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 … Continue reading
Yes, fellow patients, and particularly those in the line-up waiting for shock-treatment, we are sometimes gripped by that psychotic condition which I would label, “fractalsport”. What is fractalsport? You know what fractalsport is and are exhibiting its symptoms right now with your attempts to deny it. For those of you whose brains are still effervescing … Continue reading
Earthscapes. United States Postal Service (2012) [Click on images to view at higher resolution.] This is the first of three posts about postage. The U. S. Postal Service, as part of National Stamp Month, issued a series of Forever stamps entitled Earthscapes. Three rows of five are displayed in the stamp pane seen above. … Continue reading
First, let me explain. I make such a bold statement not because I hate fractals (or fractal artists) but because I love fractals and include myself among the hopelessly deluded. A quaint anecdote I came to this realization in a rather unexpected way: through rediscovering the joy of fractal artistry. For the last year or … Continue reading
With 3D printing technology, fractal art can cheaply and easily enter the domain of sculpture. It’s an exciting development and offers the ever dazzling world of fractals another venue in which to capture that proverbial and elusive, “mainstream” audience. Will this be fractal art’s big break or just another demonstration of how hard it is … Continue reading
Stop what you’re doing, forget everything you know –and just jump into fractals!
Synthetic. That’s a good word in computer art. You like synthetic things if you like computer art. There’s too much color in this? It looks unnatural? It’s synthetic, just like those chewy fruit candies that don’t really taste like real fruit. They taste better than real fruit. Space age flavours. This image has space age colors. Love it, or the image will delete you. Continue reading
I travel the internet, I make “Viewmarks” of artwork worth reviewing, and sometimes I end up with little scraps of things that I just can’t seem to fit into a proper blog posting. But I keep them around anyhow because they’re food for thought, so to speak; singular ideas with potential. Here are a few … Continue reading
DorianoArt has a real talent for mixing fractals with photography and doing it with style. It’s not the typical marriage between earthy fractals and leafy scenery. It’s more like an extraterrestrial romance between mother earth and alien invaders. Despite such a disturbing courtship, the results are quite natural, or rather, quite unnatural, a hybrid landscape, … Continue reading
Back, several postings ago, when I reviewed the latest Fractalforums.com calendar, I heaped abuse on Pauldelbrot’s image from his Mandelbrot Safari series calling it retro and not cutting-edge. The owner of Fractalforums.com and publisher of the calendar, Christian Kleinhuis, informed me that what Pauldelbrot was doing was in fact very cutting-edge as it was utilizing … Continue reading
There’s a theme that binds all these images together but I can’t seem to find the right words for it. Freaky; harmonic; other worldly; sacred symbols; journey into mystery: they all fit for some but not for all. I guess variety is best; with a play on the famous book by Henry James, The Variety … Continue reading
Like the elegant orchids and other surface-dwelling plant species called epiphytes, image comments can have a richness and uniqueness that is surprising when one considers their tiny size and extremely casual origin. And also like the epiphytes of tropical forests, comments can become almost as great, collectively, as the underlying tree they’ve attached themselves to, … Continue reading
Arvinder Bawa recently had a showing of his fractal artworks in Laredo, Cantabria, Spain at the Sala Ruas gallery. The poster explains it best: ~Click on images to view full-size on original site~ Arvinder has written an interesting explanation to accompany the exhibit. I like his simple language and layman’s terms: …For the exhibition it … Continue reading
~Click on images to view full-size on original site~ Just a neon sign, cloudy sky and moon, but what a transformation. A number of 3d fractalists refer to having an “architectural style” and here you can really see what’s meant by that term and why it is such a natural one in the world of … Continue reading
Fractalforums.com’s owner, Christian Kleinhuis (aka Trifox) is attempting to put out another fractal art calendar this year. I reviewed last year’s and called it, “The Best Fractal Calendar Ever!“. I hope that review scored me enough points over there with the Fractalforums.com folks to cover this year’s review. Here’s a brief summary of the discussions … Continue reading
Does it seem that no one has any interest in the old, 2D fractal images anymore? And furthermore, does it seem that since the advent of the 3D fractal craze that there are more fractal artists making interesting work than ever before? I’d answer yes to both those questions. Numerous times while browsing further and … Continue reading
I found his gallery on Flickr during a routine search of the word, “fractal”. I clicked on a couple of unusual looking thumbnails and quickly headed straight to his main gallery page. ~ Click on images to view full-size on original site ~ Ron uses one of the 3D mandelbulb programs but he must be … Continue reading
