphered even by an expert, but there is one little bit that I often see in them that I understand quite well and is intended to be read by everyone who looks at it –a copyright notice.  Up until recently I never thought anything of those copyright notices but after giving myself an award winning internet education on copyright, I’ve begun to feel that those copyright notices on UF parameter files are …a little weird.

Why weird?  Because indecipherable text is not the type of thing that most people would think of as even qualifying for copyright protection.  The US Copyright Office says this about what kinds of things can be copyrighted:

§ 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general²⁸

(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:

(1) literary works;

(2) musical works, including any accompanying words;

(3) dramatic works, including any accompanying music;

(4) pantomimes and choreographic works;

(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;

(6) motion pictures and other audiovisual works;

(7) sound recordings; and

(8) architectural works.

(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Here’s an example of what a UF parameter file looks like:

An example of what a UF parameter file looks like

Now ask yourself: In which of the eight categories listed by the US Copyright Office would you put the above UF parameter file?

None, of course.  It doesn’t fall under any of the categories, although “(5) pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;” is probably where most Ultrafractalists would say it fits.

But I don’t think that’s right.  The reason it’s not a graphic work is because it’s not a picture of anything, it’s a text file.  Of course it will create an image once it’s opened up in UF and that image would qualify as something that can be copyrighted, but the parameter file itself is really just a set of instructions or method of operation to make the program draw the image.  It’s not a piece of literature or a poem or even a news story, it’s just a set of written instructions or what would be better described as a procedure or algorithm.

If you look at the last paragraph it says, “(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure … method of operation … or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described…”

I think a parameter file is a “procedure” and although it comes in the form of a text file just like a piece of writing would, it’s still a procedure and not a really far-out, avant-garde poem or other kind of textual work that can be copyrighted.

Now the US Copyright Office says, “Works of authorship include the following categories:”.  They aren’t limiting the coverage of copyright to just those eight.  There could be others, I suppose, that they haven’t included.  Would you expect the US Copyright Office to have considered or even known about fractal parameter files?  The wording is vague and open-ended because human expression comes in so many forms and formats.  So maybe another category could be added or proposed and it would be suitable for parameter files and other, “original works of authorship”?  But are UF parameter files “original works of authorship”?

Sure, they are.  But if they’re procedures or processes or methods of operation, then they are clearly excluded from copyright protection.  That’s because those sorts of things are covered by patent law and not copyright law.  UF parameter files look more like algorithms than the sort of “works of original authorship” that are covered by copyright.

Algorithms, even computer algorithms, can be patented.  Not in all countries, but they can be in the U.S.  The GIF file format contains a patented algorithm, the LZW compression algorithm.  Unisys caused a great deal of anxiety among software developers some time back when it acquired ownership of the LZW algorithm and was going to require everyone to buy a license to use GIFs.  But getting a patent is different from getting a copyright.  Copyright is something that occurs automatically today, but patents require formal registration with the Patent Office.  You can’t just slap a “Patented” label on a parameter file like you can with those, one size fits all, anywhere-anytime, 24/7, copyright notices.

If I’m right that UF parameter files can’t be copyrighted, then there are some ramifications to that.  For one, there would be no restrictions on copying or publishing UF parameter files.  That means anyone wanting to set up a repository of parameter files could do so without worrying that they are infringing anyone’s copyright —there would be no copyright. Those notices would just be mistakes written by parameter file authors who have misunderstood what copyright really is.

I don’t expect those notices to go away anytime soon though.  In the words of Colonel Kilgore:

"I love the smell of copyright on my parameter files. Smells like --Victory"

Known as JackOfTraDeZ or FractAlkemist and probably a few others, Lloyd Garrick, a name he rarely goes by, has made a sizable collection of fractal videos using Fractint and some very interesting musical soundtracks.  In fact, the music almost adds an extra dimension to the fractal visuals and the combination of the two transforms them in the same way adding a third dimension makes everything come alive in 3D imagery.

As is so often the case with me these days, my discovery began with a humble link from a thread about something unrelated at Fractalforums.com:

Famous videos?  I didn’t know there was such a thing in Fractaland.  After clicking on the famous videos link and visting the Ultimate Fractal Video Project site where his many videos are available for download, I went to his YouTube channel.  And all this before I’d even finished my morning coffee.

The title image for the BuddaBrot video caught my interest right away…

I generally “listen” to videos with the sound turned off.  That’s because the musical accompaniment usually doesn’t accompany the video.  So I “listened” to this one muted as well.  It wasn’t until I’d viewed a few more that I began to wonder what sort of soundtrack, if any, there was.

Like I said, the music combines with the imagery to take the video to a whole new level of creativity and alive-ness.  In BuddaBrot the gritty golden noise actually seems to be moving with the beat of the music.  It’s like it’s dancing.

Lloyd says this about Mission to Mars on the video’s YouTube page:

Use your imagination! You’re a rich space tourist on a mission to Mars. You approach the red planet from deep space, descend into orbit, then make planetfall into one of the large canyons known to exist there. You rocket above and over the surface looking for a smooth place to land among the sand dunes and mountains. … And you wish you had hired a better pilot …

Lloyd’s got a sense of humor!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen comedy in a fractal video before.  Also; did you notice that the video is nothing more than a “deep-deep” zoom?  Lloyd’s got a way a making everything new.

Note how the acceleration of the car’s engine is matched by the changing imagery in the video.  This is really a very well planned bit of animation.

Fractint stuff looks pretty retro doesn’t it?  And the soundtrack is –what? It sounds more like a machine than a piece of music.  But together, they create something I find very impressive.  This is the secret of art: it’s not what you use, it’s how you use it.

Ultrafractal makes some very smooth and advanced fractal imagery, but it’s no different than Fractint when it comes to making art.

Lloyd goes even further and makes this comment on Cathedral of Chaos (not included here): “Tweaked Mandelbrot LAKE animation. You can do things with FRACTINT like no other freakin program out there!”

I chose Dancing Dragon not because it’s one of Lloyd’s best videos but because it’s probably the best example of his skill in combining fractals with sound.  The fractal imagery alone is really nothing too exciting.  As cool as this julia of the mandelbrot set might have looked the very first time we discovered it, it’s a pretty cliche theme in any fractal art venue now.

And yet!  And yet, the soundtrack floods that old worn-out image with a golden grandeur and makes us feel we’re watching the awakening of  some great golden dragon.  We can all learn a thing or two from Lloyd here.  Or should I say, Master Lloyd?

StarGate uses a soundtrack from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s famous, and very freaky, science fiction movie.  Kubrick really raised the bar for science fiction movies, maybe even a bit too high since no one’s been able to even touch it since then.

Lloyd is right when he says, “Too bad fractal animation wasn’t available when 2001 Space Odyssey was made in 1968 but it’s available now so how come noone’s using it?”  Lloyd’s simple fractal imagery fits in quite well with what I think Kubrick was trying to do in the Star Gate scene from his movie (which is something everyone is still trying to figure out).  But I don’t have to tell you; the power of YouTube allows me to “quote” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. You don’t have to watch the whole 10 minutes; some people find Stanley Kubrick boring.

Back to Lloyd, the Stanley Kubrick of fractal art.

Profoundly minimalistic; that’s what makes this one so good.  The silvery, bubbly fractal image is quite elegant and has strong design characteristics.  The music is really nothing more than a background “theme” (musical texture?) with a single shimmery chord.  The fractal drifts in and then out in a single, simple crescendo.

Well, I could go on but all I think I’d end up doing is embedding everything Lloyd has ever done into this blog post.  Check out the rest if you like what you’ve seen so far.  Holding on to your hat is not the same as holding on to your mind.

