Our brains need a vacation.  And what could be a better Brain Resort than the electronic paradises of the fractal realm.  Here’s a sampler of some of the most interesting fractal scenery and composite images I’ve stumbled upon over the last few months.

Although we’ve already arrived at our electronic destination, let’s do the old-fashioned pre-electronic drive to the airport.  We pass through some new construction downtown via the expressway:

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

Ship by Dominique_Peronino

Dominique chose to call this a ship for some reason, but I’ve been looking at it in my Viewmarks collection for more than a few months and I always see a new highrise in the making.  In fact, when driving down the downtown expressway now I’m reminded of this image when I see any highrise in its early construction phases.  Life is starting to imitate fractal art.

These sorts of 3D jackposts and concrete floor images are quite common now but this one is special because it looks like more than just the regular tube and slab stuff.  The sky background might have played a role in transforming it although it seems to be just a simple gradient.

shattered_sphere_by_haltenny

Something strange and astronomical is going up at the airport it looks like.  Haltenny has always been something of a pioneer in the 3D fractal world.  I suppose this one isn’t all that pioneering in the technical sense but I’ve never seen such an interesting concrete ball structure as this.  It almost looks like a fossilized thing with those embedded circular structures.  Or is it more like a semi-constructed stone Death Star?

subterranean_city_by_haltenny

Looks like Haltenny got the contract to do the parking garage too.  It really pays to explore fractals, 3D or otherwise, because that’s how I’m sure people like Haltenny find these sorts of things while others seem to just find what’s already been found.  Images like this really renew one’s excitement with 3D fractals.  It seems like there’s always something new waiting around the corner.  That aspect to fractal art is still the same.

My Home Town by Frakkie

Uh oh.  I don’t think we’re in the parking garage anymore.  We’re in the Twilight Zone where reality and fractals meet.  It happens in the realms of electronica that airports are grown, not made.  This is proto-airport and the runways will be the lava beds once they’ve cooled.  There will be no need for planes because all the departures will be arrivals: your itinerary is written on a mobius strip.

It’s a neat image, not really a super technical feat or anything, but just for the artistic impression which is what counts in all this really whether you’re aware of that or not.  What I like is that the imagery really does suggest a sort of half-real, half drafting board state.  It hasn’t finished calculating yet but we’re here already.  The crisp contrasts are very digital and yet the lighting also gives the image a very vivid depth and realistic feel to it.

light_at_end_of_tunnel_by_mario837

Yikes.  Ample parking means walking a few miles to the terminal.  I’m so glad this is all electronic and nothing is ever more than a mouse-click away.  And no baggage either.  In fact, I’m sitting in my basement with barefeet.  What’s so special about this one?  The simple depth and perspective is done well.  Also, it has the feel of the outside and yet it’s inside.  A sort of interior exterior.  It looks like snow has fallen on a shallow river bed but how can it snow inside a tunnel like this?  A nice example of how 3d fractals can conjure up some extraordinary scenes.  Like Escher’s work; impossible scenes that just look natural.

Plaza Organica 7 by Tom Wilcox

Similar in some respects but having a very different feel.  The full-size version really shows the smooth, almost abstracted style to this image.  Abstracted?  You see how hard it is to tell what reality is on these electronic vacations?  Isn’t it all abstract?  Also, as a side note, I found this one via Haltenny’s Deviant Art favorites list.  A good favorites list is the best way to browse Deviant Art.

Tom is well known for his very polished and refined style of fractals of which the image above is a good example.  This is from his deviantART page:

And now for our in-flight dream…

i_was_dreaming____by_dorianoart

I declare the birth of a new fractal genre: Dorianoscape; in honour of Doriano Benaglia who is the unrivaled master and inventor of the art form.  Encore!  Encore!  …here it is:

thelestus_by_dorianoart

Panoramic; timeless; digital surf crashing on the pixel-grained beach.  Note the subtle horizon touches like the hills on the left and the little star in the middle.  He doesn’t just slap these things together, he composes them.

The dream continues…

ipolemon_3_by_dorianoart

The images have this effortless quality to them and yet they are also uncommon and unique.  Artists make art and you can recognize the artist from the art, but in the fractal world I’m sorry to say that the technology is what really makes the art and we are more likely to recognize the software than the artist by looking at the art.  But not with Dorianoscapes.  500 years from now when someone finds an unknown Dorianoscape on a vintage 21st century usb stick unearthed during renovations of an old villa, it will be immediately recognized as the originator’s handiwork and not one of the thousands of imitators who I’m sure are bound to spring up in the years to come.