There is fractal art and there is the analysis of fractal art, and then there’s fractal events: contests, calendars and the occasional news item. But then there are those occasional “things” that just don’t fall into the usual categories. Here are some of those high points –special finds– of this 2011 holiday season on Deviant … Continue reading
We’ve all watched or taken part in, at sometime or another, that great quest to “define” fractal art. Although few members of the fractal world seem very interested in this sort of “constitutional debate” everyone operates with at least some sort of understanding of a boundary around fractal art. The boundary is where fractal art … Continue reading
Christian Kleinhuis of Fractalforums.com has just published a 2010 fractal calendar. Featuring the best artwork form Fractalforums.com and printed large size and spiral bound, it hopefully marks a new era in fractal art publishing. A review of the images and background on how the project came about. Continue reading
“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. Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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. Continue reading
“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 … Continue reading
A collection of uniquely rendered fractal things. And a few that are just traditionally intriguing. Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Fresh and only recently uploaded to Fractalforms.com, the Times Square of Fractalville, comes this modestly named image, Stable Wormhole. Created by none other than the author of the famous Mayan-something images, Reallybigname… ~Click on images to view fullsize on original site~ It’s part of the ever enduring mystery of art that images like this rarely … Continue reading
It’s not often I click on fractal videos these days. Video is just tricky with fractals, especially when you’re trying to combine it with music or some sort of meaningful sound. But when I saw Madman’s posting on Fractalforums.com today, when he said, “This one took 10 days to render @HD quality, no anti-aliasing.” …I … Continue reading
And another thing… If you’ve only got one or two judges then there’s nothing that really needs to be explained. But when you’ve got 12… one would naturally wonder how a much more complicated scenario like that would actually work. How do a dozen people from all over the globe select a group of 25 … Continue reading
If they’re going to… not consider a second artwork by any artist rearrange the judging results to include a “wider range” of styles declare in the rules they don’t want “garish” art let the Honorary members influence the results have a discussion to decide the final winners …then why do they have all those judges … Continue reading
In case you haven’t seen them, the winning images are all here. Of the 25 winning images which will make up the entire exhibit shown sometime within the next year, there’s only really one good one: Aztec Flying City by Bernard Bittler. They messed up his name on the official website. I know because this … Continue reading
Why don’t I ever seem to get better, Dr. Jones? [Image seen here.] I feel strangely unmotivated to write about the 2011 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest (BMFAC) "winners" this go-around. I’m tired of BMFAC as a topic — maybe because while the competition makes changes that should improve it, it never really improves. … Continue reading
By looking at all these weird fish images my hope is that you’ll stop seeing them as fish and start seeing them simply as objects of shape and color. ~Click on images to view full size on original site~ They have no need of being real, we can relate to them entirely as manifestations of … Continue reading
If you’ve been following my recent revolutionary thoughts about fractal art you may have noticed a few comments posted by readers here and in other venues relating to emotional experiences and feelings triggered by fractal images. Such things are important from my revolutionary perspective because they appear to refute my theory that fractal art is … Continue reading
Who knew this was a documentary? [Image seen here.] It’s been a rather heavy week in science. An international scientific team in Italy claims to have recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. And just when you were finally getting comfortable with the fabric of the universe. Rip up that old model … Continue reading
Why do people make fractal art? Well, actually they don’t make it so much as they find it… steal it… dig it out of the dirt. Some of the best pieces of fractal art are things just picked up off the floor of the gold mine. The fractal miners don’t call them art. They don’t call them anything. They’re named by where they were found or by a date. Continue reading
~Click on images to view full size on original site~ Mayan Trickster by reallybigname was a great piece of design but this one here by Jesse Dierks is what I would call a great landscape –a fractalscape. It’s a classic sci-fi vista complete with a rich, city of the gods in the distance. Buildings that … Continue reading