~ Click on any image to view a larger version on the original site ~

Sahelanthropus tchadensis by Didier Descouens CC-SA

Although the works of Max Ernst (1891-1976) might exhibit a pronounced frontal brow on their foreheads, closer examination reveals startling similarities between them and the contemporary fractal art that now inhabits the same landscapes they once did.

Europe After the Rain by Max Ernst 1942

Ernest employed a technique of squished paint.  Touched-up obviously and with some additional hand-painted elements, but what a fine way to represent the airborne decay of the European urban landscape in the early days of WW2.  The abstract, unrealistic imagery of paint squishing (decalcomania) has real similarities to the algorithmic renderings produced by aerial bombardment.  Ernst’s image is a better expression of that because it works even worse thoughts in our imagination.  It also, perhaps, served as inspiration of Ernst himself to produce the work he did.  The same imaginary effects that work on the artist are felt by the audience too.

The Entire City by Max Ernst, 1936

If you will forget for a moment the central theme of Ernst’s work here, you will undoubtedly recognize a proto-mandelbox in this image.  Seriously, Ernst is portraying a single, monolithic image of a “lump” as an iconic image for a city.  But wait, what came first?  Was it Ernst’s idea to portray a city this way, or was it Ernst’s creation of an interesting “lump” that triggered the concept of The Entire City in his imagination?

Again, the imaginary workings of Ernst’s imagery conjure up a twilight zone where abstraction and realism meet.

Fishbone Forest by Max Ernst, 1927

Did he make that circular Sun-like object in the sky by pressing a pop bottle into the canvas?  Artists like Ernst are sometimes shockingly creative.  Of all the skulls we’ve unearthed here, this one displays the fractalopithecus family characteristics the best:  Abstract imagery used to imagine an alternate but legible reality.

It’s an example of what fractals can sometimes do because fractals are primarily abstract but can sometimes be found in naturally occuring formations where they suddenly suggest realistic themes.  I call this neither abstract nor realism but instead: imaginary.  It’s already cropping up here and there because fractal artists sense something of interest in their imaginary scenes but they fumble with the terms for it because the currently used terms don’t apply to this artificial “realism”.

Fleurs sur Fond Jaune by Max Ernst, 19-something

Unfortunately I can’t find a larger version of this image (or the year it was made).  Perhaps it is perennially new because every viewer interprets it differently.  It’s more than just a study of popcorn; the flowers have transcended their real forms and become vivid imaginations of what they once were.  We will not see flowers like this anywhere in the world, and yet we will recognize them when we do.  The same imagination is present in both graphical experiences, real and imaginary.

Hommage a Rimbaud by Max Ernst, 1961

The Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery site says this about the above image by Ernst:

The most inventive prints by the surrealist Max Ernst were arguably produced after the Second World War in collaboration with the master etcher George Visat. This is from a series, developed in the early 1960s, on the theme of the ovoid or egg shape. This most essential of natural forms is here conceived as a constant spiral, half-submerged in a web of textural irregularities. In this ‘hidden’ vision, Ernst appropriately pays homage to the symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91).

“Inventive / theme of the ovoid or egg shape / hidden vision / symbolist” I’m not the only one to see modern things in this pre-fractal artifact.

Imaginary art opens it’s mouth but it doesn’t speak –it sings.  The title can be part of the work and not merely some stuck-on thing; an iconic utterance as ancient as Adam naming the animals.  It doesn’t stick; it protrudes from the image.

The Forest by Max Ernst, 1928

Forests don’t look like this, but some do feel like it sometimes.  There is a forest like this somewhere out in the world, undiscovered by us, and this image prophesies it.  Imaginary art slips past our eyes and makes a direct appeal to our minds by conveying, in secret alphabet, a message our eyeball gatekeepers would have turned away.  It’s a parable or metaphor: more real than the real thing.  I can’t think of any better way to define what “art” is than that: art is what you think of when you’re looking at it.

There are great expressive possibilities for fractal art.  But first we have to accept, like I believe Ernst accepted with his own work, that we are better off letting it direct us than we are in trying to direct it -being the directed rather than the director. How can one make imaginary things?  They can’t, of course.  But we can look for them and decipher their names.

Back in the Halcyon group-hug salad days of Orbit Trap, I put up a post about titling.  I used my own images (and several others) to investigate whether titles unfairly nudge viewers to the artist’s interpretation or favorably provide additional meaning-making material.  I’d like to re-visit the question using some images I recently saw on Fractalbook.

Since fractal images overwhelmingly tend to be non-representational, this question of the perceptual influence of titles has more than a passing importance for fractal artists.

~/~

Just as kind of context refresher course, here’s what I said three years ago:

Names don’t have to be overly prescriptive. Viewers will still see whatever they prefer. Or, of course, they can categorically resist and deep six any title you’ve labored for hours to concoct.

But names can be like those mannequin torsos found in style shops. They at least provide a working semblance to hang up some preliminary but pricy rags of meanings that viewers might eventually buy.

Names also hint at an image’s "personality" — possibly providing a snapshot of its heuristic psyche.

And that’s where crucial artistic decisions come into play. These critical first impression snapshots often set the ground rules for an image’s tone and mood. Without such delicate pre-viewing preparation, a viewer’s response to your labor of love could be nothing more than a mumbled Huh?

Here we go.  Ten images.  Forty answer options.  Score yourself via the grading grid provided at the end of the post.  You can, of course, find the correct title by clicking on each image to view its source page.  But, as the administrator of this quiz, let me point out that doing so would be cheating.  So.  Do not open your instruction booklets images until instructed to do so.  Begin.

~/~

? by gateman45.  Seen on Renderosity.

(a)_____The Hand of Orloc
(b)_____Hello, It’s Me
(c)_____Terminator Leftover
(d)_____Rake Roomba

? by Lenord.  Seen on Renderosity.

(a)_____Journey to the Center of the Inner Ear
(b)_____Sunrise on Tatooine
(c)_____The Land of the Sandkings
(d)_____Clean-Up on Aisle #9

? by claude19.  Seen on Renderosity.

(a)_____Death of Blue Beetle
(b)_____Truck with a Hemi Buyer’s Remorse
(c)_____The DRAMA…on the Other Side!!!
(d)_____Postmodern de Kooning Woman

? by Jennyfnf.  Seen on Renderosity.

(a)_____Faery Ring
(b)_____Early Morning Poppies
(c)_____Manta Ray Formation
(d)_____Root Rot Begins

? by stereo cyclop.  Seen on Renderosity.

(a)_____Go Towards the Light
(b)_____Elf Maid’s Pets
(c)_____Condensation
(d)_____Don’t Cry Over Boiled Milk

? by Cov1ous.  Seen on deviantART.

(a)_____Sea Anemones
(b)_____Silly String Accident
(c)_____Northern Lights in HD
(d)_____Rampant Energy

? by dagian.  Seen on deviantART.

(a)_____Motherboard
(b)_____Jack That Meat
(c)_____The Outsider
(d)_____Recursive Doorbell

? by kayandjay100.  Seen on deviantART.

(a)_____Sunrise on Cassiopeia
(b)_____Cockroach Chorus Line
(c)_____Gone Viral
(d)_____Xtreme Manicure

? by russianlad.  Seen on deviantART.

(a)_____24
(b)_____175
(c)_____490
(d)_____Hike

? by eReSaW.  Seen on deviantArt.

