{"id":419,"date":"2009-10-08T10:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-08T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=419"},"modified":"2009-10-08T10:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-08T14:51:00","slug":"meanwhile-back-at-the-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=419","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, back at the Academy…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
<\/a>
lesson_2_atmosphere_isolation_for_janet <\/a>
Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n
I found this in the Student Galleries<\/a> section of the Visual Arts Academy.\u00a0 There’s no name or date but it’s filed in the Ultra Fractal Artistry<\/a> section of the gallery, a course given by Janet Parke.<\/p>\n

I like this.\u00a0 In fact, I fished it out of all the student works there as the one that appealed to me the most.\u00a0 However, I should mention that most or all of the works there are probably produced for specific course assignments and to demonstrate competency of the course material, so it’s not the standard sort of online gallery.<\/p>\n

This is a fine example of a number of things.\u00a0 For one it shows how the complex graphical features of UF can be used to compose interesting artwork that would be eye-catching in any venue, fractal or non-fractal, or even online or off.\u00a0 The image is really indistinguishable from any abstracted landscape painting found in a traditional gallery.\u00a0 Although details often change when viewing digital artwork at differing levels of resolution and size and also when produced as prints, what I can see in this image is a darkened, moonlit, landscape barren of features and yet very expressive in a surrealist<\/a> way.<\/p>\n

If the purpose of this course was to teach artistry, then I’d say the student has learned something or at least polished whatever they already had.\u00a0 But perhaps teaching artistry in the context of a program like UF which has so many user-controlled graphical functions is much easier and also much more necessary as its features allow the user to work with fractals the way one would work with photos in Photoshop.\u00a0 UF is a program designed to give artists creative control of imagery; to paint with fractals in the sense, as I mentioned, artists work on photographic imagery in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

UF is a program that enables a wide range of conventional digital artistry.\u00a0 It’s natural then to teach a course on how to use those conventional layering and masking features in the context of fractal generated imagery just like the example I’ve selected here.\u00a0 I’m quite curious to see what sort of influence these online courses at VAA have on the development of fractal art.\u00a0 I really think that regardless of the instructor’s personal artistic preferences and whether they fit with the student’s own, one can only hope to gain something of value from instruction even if it’s only a better technical use of their tools.<\/p>\n

Back in High School art class, our art teacher’s taste in art seemed to focus on gardens and other forms of colorful foliage.\u00a0 Not the sort of thing that appeals to iconoclastic teenagers, but we learned a lot about composition, design, color, and the importance of developing a personal style.\u00a0 The teacher never expected anyone to imitate what she did, and I don’t think any of us angry young artists did, although some of us did gain a greater respect for the fabric, wax and dye medium called Batik<\/a>.\u00a0 Man, she made one almost three stories tall!<\/p>\n

Are there some similarities in this student work to Janet Parke’s<\/a> own style?\u00a0 I suppose, in a general way, perhaps the color scheme and flowing, folded shape of the structures in the image, although these are becoming fairly common choices in UF work these days.\u00a0 But there’s a harsher grittiness to the student’s image and a significantly more saturated, less muted tone to the colors that makes for a very different mood.\u00a0 I’d say the style is quite different, although, like I said, such details can be distorted by changes in image size and as we all know, in UF, image size can be pretty big.\u00a0 It’s quite possible that the image we’re looking at is a mere thumbnail of what the instructor and the student were viewing for the purposes of their coursework.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
By Helmut Tarnick, XenoDream Introduction Course<\/a>
Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n
People often go nuts with XenoDream and try to concoct all sorts of creative, but confusing images.\u00a0 And they’re almost always made of brightly shining gold or silver that looks just too clean and shiny to be real, not to mention it’s use, in flowing liquid form, spashing about in impossible ways.\u00a0 So what I like about this one by Helmut Tarnick for Joseph Presley’s XenoDream course<\/a> is the relatively simple yet appealing shape he’s used and the tasteful and realistic steel surface he’s given it that allows me to study the image without having to put on sunglasses.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the larger image you’ll see on the Student Gallery page by clicking on the image or caption, looks less photographic than this smaller version I’ve used here.\u00a0 Realistic surface texture is easier to do in lower resolutions obviously.\u00a0 But I’d check out such technical things with Professor Presley before you go saying that on the final exam.\u00a0 Why should the iteration of such a simple piece of metal look so appealing?\u00a0 It’s a fractal thing, I guess.\u00a0 The self-similarity and ever expanding number of pieces at lower scales just naturally captures our attention when done tastefully like this.\u00a0 Also, there are simple, but intriguing patterns to be seen if you study the image carefully to find the juxtaposition of the same element repeated at differing scales –a basic fractal characteristic.\u00a0 Overall; a very skillful and artistic use of XenoDream’s capabilities.\u00a0 Maybe Helmut will be teaching his own course one of these days?<\/p>\n