MB3D_0474 by  0Encrypted0

This one is a real masterwork in the sense that it’s rich with all sorts of details as well as having a strong overall composition to it and multiple impressive themes like shadow lands; bubble worlds; majestic heights; and more if you study it longer.  It’s not a typical work for Encrypted who usually makes very intricate, jewelled 3D fractals.  This one is very painterly and full of smudgy suggestion and panoramic silence.  You know,  maybe fractal art really will become a rich art form.  All it needs is a few people with that special skill of working with its special machinery.  Encrypted’s got it.  Let’s hope more people will find it too.

Cendria by lxh

This one looks old-fashioned to me.  I noted some similarity it had with an old photograph on Wikipedia that I stumbled on:

Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre (1838)

It’s the roof lines, chimneys and evestroughing of this photograph of Paris in 1838.  (Actually, a daguerreotype, an early form of photography.)  Interestingly, this photo is perhaps the oldest one showing a living person according to the Wikipedia author.  Only the man getting his shoes shined (left-foreground) showed up in this long exposure while all the other people and street traffic disappeared in a blur of (relatively ) fast movement.  Lxh’s image takes us up to the chimney tops (where troubles melt like lemon drops) and we exchange the rest of the Parisian cityscape for fields of clouds in the sunshine.

Fractal Rock by Axolotl

The Ayers Rock of fractaland.  More photoshop than fractal but the importance of the mandelbulb sitting off in the distance is great enough in this image to make it “fractal” (whatever that really means).  Nice use of lighting and all that serious art technique stuff.  Axolotl must know something about making artwork because this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally.  Do you feel like walking in the sun like the woman; or do you feel like sitting in the shade like the man?  Couldn’t he at least drive her over to the Fractal Rock?  And what’s with that steel umbrella that looks like a covered serving platter?  A nice early use of composite imagery (Mar. 2011) that has stood the test of time and still looks good despite how retro the mandelbulb now looks to all of us.

the_toyota_annunciation_sexton_blake_magritte_by_aegiandyad

I think this is just a filtered and processed photo that resulted in something cool looking.  I throw it in because it fits with the electronic vacation and what exactly is the difference really between fractal art and all the other digital stuff, exactly?  Don’t know who Magritte is?  Those title allusions are just extras.  The image creates its own fantastic context. (“Better” than Magritte?)

Here’s something Magritt-ey:

Rain of Pain by CO99A5

Why pain?  I guess the dark sky and dark below-sky (not really land) suggest dark things.  Rene Magritte liked to include stark geometry into his nicely pained images.  Nowadays we like to include nicely painted images with our stark geometry.  If Magritte were alive today he’s be laughing!  And he’d be out of a job, too.  Buried alive by the style he created.  Hey, that’s painful.

What’s a vacation without a hotel?  And if electronic hotels have hand made paintings on the wall, then real hotels must have electronic paintings on their walls.  And who knows electified art better than Zone Patcher?  But first the art:

Reappearance of Ancient Luminous Connections by Zone Patcher

From Zone Patcher’s Flickr notes:

….SOLD….to The Park, New Delhi…..boutique Hotel company…everything inna da rooms will be white..everyting..except…my Fractal Collages…heee..

And here’s the hotel room ($140/night):

Room photo, from The Park Hotels, Goa, website

Of course our electronic itinerary includes a lot more artwork, but you’ll have to sleep on the floor (your own floor).  They weren’t kidding about everything in the room being white.  That big black box thing with the mail slot is a drop safe, I think.

bye_bye_maria_elena_by_mario837

Nice simple straight-forward image made in Fractal Explorer using a Sterlingware formula that would look nice in any high class hotel.  Fractals are the ultimate public art since they’re decorative and completely lacking any sort of real world connection that could lead to them becoming politically incorrect sometime in the future or even later this day.  Look hard at this one and try as much as you can to be offended by it.  It just can’t happen.  The title is a reference to the recent passing away of the beloved singer Maria Elena Walsh.

Since Goa is a short walk from downtown Europe in the fractal realm, let’s visit some of the cultural wonders amidst the electronic cafes (bring your own coffee).