(a)_____The Butterfly Effect
(b)_____Mr. Bombastic
(c)_____Bad Dancer
(d)_____Streaming The Fly

~/~

This examination is self-graded.  Score yourself according to the following scale:

10 out of 10 — Precog Emeritus
8 out of 10 — Genius Grant Material
6 out of 10 — Lucky Ducky
4 out of 10 — Good Guesser
2 out of 10 — Try Working with the Drugs
0 out of 10 — Stick to Numerical Titles Only

~/~

Addendums:

Just want to remind readers again that Orbit Trap does sometimes publish guest posts on fractal art topics.  If you’d like to write something for us, please contact the contributors with a query to orbittrap(AT)ambaka.com.

Although Orbit Trap has no links page, there are some good fractal blogs tucked away on the Internet tubes.  Here are two I enjoy.  Both bloggers are learned about both fractals and art:

Algorithmic Worlds.  Samuel Monnier’s blog.  Technically in the know and on the edge.  Consistently thoughtful and informative.  Great eye for composition and use of design elements.

FractalMix.  Guido Cavalcante’s blog.  Politically savvy — the artist as a witness to history.  Consistently articulate and experimental.  Few in our field know as much about art history and aesthetics.

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

Untitled by tohu777 (on Flickr)

Comment posted to the above image on Flickr

In defense of Valerie, tohu777’s image fooled me too.  I thought it was an art installation out in some desert somewhere.

Even now I’m not so sure it’s not a real photograph.  But of course, what difference does it really make?

It makes a difference.  For some reason it’s just different when you find out an image is not made from what you thought it was.  But in this case, because the image is so incredibly realistic (would the real thing would be more vivid?) and also because the image has such great artistic interest, I can’t look at it without seeing something real and as relevant as the real world.  It has become real.

Good art invents itself.

What is artistic about it?  A lot of hyper-realistic 3D imagery is boring when placed in a non-technical context.  In itself, realism is a rather empty goal because reality is common.  I said similar things in a previous post, Reinventing the Real.  But this image doesn’t merely attempt to fake the photographic look, it presents something that’s interesting and thought-absorbing regardless of its graphical origins.

• Arctic
• another planet
• crash-landed ship or protruding alien city tower?
• the highly fabricated mesh around the tower makes me want to check what I’m standing on
• the sun (or whatever) is setting and it’s going to get cold
• what was built first? the tower or the bent superstructure around it?  Was it designed to look bent?
• no one has been here for a thousand years (or since the last heavy snowfall)
• such intense human activity punctuating such a vast expanse of emptiness
• on most days the sun is the only viewer
• I hope this wasn’t the rescue ship I’ve been waiting for
• there’s got to be a door in there somewhere

Untitled by tohu777 (Flickr)

Not far from the first one, in Flickr-land, I stumbled on this.

Flotsam on a remote space beach?  When an asteroid cleans out its pockets, it  all ends up somewhere.  Are there hurricanes in space?

Check out tohu777’s Flickr photostream for more scenes transmitted from a distant star.

Liquid Canvas Abstract by Richard Todd

A “liquid canvas abstract” is a floating painting — an artistic expression of color and form on a liquid “canvas” using oil-based pigments. The evanescent image is preserved photographically in high resolution.

No digital construction is involved.

from http://www.richardtoddartist.com/about/

Liquid Canvas Abstract by Richard Todd

I had the idea for a liquid canvas about 20 years ago, but I was too busy with other projects to do much with it. Fortunately, a good idea lives on. Two years ago, I came back to this one. And now I’m excited to share the results with you. So far, the response has been more than I could have hoped for. Adjectives like “beautiful,” “stunning,” and “fantastic” have inspired me to work in this medium with ever greater depth of purpose. The paintings are a combination of artistic technique and the uncontrollable physics of fluids in motion, creating a unique cacophony of form, light, and color. The paintings are so ephemeral that they last only seconds. I use fine art photography to give them the permanence they deserve.

from http://www.richardtoddartist.com/about/

Liquid Canvas Abstract by Richard Todd

Richard really describes his work well and very concisely, too.  But still, there’s a few things I’d like to add: The Confluence of Ancient and Modern.

Yes, if I understand what he’s describing properly, he’s doing a variation of the ancient marble paper making technique.  What’s different is that he’s using photography to capture the imagery rather than laying a sheet of paper over the painted matrix.  The result of this, if you think carefully, is to produce a 3D version of the marbled imagery instead of the flat, paper version of the ancient method.  Photography captures the paint that is below the surface as well as on top of it.

But then he prints the photos out using high quality methods:

I’m pleased to be able to offer a level of print quality commensurate with the paintings themselves. I doubt there’s a better printer than the Epson 9900. Combined with Moab’s Entrada Gloss paper or Innova’s Ultra Gloss canvas, the resulting images are truly beautiful.

from http://www.richardtoddartist.com/about/

It’s an interesting digital twist to an ancient artform: the results of both methods are a flat, very ornate, long lasting image.

There’s many more to look at in his Galleries and Collections section, as well as in the flash applet on the home page.

Ebru Sanati: Turkish Marbling

We follow the Western footsteps that brought the technique for making marbled paper back to Europe from Istanbul in Turkey…

We are soon invited in to have tea with a friendly turk.  What do you know?  On the television is a show all about the Turkish art of painting on a gelatinous surface.  Fortunately it’s a very visual demonstration so our inability to speak Turkish is not a problem.  Art is the universal language.  Tea is pretty widely understood too.

Looks pretty easy doesn’t it?  Apophysis is even easier though.  Here’s a more sophisticated example which incorporates the actual painting of an object in the paint film and not merely the creation of an ornate background.

I find Richard Todd’s work interesting not just because it looks so good, but because it’s an advancement of an ancient art.  Not only that, stop me if I’m wrong, but I think fractals can be considered a new technique for dripping and swirling paint.

A special thanks to Paul N. Lee, the veteran fractal archivist, for alerting me to Richard Todd’s Liquid Canvas Abstracts.

I have a few rules of thumb I like to keep to when it comes to reviewing fractal art.  One of them, if it were boiled down and expressed as a revolutionary slogan painted on a flag, is “Art, not Artists”.  It’s not a hard rule to follow in the fractal art world where the work of most artists is eclectic by nature and varies quite widely.  Expressed another way: There are no good artists, only good art.

I go looking for good artwork and the name of the artist is just part of the frame.  Lately the art trail keeps leading back to Johan Ason’s Mandelwerk Castle, his Deviant Art gallery.  I think there is such a thing as a talent for working with fractal software and other algorithmic machines to make artwork.  It’s like a talent for taking photographs.  It’s different than a talent for painting or sketching but, like all visual art, the final result is something you look at.  The process is different and as such it favors a different skill set and a different talent that directs it.  So maybe there is a such a thing as a good fractal artist.

Johan (aka Kraftwerk on Fractalforums.com) seems to have that talent for fractal software.  And there’s a few others.  Let’s take a look.

~ Click any of the following images in this posting to view full-size on the original site ~

Hommage to Benoit Mandelbrot, by Johan Ason (Mandelwerk)

Most of the time, natural imagery like sunsets and clouds clash with computer generated fractal imagery.  For that reason alone, Johan deserves an special award for this one: the natural sky and the fractal landscape fit together perfectly.  And as a salute to the recent passing of Dr. Mandelbrot it’s even more appropriate:  I can’t think of a more realistic, while at the same time fantastic, rendering of what an alien planet might look like; a world created by fractal geometry.

Someone on Fractalforums.com commented on the excellent composition of the image also.  The eye is naturally and effortlessly guided through the image first from the structure in the left foreground, across that barren stretch in the middle to the distant hill and finally to that fading sunset.  Painters can make these sorts of compositions happen deliberately, but photographers and fractal artists have to hunt them down and capture them in the wild.  (With a little help sometimes from a graphics program.)

