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

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

It’s not all bad

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

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

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

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

Three cheers for thumbnails!

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

Ich bin ein Garbage Picker

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

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

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

They say I gotta dig

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

Fractal Art is the realm of the scavenger

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

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

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

No two piles are exactly the same

But why is there so much trash on Deviant Art?

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

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

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

What then should be done about these trash factories?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or may ever dig again.

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

A View of Toledo by El Greco (c1597)

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

UFO by SvitakovaEva (Deviant Art)

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

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

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

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

Evolving Hologram by DorianoArt (Deviant Art)

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

Hologram by DorianoArt (DA)

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

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

A screen capture is worth a thousand words

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

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

Let’s change the subject:

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

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

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

Odysseus blinds the Cyclops

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

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

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

Now let’s get down to blinding the beast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brummbaer with his Fractal Tralfamadore images

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

The Artist:

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

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

The Fractal “Paintings”:

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

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

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

Here’s a good example:

A Crack in the World by Brummbaer

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

The Story:

Once upon a time on Tralfamadore

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

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

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

So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery menu

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

Palace of Information by Brummbaer

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

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

Follow Your Heart by Brummbaer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ultimate Mandelbrot Xmas Fractal by aparks45 (DA)

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

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

Here’s another one by aparks45:

A Beautiful Fractal Christmas Holiday by aparks45 (DA)

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

Christmas Holiday Snow Globe by aparks45

The Day before Christmas by aparks45

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

And received (so far) only this response:

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

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

Fractal art is:

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

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

Christmas Mandelbulb Fractal by aparks45 (DA)

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

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

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

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

Off We Go Then by aparks45 (DA)

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

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

Swim thru the planets of life by aparks45 (DA)

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

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

Aurora Borealis Out In Space by aparks45

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

A gallery note:

Mother Mary Angels Jesus by aparks45

That one there has a story:

Here’s a screenshot of the Ebay listing:

Click to view full listing on Ebay

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

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

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

Elevenish by LucaGN (Deviant Art)

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

For Eva by LucaGN

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

Boleslawiec Delights by Timemit (Deviant Art)

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

What the War Lost by Timemit

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

Fractal_Years_by_misterxz (Deviant Art)

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

Ultrameta 731 by Dan Wills (Picasa)

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

Balancing Act by Actionjack52 (Deviant Art)

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

World's greatest avatar by Actionjack52

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

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

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

Ice Arena 3010 by Actionjack52

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

Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel (1565)

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

Dabbling in Color by Dsynegrafix (Deviant Art)

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

In Lieu of Circles 4 by Dsynegrafix

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

Pyropus by Eccoton (Deviant Art)

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

Ancient Sun by Mehrdadart (Deviant Art)

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

Sunrise in China by Mehrdadart

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

Connections by Actionjack52

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

Mandelbubbles by Jimmie (Fractalforums.com)

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

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

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

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

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

Aborning by Mehrdadart (DA)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy on Deviant Art)

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

CupreousComplex II by Mark J Brady

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

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

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

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

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

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

Detail of Biomass by Fitz (NoEyedSquareGuy)

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

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

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

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

Fractal Wasp Troll by Johan Andersson (Mandelwerk, Kraftwerk)

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

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

Gordian Twist by Hal Tenny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aztec Flying City by Bernard Bittler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretty weak”

Ha ha! Prince John, you rascal!

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