MB3D_0563_hd by 0Encrypted0

Another fresh view of the 3D mandel-things.  Note how it gets Escher-esque on the far right and how the structures vary from straight to curved and from golden to soot-covered.  Such a rich variety of things in this one.  Is it an electrical station or a steel making factory?  Or a clock tower?

MB3D_0554_hd by 0Encrypted0

Like great symphonies, 0Encrypted0 (that’s how he writes it) gives them simple, unassuming numbers.  This one really is a symphony of imagery.  I really like the left side wall of shelf things and its lighting especially, and then the depth to which the top right moves off to.  This one is strangely panoramic although everything appears to be inside and enclosed.  It’s a city of cities within a city.

MB3D_0575_hd by 0Encrypted0

I rarely pay much attention to the names on images like this posted to Fractalforums.com.  I just bookmark the ones that look great and so it’s by accident that I’ve reviewed three in a row here by the same artist.  This one is a fantastic example of rich design in a 3D fractal.  It must have really boggled the mind of 0Encrypted0 when he found it.  The square areas act like frames and similar to the photography theme of memory boxes, wooden boxes with all sort of inner partitions each one holding some different object or curio.  The description note says: “Amazing Surf CrossBiFold _RotatedFolding _FoldingTetra3d“.  And that’s a pretty good description, too.

ModularNexus II by MarkJayBee

I must have gotten off at the wrong subway stop because everyone speaks English here.  There are no signs in the electronic worlds because you’re always “here”.  This was just posted a few months ago and shows how Mark’s painterly style has not been a one time thing (like a mistaken keystroke).  I don’t know if they’re tearing this down or building it up.  But then, what does any of that mean in a place of virtual reality?  There’s a million shades of brown here; some suggesting rust and others polished granite.  There’s the big palace up top in the sunshine being built, but then there’s the grim, subterranean foundations holding it up.  Someday writers might actually write novels for specific pieces of cover art.  Do e-books really have covers?

architectura_naturalis_by_vidom

These images go so well together I don’t know whether he added the photography to the fractal or vice versa.  Here’s what Vidom says:

Here I made a single layer fractal architecture, where my main goal was using fog settings to achieve a glassy-windows appearance on the right lower part.
Testing some of my photographs to choose a simple sky, I instead decided to set a natural lush ambiance, with a single photo of a pond I took in a Milan park.
The fractal itself isn’t changed but it’s quite hidden now, so it’s in manipulations category.

By the way, Vidom’s entire deviantART gallery is a vacation all its own with all sorts of panoramic and intense mechanical constructions combined.  He also posts very high resolution images so you can wander around the image the same way you can with large works of art in an art gallery.  He should charge for admission because it’s better than Disneyland.  Each image is almost a virtual day trip in itself.

pythagorean_gardens_and_village_by_vidom

This is perhaps the most detailed panoramic 3D fractal I’ve ever seen.  The original is 2300 x 1380 px and to me resembles a sports stadium the size of an entire planet.  Vidom says this: It suffered a lot with resizing, it went from 65MB to 2.2MB, but it’s still interesting even with less details.”

It’s something worth noting that this image was made with the same software as every other Mandelbulb3D image.  The sky and the cloud-shadows on the “seating”  (left of center)  were added, I assume, but it really shows how operating the machinery is the key skill in fractal art.  If it weren’t a skill then why do some people come up with things like this repeatedly and others don’t?  The creative process is different in fractal art than it is in the traditional hand-made genres.  The paint brushes have a mind of their own.

Well, it’s time to leave.  Let’s head back to the hotel lobby to sneak check out:

unspoken_reverie_by_vidom

Even the greatest hotels of reality-land can’t compare with the Vidom Hiltons of fractaland.  Consider this lobby-scape of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai ($1500/night):

Bird’s eye view of the lobby of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai

I don’t see anyone at the main desk so I guess they don’t care if I leave without paying my bill…

I get a window seat on the plane and take these photos on arrival back home.  Something’s happened since I left.

bbrot1 by William Brodie-Tyrell

bbrot5 by William Brodie-Tyrell

bbrot3 by William Brodie-Tyrell

I found these buddhabrot images via a posting on Fractalforums.com recently, but I think they may date from 2004 if they’re of the same vintage as most of the other stuff on the original site.

Reality can be edited in fractaland.  I quite like this one.  The effect is great even though the parts put together are quite ordinary.

Fractal by Alizadeh100

Fractaland, it’s just a click away.