13th Secret of Cathedral Woods by Johan Ason (Mandelwerk)

You really need to click on this one to see the great detail in the full-size image.  The “tree trunks” themselves have some strange secrets to tell and the glowing glass canopy of “leaves” is even more spectacular in the larger version.  Cathedral and Woods makes for a good title and I like the mysterious sound of the 13th Secret.

Do you see the strange face lurking beside the tree trunk in the right corner?  That’s not an evil troll waiting to skin you alive in a full moon ritual, that’s the artist.  I’ve seen artists try to get creative with their signature/watermarks but none have looked as good as this.

Finest signature/watermark I've ever seen by... Johan Andersson!

Well, drown my kittens!  It’s Andersson, not Ason.  I noticed that his first name didn’t seem to be spelled right on his Deviant Art page, so maybe I should have been more careful.  Don’t believe everything you read on the internet or just guess at stuff you’re not sure about.

That’s his picture (I’m guessing); the squiggle on his shoulder is his actual autograph; there’s an email address and a nifty, euro-company name: KONSTPRODUKT.  All that in a single color image; that’s better identification than a passport.  Very classy.  Apparently konstprodukt is Swedish for artifact.  I think I’m getting close to unraveling the next secret of the Cathedral Woods.

Anyhow, Johan has constructed a very creative as well as effective signature for his work.  The email address is a great idea.  Assuming that shadowy figure hasn’t scared you off.

Seventh Secret of the Forest by Johan Andersson (Mandelwerk)

Johan writes: “Inspired by Jesses http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=3447 and Rrrolas images of negative scaled boxes I went ahead and found a surreal forest…”

I would never have thought such an image could come from the mandelbox, but then, it hasn’t even been around for a whole year yet, so maybe there’s lots more to be done with it.  A very different style of image from the usual 3D fractal graphics.  It would make a great Yes album cover.

Dark Secret of the Moon by Johan Andersson (Kraftwerk/Mandelwerk)

Apart from the awesome panorama in the top left of the image and the shining cliff face that forms part of it, what I find equally interesting is what’s going on in the right hand side.  The incredibly lifelike and very graphic imagery on the left slowly changes to very plain, geometric and much more abstract imagery on the right.  It’s almost like a diagram or chart showing a range of something.  I find it gives the image a very surreal quality because the two very different sorts of imagery are connected and flow from one to the other.  It’s a sort of dissolving reality; a face slowly morphing into a landscape or a landscape gradually melting into a geometric shape.  It reminds me of one of those many Salvador Dali abstracted sequences.

Under Desert by Jesse

This is the image referred to by Johan previously.  As he said, it’s a variation using a negative scale parameter setting.  The results, as you can see, are these elegant, almost vector graphic images.  The title is a very good one; a desert cave or tunnel with some glowing light source.  Again, such a different style from the gritty, weathered stone surfaces that most mandelbox images have.  It sure pays to explore the whole range of parameter settings.  When you set off to boldly explore the mandelbox formula, this is the sort of treasure and new worlds you may find.

Statics by Jesse Dierks (Jesse)

This one is absolutely incredible, isn’t it? not just because of the innovative needle like structures but also because of the range of imagery and the incredible intertwining designs.  Note also the interesting recursion of the design we see in detail in the top and left as it iterates into infinity in the bottom and right.  The color is perfect; from the gold/orange of the cathedral like spires to the fish bone needles in the mid-ground to the red/green clay surface that lays exposed in the top right.  Jesse deserves not just an award for this image but for creating the program that made it.  He’s a real multi-talented individual.

Mandelbox add rotations 2 by Krzysztof Marczak (buddhi)

The full size is worth the click.  I found this one via Johan’s list of Favs on Deviant Art.  I see an alpine scene; something up in the mountains but grass covered.  That smooth golden patch in the upper right is a (fractal) alpine meadow.  And from that meadow you can see the distant tops of other mountains, but, just kind of twisted and spun around.  I can’t explain the smooth cave structures in the bottom right, but sometimes dreams get mixed into the formula.  Click on them, and they’re gone…

Emerging by bib (Jeremie Brunet)

What the tomb saw, before the archaeologist entered.  Is that a mandel-light-bulb glowing and emerging from the crypt?  Perhaps this is what light sources look like up close in the mandelbox programs?  Anyhow, I like the Egyptian tomb look to this: the ornately carved wood furniture and the decorated walls.  It’s both ancient and decayed while at the same time elegant and well, emergent.  Something is coming out and it doesn’t look any worse for wear after a few thousand years of lying entombed in silence.  There looks to be two other burial things there in the foreground.  Empty?  Or robbed?  It’s a mistake that the emerging thing has allowed you to see this much and live.  Be thankful for that oversight and start running.

"mandelbulber_03_10_2010_sauermann_b" by Jotero (ID on Fractalforums.com)

Jotero?  A new face on Fractalforums.com.  And he’s got his own unique style too.  Who else makes 3D fractals that look like this?  The coloring here is special.  It creates an electron micrograph look.  That’s a photograph taken through an electron microscope.  If you had really good eyes and they worked with electrons instead of photons, this is what you’d see when you looked at a mandelbox.  From the title I’m assuming he used the Mandelbulber program by buddhi (Krzysztof Marczak), a free program for Windows as well as Linux.  (Not to be confused with the Mandelbulb 3D by Jesse.)

"mandelbulber_06_10_2010_b_sauermann" by Jotero

Magnificent detail.  This is a royal mandel-palace.  And it’s virtually monochromatic and yet looks great.  The single color tone probably heightens the visual impression that all those intricate details make.  Very subtle lighting and shading makes for a very vivid 3D image just like a scanning electron microscope does.  The best fractal images are discovered, not constructed, in my opinion.  I’m sure we’ll be seeing some more great work by “Jotero”.  (Some connection with this site and this one, too.)

I’ve got more.  Lots more.  My fractal fishing net is still full.  There’s just so much good stuff out there since the Mandelbulb and all the rest of the 3D fractals crashed onto the scene.  So I thought I’d make a start by emptying out my net here; starting with Prince Johan …and a few others.

Kellerwald by Willow (Wikipedia) Published under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license

If a tree falls in the woods…

…and no one hears it, does it really make a sound?

If a tree falls in the woods and it doesn’t cost anything, does it really make a sound?

If someone violates your copyright and it doesn’t cost you anything, should you be making a sound?

Does copyright have any purpose or meaning in situations where the artist’s commercial interests are not threatened?

Purpose of Copyright

The US Constitution, Article 1 Section 8 (powers of Congress) has this to say about copyright:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

The World International Property Organization (WIPO – an agency of the United Nations) says this about copyright on their website:

The purpose of copyright and related rights is twofold: to encourage a dynamic creative culture, while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence, and to provide widespread, affordable access to content for the public.

“To encourage a dynamic creative culture while returning value to creators so that they can lead a dignified economic existence”.  In other words: to make money from their work so they can make more of it.

Copyright was invented to commercialize the production of cultural works so as to benefit those who produce them.  Copyright granted a monopoly to the artist for the commercial exploitation of their work.  Copyright then, is a legal device which attempts to promote the production of creative cultural works by making them economically self-sustaining.  Profit, that great economic motivator which dictates the careers and daily routines of most people, can now be harnessed for the production of culture via the mechanism of copyright.

Moral Copyright?

So getting back to my analogy of the tree falling in the woods, one ought to first consider the commercial ramifications of those copyright trees that fall in the woods before “listening” to them, because that’s really what copyright is all about: commerce.  Long before I ever started reviewing fractal artwork on the internet I became aware that most fractal artists saw copyright as the exclusive right to say, “Hey!  That’s mine!” whenever their work popped up somewhere they hadn’t put it.  But that sort of “moral copyright” is something that:

1. Was never intended by copyright law
2. Makes an actual lawsuit totally pointless
3. Serves no purpose in fostering cultural works

So far there is no commercial market for fractal art in the form in which it appears on the internet.  Images uploaded to the internet at best serve the commercial purpose of low resolution samples from which potential customers can go to the artist to buy prints.  It’s the high resolution files that have commercial value because only with them can you produce prints.  If you just want to look at the images online, that’s free of charge, but if you want to look at them offline like as a print hanging on a wall, you have to pay.  You have to pay because you need access to a high resolution file and you can’t get that on the internet.

These low resolution images posted to the internet allow artists to exhibit and share their work, for the large part, so far, as a hobby and in the context of an online social network.  They don’t allow artists to make money merely by posting them to the internet; to do that they’d have to charge admission to their online gallery and simultaneously restrict access to it.  There is no commercial loss to artists when their images are reposted elsewhere on the internet because no artist anywhere charges merely for viewing their work.  In fact, if a proper link is provided, one can argue that reposting artwork serves only to benefit the artist commercially by increasing online access to it and thereby increasing their audience and subsequently the potential market for their work.

Links can be good for art sales

Most commercial enterprises on the internet pay people to link to them.  Amazon, for example, has a very sophisticated and well established system for paying people to review their books, post the (copyrighted) cover art, and link to the page on Amazon that offers the book for sale.  Here’s a screenshot for those of you who never click on text links:

Amazon Associates Referral Program by Amazon.com Oct 19, 2010. Click to visit site.

Web browsers = Virtual Squirrels

Images posted to the internet are in an environment where copying is not just easy, it’s trivially easy.  In fact, copies of them are made by the viewer’s web browser for everything they look at and stored in their browser’s cache automatically, whether they want them there or not.  I said, “for everything they look at” but if you look through the file folder used as your browser cache you’ll probably also find some images you didn’t even notice while you were browsing; that’s how trivial and common the act of copying is on the internet.

I don’t know of anyone who actually sells the low-res digital images they display on the internet; I don’t see anyone actually trying to do this.  I do see other types of digital images being sold and it’s theoretically possible for fractal art to be sold that way too, but I’m not sure how much success fractal artists (or any artists) would have selling desktop wallpaper images or stock images for websites or electronic publications.  Outside of print sales, which require high resolution image files that are rarely posted to the internet, fractal art images found on the internet have no significant commercial value and therefore the copyright protection which they hold is virtually meaningless (no pun intended) in such a non-commercial context.

Money is the backbone of copyright.  Without it, copyright literally can’t stand up.  Instead it becomes some misshapen and dysfunctional thing squirming about on the floor making strange gurgling and terrifying noises (so to speak).

Don’t let your artwork surf naked

Did your mother ever tell you to put your name on something before you take it to school to show everybody?  Well, she’d probably tell you to put your name on your fractal images before publishing them on the internet.  That way you’ll always be assured of attribution and at least a “visual” link by which interested viewers can google your name and find your site.  Large images might be resized so consider making your name large enough that it will still be readable if the image is reduced to a size in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 pixels.  Cavemen didn’t sign their art; but if they were alive today they would.

Early attempts at uploading. (By Abdullah Geelah - Creative Commons-SA license)

Copyright is slowly getting acclimatized

Although the internet may not seem like a new thing to anyone anymore, it’s still developing and is only gradually becoming incorporated into the deeper structures of our culture and society.  Laws are probably one of the most complex aspects of our culture and the medium in which politics and social power are most intensely expressed.  Even stupid laws are the result of very careful complex social and political negotiation.  Small changes to the social and political environment of any country often results in changes to its laws or in the creation of political pressure to make those changes.

The internet has brought about many changes to the world and nowhere have these changes been as extreme as in the area of publishing.  Publishing is done differently on the internet and naturally laws which were designed for an offline publishing environment won’t always achieve the same intended results when applied online.

Continuing my analogy… when trees fell in the offline forest (i.e. they were copied) the event was almost always one of commercial significance because offline publishing is expensive (print, television) and almost always had to revolve around making money in some way, if only just to exist.  But today, when trees fall in the internet forest, the event rarely has any commercial impact because a good deal of internet publishing (posting, uploading) is for fun or other non-commercial, amateur purposes.  Sure, there’s people on the internet cutting into the profits of film and music companies through file sharing, but if you look at what goes on elsewhere on the internet it’s a completely different situation because all of that internet activity is happening outside the context of any potential or actual commercial market for what is being viewed, up- or downloaded.  Accusing people of stealing amateur internet content makes about as much sense as calling your insurance company to tell them your car has been downloaded.

Copyright takes on a different meaning when it’s applied to amateur, online communities like the fractal art world.  Traditional copyright law was drawn up for very different situations.  It doesn’t make sense to respond the same way to seeing our artwork on someone else’s website as we would if it was being used for the cover of Time magazine.

Cornelia Yoder was true to her words: the Fractal Universe Calendar 2011 is made up exclusively of her images and retains the traditional name although the publisher has skipped like a stone from Avalanche to Lang to Perfect Timing.  She has also kept up the time-worn tradition of adhering to that tested and true style that, in the words of one editor, “just works”.

Cornelia’s had quite an act to follow; over a decade of lush fractal bouquets, turned this way, turned that way, some with ribbons, some with none at all –but all of them radiating that, je ne sais quoi, that has made the Fractal Universe Calendar a cult favorite and engendered today a very cultish following despite more than a decade of progress in fractal art software and artistic style within the fractal art world.

But I sense the worshippers of this Fractal Universe Calendar style are coming to the end of their creative spiral.  I can see a good number of images amongst those published throughout the years that bear a close resemblance to each other.  Is this the coalescence of a new sub-genre? or the inevitable genetic collapse after so many years of inbreeding?

Some of the images to me look to be minor variations of the same parameters.  For instance: compare 2007-4 and 2009-7, counting from the left to the right.  Now there’s a twisted family tree –one too many “Julias” in that one!  Imagine having no in-laws.

Look carefully; can you spot any other slightly modified duplicates?  A little shift of the hue?  Something spun the other way?  Old tire, new tread?

Can you see any?  Or is it just me?

Fractal Universe Calendar 2011 and past years thumbnail gallery. Click to view larger version at publisher's site

What has it done for fractal art?  It’s brought publishers to the realization that fractal art can be bought in bulk like any other stock imagery they already use.  The years of contests, editors, sorting, sifting, short-listing and final cutting are over; just find someone who knows how to make the stuff and order a dozen.

While Cornelia Yoder might be “flabbergasted” over her recent rise to fame, laying claim to what used to be a highly contested and multi-artist production, I see this sudden development as a sign that the calendar publishers have gotten wise to the over-inflated view that fractal artists have of themselves and their cliche artwork.  Publishers don’t need “artists”, they just need one person who can perform the fractal equivalent of a flower arranger.

Flower Arrangement 2 by Craig Hein Design

CraigHeinDesign.com

Now I know some of you like the kind of fractal art that the calendar features (year after year) but that’s okay because there’s many people who love looking at flower arrangements and they have about as much variety in artistic style as the calendar’s “fractal arrangements” do.  I’m not interested in pointing out what is “good art” and what isn’t, I just want to point out that “fractal arranging” has become a very common skill which is easy to acquire and needs only a little “tweaking”, as they say on the Ultra Fractal Mailing List, to enable one to produce work that can be considered individual.  It wasn’t that way back in the 90s when these delightful, shiny ribbon things first burst onto the fractal art scene, spinning and sparkling in ways fractals had never spun or sparkled before.

Easy and Efficient Online Floral Arrangement Ordering from FTD

FTD.com

I have a funny anecdote to tell: back a year ago when the Fractal Universe calendar was going through some changes and looked to be closing up and then to be producing one last issue without a contest, I thought they had made a new calendar out of old images from previous years.  So I went to the calendar site and compared the latest calendar’s set of images with the archives.  Immediately I was sure I spotted some duplicates!  I searched the archives to find what image and from what year they’d taken it –but I couldn’t find them! The ones I thought were reprints weren’t reprints at all it seemed.  But it was hard to be sure so I went over each year again because I was sure I’d seen a few images from the new calendar that matched ones in the archives.  Finally, I had to go through the process really slowly and carefully: I would look at the new one I suspected of being reused and then look at a single archived image and then look back at the new image again and then repeat the process with every archived image.  It took a while but I was certain I’d find proof that they’d rehashed old calendars.  It was like in the old cop TV shows where they have a witness look over the mug shot books again and again because the detectives can’t believe none of the criminals in the book match the person the witness saw.  Then it dawned on me:  These fractal images are all so similar that they have no distinguishing characteristics –They all look the same!

So, is it any surprise that the calendar publishers have come to the same conclusion?

Publishers now believe that…

• Fractal art is a type of craft, not a type of art
• Fractal art is anonymous because it lacks the personal style that traditional art, like painting or even photography has had, and which gave its creators name-brand recognition
• Hundreds of artists can make those “flowers in a blender” fractals and it’s a nice, safe style for mass consumption because the wall-calendar buying public is primarily looking for decoration and inoffensive gifts, not the latest cutting-edge fractal art
• There’s no reason to pay more than a token fee for fractal art because artists have been lining up year after year just for the thrill of getting offline attention and online bragging rights
• If they ever get into the paper plate business, they’ve got enough fractals to put off hiring a design department for a hundred years

So the next time you hear someone trying to defend things like fractal art calendars because they “introduce fractal art to a mainstream audience”, just tell them the story about the great Fractal Universe calendar and what it did for fractal art.

The only way fractal art will ever become mainstream is by becoming mainstream.

We’ve all heard of blur.  It’s one of those basic graphic effects that every graphics program, and even some fractal programs, automatically include.  Most of us though are probably more familiar with the sharpen effect which does the exact opposite which is to get rid of, or at least reduce, blur.

Few digital artists, and for that matter, few artists of any kind, would deliberately blur an image, especially an entire image.  Fewer still would do it again and again pursuing on a large scale such a passive, mild-mannered effect which is usually only employed on a small scale.

I should point out that the images here are not digital works.  They’re combination prints which are photographs made by combining negatives to make a single image.  It’s just like layering, in fact it is layering in it’s original, literal sense.

The artist who made all of these images is José Medina and they come from his Transitions series of combination prints made this year.  I found these images at cramart.ca and since they are all displayed in a flash applet along with the works of many other artists it’s impossible to link to them.  Strangely, they don’t appear anywhere else on the internet except as these small thumbnails in the flash applet; perhaps they are unique to Medina’s work at the CRAM collective.  I first saw the images in a Niagara Region (as in Niagara Falls) travel magazine and was immediately impressed with their strong artistic qualities and unique style.  Like the Mandelbox, they just looked so incredibly cool.  I Googled the artist’s name and found some more wondrous examples on the CRAM site.

About CRAM:

CRAM was founded in February 2006 and is located in the heart of Niagara on the second floor of 24 James Street in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario, between Christopher’s Magazine & Smoke Shop and The Office Tap & Grill. The CRAMplex is home to Canada’s smallest art gallery, CRAM Press, and Marinko Jareb’s DJ Service, Fine Art & Design Studio & Collectible Designer Toy Shop.

CRAM Gallery showcases a collective of professional artists with ties to St. Catharines and Niagara who advocate regional ideas from outside metro and international centres.

CRAM Press was established as Canada’s smallest independent print workshop in 2009 by Co-Directors Tobey C. Anderson and Alan Flint with the installation of Harold Town’s old etching press. In August 2010 the CRAM Press was expanded to accommodate an American French Tool etching press and, while no longer Canada’s smallest print studio, it remains Niagara’s only print facility.

from http://cramart.ca/about.html

Like I said about the blur effect, it’s hardly new and exciting but these images are new and exciting.  Like Colombus, I think Medina just sailed a little further than the rest but it was sailing over the horizon.  Now, of course it all looks so simple because he’s shown us where we too can go.

Digital or not, we can all relate to work like this and learn from it.  Or just appreciate it, “stumbling in the neon glow” as Aristotle would say.

José Medina 2010

“Less is more.” You’ve heard that I’ll bet but here you’re actually seeing it.  That’s the minimalist trick.  On the other hand less can also be a lot less and even nothing, but done carefully the object in the image become a mystery (mist-ery, ha, ha,) and it’s no longer something we recognize, it’s something that may be, or something almost imaginary.  Blurring can be transformative –in a good way.

I assume this image above is a lighthouse but that’s mostly because the next image is obviously a lighthouse and most artists work with themes.  But it doesn’t matter because the object is interesting even if I can’t say for sure that it’s not a concrete parking barrier or a lawn ornament.  And that black crackly thing on the right is almost fractalish even though I suspect it was placed there deliberately to balance the composition which would otherwise be somewhat empty on that side.  I think the distant hills in the middle foreground are, ironically, more distinct than the top of the lighthouse.  And how about the way the lighthouse dissolves into the sky?  It’s almost like a detail view of an old renaissance oil painting with its subtle but careful features.

José Medina 2010

This one has it all: dream-like details; dissolving boundaries; ghost-like horizons; colors that drift across the spectrum; and a few smudgy mysteries.  I particularly like the little window halfway up the lighthouse below the balcony railings.  I think it’s been deliberately not obliterated.  Good artists cheat like that.  Photoshop filters never do.

Although the method used is composite printing, Medina’s images here use that particular method to achieve a strongly blurred style of image.  Other composite prints look like normal photographs, crisp and in focus.  They just combine features and imagery in the same way we layer images in a grpahics program.  But Medina’s composite prints are characterized by a heavily blurred artistic style and that’s the effect that impresses me the most with them.  You could say they’ve been post-processed in just the same way we would make a fractal image and blur it in a graphics program.  Although, of course, most of us wouldn’t blur a fractal, we’d sharpen it.  It might be worth trying the blur thing if we could get results like this.

José Medina 2010

I’m guessing this is the CN Tower, Toronto’s great claim to fame for many years which has subsequently been overshadowed by even taller, free-standing, feats of engineering like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.  But how many of those have been immortalized like this?  Yes, greater than that great icon is this new icon by Medina.  Towers of art will never be topped.

José Medina 2010

I don’t think a digital filter would produce such irregular blurring here.  In places you can make out brick work and in other places the edge of the building itself has dissolved away.  This is what I mean about the selective, hand-made blurring effect seen in these images.  The rooftops have been quite obviously, for lack of a better word, gaussian blurred as we know in the digital world.  I didn’t really notice it until I looked more closely at the edges of the building.  Or maybe it just came out this way?

José Medina 2010

A word about Craquelure.  Not the French candy, the cracking that old, hundreds of years old, paint in paintings do.  It gives an old, worn look which in this case accentuates the blurred, renaissance, faded, dissolving look.  I’m sure there’s a filter that does that too, but here there are some finer touches to it.  Note the dark “crack” in the lower mid section of this one and the 3D appearance to the other cracks.  It’s subtle, but then blurring is all about subtlety.  Subtle subtlety.

José Medina 2010

Well done blurring is hypnagogic.  We are seeing the image as it slips away into sleep.  But no, it’s us, the viewer who is dissolving away.  I say, “Well done blurring” because blurring is a tricky thing really.  It’s hard to straddle that ideal twilight zone of majestic illusion without falling off completely into total attenuation and pigmentary nothingness and at the same time not playing it so safe that we stay well within the everyday realm of legibility.  Blurring is a fine art and I show these images here because I think they’re the finest examples of it I’ve seen.

Is this image a palm tree?  Maybe.  But the regularity of the branches suggest something possibly mechanical.  Maybe an amusement park ride that spins around with swings hanging from it’s arms.  The swings are outside the picture and the chains that connect them are too small and thread-like to show up.  Look more closely and I think I see a roundish trunk and the slight presence of sunlight coming from the right hand side.  Some wind too.  Voices?  Sounds?  Asleep again…

José Medina 2010

I think blur is a kind of minimalism; it’s the transition zone between the usual, detail-driven and intelligent focused artwork that most artists make (and most viewers look for) and the incoherence of things like painting with white paint on a white canvas.  We can make out water and by deduction coast, possibly sand, a sandy beach, and a few dark objects along it, possibly rocks which would suggest those dark areas inland are trees and that this is a remote or more remote place or is that green haze in the right foreground a well-mowed lawn in a public park?

José Medina 2010

“Stumblin’ in the neon glow.”  That’s the sort of thing I mean.  And “purple haze” is not too far off either.  They’d make great names for filters that do this.  Neither of the authors would object to the use of those titles, I’m sure.  Does Jim have email?  Or Jimi?  What?  Jim and Jimi?  That’s almost a verbal blur.  “Grasshopper!  Now do you see it?”  “I see nothing at all master!”  “Good, good.  You have done well, Grasshopper.”

Again, I see water and from water comes shore.  The strange shapes in the foreground are rocks and since they seem to clash with the shore I’d say they’re part of a breakwall or shore project to reduce erosion.  The trail in this urban project looks familiar and I’m thinking that maybe I’ve even been to this place.  Medina is based in St. Catharines which is only 2 hours from where I live and since he seems to have included a photo of the CN Tower it’s possible that he visited the city and took this photo at one of its many lakeside parks that are characterized by these urban garden-isms.  On the other hand, it could easily be Cuba.  Blurring gives anonymity to things and yet the result is we claim them as our own.

The Master and his Iron Photoshop, José Medina

Sure, it’s an Iron photoshop.  Just look at the roller in his hand.  I think there’s a roller tool in Photoshop.  I’ve never used Photoshop actually.  I’m guessing that it’s the same as the Gimp and it has a roller tool and a smudgy finger tool and of course, several kinds of blur effects.  Gaussian is nice, but it’s not as sophisticated as the blur effect in the images here that I suspect have been done by hand, selectively, more in some areas and less in others.  Of course you can do that too in a graphics program.  You’re just using numbers instead of using your hand.  Not as much fun as working with the Iron photoshop, but then you’re not working with zero levels of undo like they are in the Iron world.  (And when have you ever gotten your clothes stained with fractal ink?)

Is DNA an algorithm?  Can its renderings be presented as Algorithmic Art?  Will they jump down off the wall and attack the well-dressed gallery patrons?

Consider the humble jumping spiders of Oklahoma:

Jumping Spiders of Oklahoma composite from the work of Thomas Shahan on Flickr

As always, click on any image to view it on the original web site or in full-size.

It’s easy to define (and limit) fractal art to the renderings of fractal formulas, but then that also focuses our attention and our consideration on just that kind of imagery.  That makes a lot of sense at first because really, aren’t insects and weird microscopic creatures a completely different sort of visual thing than computer rendered fractal formulas?

On the other hand, we raise no objection to the inclusion of the complex creations of layering and other graphical manipulations when they’re labeled as fractal art even when their (assumed) fractal formula qualities are hard to recognize.  (Well, they at least started out as fractals.)  Perhaps the boundaries of any genre start to look arbitrary and fuzzy when we try to defend them.  Maybe visual imagery is more about what it looks like than how it was made?  In that case:  what does “fractal” mean?

After attending every live concert ever given, this Grateful Dead fan was spontaneously transformed into a hairy spider and now waits patiently on a tree leaf for the End of the World.

Aztec Flying City by arias on Fractalforums.com

Yes, arias combined the products of several formulas to create this very natural and stylish image.  This is a masterpiece of layering, and not the usual monstrosity that often results.  Check out the high resolution version (6000 x 2326 pixels) and you can marvel at the rich detail in this well composed image.  Note especially the mandelbox details near the middle edge on the right.

Arias is Bernard Bittler, has a professional art background and I believe lives in France.  I’m sure he’ll be making many more 3D fractal images because he’s obviously very good at it.

Cube Guardian by bib (Jermie Brunet)

This one is also even more impressive viewed full-size.  I like the subtle, blue-gray coloring and of course the velvety texture of the “clock faces” or “drums”  that are silent and yet ever-watching this tiny mandelbox neighborhood.  I might have titled this one “fungus clocks”.  It looks very natural and is proliferating with the growth of these round clock faces that to me resemble the smooth velvety surfaces of some tree funguses.  The fine detail to the left and right of the main Cube Guardian is a great presentation of the endless recursion of fractals.

Fractal forest by Power 8

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what I find so captivating about this image.  There’s some surreal mood to this image and the title, Fractal Forest, is a good one as it really has the look of a strange, but forested, place.  The red-green coloring is very creative and works well despite being so unusual and unnatural for such a suggested “forest” scene.  You’d never guess this was a mandelbox (and I’m guessing) but it just shows how powerfully creative fractal art can be when you’re ready for the unexpected.  There’s a old, oil painting, Renaissance feeling lurking around down there.

Caves by Prokofiev

This image I found in a thread on Fractalforums.com discussing the “Hausdorff dimension of the Mandelbulb”.  I have to confess that although Fractalforums is an extremely rich environment for the discussion of all sorts of concepts and technical matters related to fractals and their rendering, all I mostly do is look at the pictures.

Perhaps this image was not intended by Prokofiev (a screen name, I assume) to be a powerful work of fractal art but rather merely to function as an illustration of some concept or technical issue?  Well, in that case it succeeds at both.  I’d like to title it, “Unzipping Infinity”.  Art doesn’t have to be lavish and complicated, it just has to push a few buttons in your mind.

Method by Far

A cellular automata triptych (three panel) made in Ultra Fractal.  Although cellular automata aren’t anything overly complicated to render, I didn’t know UF could render CA images.  I like the triptych style; it suggests something carefully made and designed to be set over top of an altar —sacred renderings.  Click on the image to see the cosmic details as well as things that cannot be explained.

CA have some interesting fractal and not so fractal qualities to them.  For one, there’s always a large scale structure to the image as well as a myriad of small, tiny scale structures.  This gives CA both a macro as well as micro appeal.  CA are the busy ants of the fractal (or something) world and this set by Far is a reminder that the creative possibilities are far from over for them (no pun intended).

Time for a movie.  Here’s an excellent fly over of a special area of a mandelbox that Kraftwerk (aka Mandelwerk on DA, aka Johan Ason) has been exploring recently.  This fly over is particularly well done and much more engaging than most I see because there is a specific subject or point of interest in it, that being the “Cheops” collection of structures which are also particularly interesting as still images in their own right.  Much more of “Cheops-ville” can be seen at Mandelwerk’s Deviant Art site (aka Kraftwerk).

Macro photography and fractals have a lot in common.  I don’t know what that is, but I just sense that they have a “family resemblance”.  Imagine you’re trying to put together a jig-saw puzzle but someone has accidentally thrown in another puzzle with it.  While looking for the pieces that match up with the ones you’ve already put together you’re also picking out the ones that belong to that other puzzle that don’t belong in the same box.  But you also keep coming across pieces that, while they don’t fit in immediately with the small part you’re already assembled, you sense they’re part of the larger complete picture and you want to hold on to them and not put them aside with the pieces of the other puzzle because they look, in some vague and hard to describe way, similar.

Calliphora vomitoria Portrait by Noodle Snacks

Haven’t we all zoomed into something like this in a fractal program?  This fly’s head reminds me of many of the formulas in Sterlingware.  Flies are purely a nuisance when seen at a regular scale but they are both magnificent and terrifying when seen up close.

Housefly on a leaf by Muhammad Mahdi Karim

I got these two fly photos off the Wikipedia.  This second one here is really a work of art.  I like color and I think color almost has a subliminal thought-inducing language and quality all its own.  What an incredible machine the common housefly is; no spaceship or aircraft a human could design will ever look as superb as this housefly.

Haze of Time by jesse

10 Million Year-Old Fractal Found in Antarctic Ice! According to a recent article in the Scientific American, some ancient species of molds when allowed to grow slowly and undisturbed for millions of years, grow and develop in patterns that are identical to those formed by iterating fractal formulas with a computer.

I just made that up, but that’s what I thought when I saw this image by Jesse in the Fractalforums.com gallery.  Great images just make me want to say great things.  The facts come later.

Assimilation by lenord

The mandelbrot inside the mandelbox!  But it seems only natural to find a mandelbrot man inside a mandelbox 3D fractal formula.  He lives there.  Just like a pearl inside an oyster and it’s shell.

I’ve looked at this image quite a bit and I can’t decide if it looks more like the mandelbrot is being absorbed by the mandelbox, as I think the title by lenord is suggesting, or if the mandelbox is actually growing out from –and growing off of–  the mandelbrot just like a plant grows out of a seed.  Lenord’s got some other ones like this and they have the same interesting combination of old and new fractal designs.  Apparently it’s all from the same formula and not from layering or some sly photoshop trick.

Kractal by tatty

New people are always popping up over at Fractalforums.  Fractalforums seems to be where all the action is lately.  I don’t know who any of these people are (and they don’t know me) but I don’t really need to know them when I can just look at their work and judge it for itself.  Tatty has really come up with something new here.  So much detail and such variety of it.  But it doesn’t look like a mandelbox or mandelbulb to me and yet it has that 3D look to it.  Could there really be some new thing called a “Kractal”?

Box 1 by tatty

Another by Tatty.  Already she’s developing some noticeable style just in these two images.  There’s a wide variety of shapes and yet they complement each other instead of clashing or looking pushed together.  Subtle and with good coloring too.

Box 1? If this is just the first she’s off to a great start.  Tatty has a good eye for the sort of pleasing organic shapes that fractals excel at.

The Last Dive by janetino

I followed a link from Mandelwerk’s Deviant Art page to these incredible mandelbox images by Janetino.  Janetino has such unique color palettes.  I’ve never seen any mandelbox images with this sort of coloring that looked so good.  Nice use of the foggy perspective effect here too.

The Laughing Cliff by janetino

This one is really something.  So ornate and such unique color.  The blue haze suggests sky and sunlight streaming into this ornate temple or ritzy spaceship.  I’ve got to look around Deviant Art more.  It’ll be worth it if I find another artist with such unique and well done work as Janetino.  She’s up there with the other top “Mandelboxers” in my opinion.

Hirgrnd1 by Seizo Yamada

Here’s an interesting photo for two reasons:  First, because it has such a dreamy, visionary, summer night, sky full of imagination and wonder look to it.  Second because it’s actually a photograph of the Hiroshima atomic bomb explosion taken, not from the air, but from the ground several miles away by a civilian who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.  It dulls the golden glow of the photo’s dreaminess to know we’re also observing an event that killed over 100,000 people in less time than it takes to answer a ringing telephone.  I wonder how many other attractive things in our world would look less appealing if we knew what we were really looking at?

Texture by hermann

Texture was found on the Fractalforums.com gallery like many of the images here.  The gallery contains (I believe) any images uploaded to the forum for any purpose, either artistic or as examples and illustrations in technical discussions.  I can’t always tell what context the image appears in with respect to the forum postings, I just browse the image gallery in behind the scenes mode and comment on whatever catches my eye.  I like this one for it’s simple, classical fractal style.  Sometimes less is more and this is a good example.  This image has a real sense of style and stands out because of it.

Another World by Well En Taoed

Just like Texture this image features imagery that isn’t new and cutting-edge like the mandelbox or mandelbulb and yet has real style and focuses on the more classical fractal type of imagery.  I think this has an extra layer, a grid pattern over it and although that might seem rather simple the effect it has on the image is strong.  It looks like it could have been taken off a vintage pulp sci-fi cover and maybe the author thought the same thing when he named it.

Mandelbox Lobby by Buddhi

This image really has to be seen in full-size which you can do by clicking on it.  The mandelbox, like most fractals, is capable of producing a lot of imagery but it takes a good eye and some careful experimentation to produce something of interest amidst the deluge of images that pour out of the formula  This one has a surreal look to it.  Maybe it’s the ornate architectural appearance that makes the square “front desk” of the mandelbox lobby look real and therefore strangely out of place.  The fact that it’s sunk below the horizon and hidden from sight enhances the eerie feel.

Menger Borg Mother ship by Cyclops

I hear this Borg thing mentioned here and there but I don’t know what it’s about or what it’s from.  I find it odd that a Cyclops would be making 3D art, but maybe that’s just a screen name for L. Shone?  There’s an MC Escher look to this and I like the careful, repetitive metallic detail in it.  The hole in the center is a nice touch and shows us that the inside is remarkably no different than the outside.  It’s got an old, engraved illustration appearance that I like.

Ave by Agurkyz (AGUS)

Another one that I’d call “classical”.  I guess I’m referring to fractal imagery that is single layer and was much more common back before multi-layered programs like Ultra Fractal came out.  But… this one was apparently made with UF!  I’ve always liked the shiny tubes and other orbit trap kinds of imagery that have an almost collage look to them.   The abrupt transitions resemble cut paper but sometimes the tube forests stretch all the way to the horizon although they do look like the scissors lopped off their upper branches, swift and invisible.  There can be a lot to see in these apparently simple images.  Good art is like that.

Orion4 by Dominique Peronino

I check in on the Fractalforum.com gallery everyday.  When I saw the first of these Orion images I frowned a little because it reminded me of when I first started out making fractal images in Sterlingware almost a decade ago.  Later on, after seeing this one and especially the jagged, machine made elements surrounding it, I began to see the subtle but attractive style that these Orion images have.  This is pure digital vision; it’s all machine made and it shines with a technological glow like only some bold new discovery in a laboratory can.  The machine drew this and no human hand can imitate that cold, fractonic style.

Titan (moon of Saturn) from UltimateUniverse.net

One last one.  This is a real photograph of Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons.  I think it’s made up of several shots taken by more than one pass of the space probe although it lacks the jumbled, collage look of a composite photo.  I’ve been using this image as my desktop wallpaper for almost a week, centered with a black background.  I keep thinking it’s the opening shot from some vintage, 1950s sci-fi film that’s about to begin:  Sinister Planet.

Anyhow, those are the pieces of the puzzle.  Maybe some of them don’t belong to the same big picture.  Or maybe this puzzle is a lot bigger than the 10,000 piece label on the box says.  We should have started building this on the floor instead of the table.