That’s it for my perusal of the Student Galleries at the Visual Arts Academy.\u00a0 You might want to consider taking a course there someday.\u00a0 Or perhaps you might want to consider teaching one yourself; their home page<\/a> says they’re looking for qualified instructors.\u00a0 Think of all the talented students you might end up teaching.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

lesson_2_atmosphere_isolation_for_janet Click to Enlarge I found this in the Student Galleries section of the Visual Arts Academy.\u00a0 There’s no name or date but it’s filed in the Ultra Fractal Artistry section of the gallery, a course given by Janet Parke. I like this.\u00a0 In fact, I fished it out of all the student works there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1711,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1711","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":0},"title":"Copyright and Fractal Art: What the Law really says","author":"Tim","date":"5 October, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright: the word that launched a thousand fairy tales! Let's see what the US Copyright Office says about copyright: \u00a7 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1711#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":225,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=225","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":1},"title":"Questions about the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest…","author":"cruelanimal","date":"8 September, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A New Way of Seeing (2007) \u2026you should be asking -- asking now that Version.2006 has a year of dry paint and Version.2007 has just rolled its wet pixels off the assembly line-- asking before you start your generators and begin revving your fractals for next year\u2019s Version.2008: ~Why is\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=225#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"A New Way of Seeing","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/09\/newwayofseeing.jpg?fit=450%2C600&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":404,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=404","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":2},"title":"Do You Need Professional Help?","author":"Tim","date":"25 August, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Sure you do. But, the kind of professional help I'm talking about is online software courses. I know that sounds like a common subject line for spam, but this is the real thing and it includes some of the most popular fractal art programs in use today --taught by experts\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=404#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5434,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=5434","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":3},"title":"Why doesn’t Fractal Art have a half-decent Wikipedia page?","author":"Tim","date":"22 July, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It's useless, and although there have been efforts\u00a0to build something substantial there, ultimately the page keeps reverting back to a few shallow paragraphs that fail to even offer a basic\u00a0definition. \u00a0I've been going there for\u00a0several years and have always wondered why it never seems to develop into anything, but now\u00a0I\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=5434#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/wpfa1.png?fit=378%2C255&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2177,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2177","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":4},"title":"The BMFAC 2010: An Audience of Winners!","author":"Tim","date":"10 January, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A small revelation took place in the comments section of Terry's recent posting, Diaries 2.\u00a0 Terry had suggested, reasonably enough I think, that since there appeared to be no information or reaction anywhere on the internet about the recent Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest's exhibition in Hyderabad, India held this\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 8 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 8 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2177#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/image1.jpg?fit=420%2C585&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":696,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=696","url_meta":{"origin":419,"position":5},"title":"Janet Parke’s Ultra Fractal Courses Available as Ebooks","author":"Tim","date":"13 January, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The well-known fractal artist Janet Parke recently stopped teaching her highly popular Ultra Fractal courses at the online\u00a0 Visual Arts Academy.\u00a0 But just this week she has released them in downloadable ebook form for self-study.\u00a0 You can read all about them here on her website.\u00a0 The ebooks contain the text\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=696#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/master.jpg?fit=600%2C437&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/master.jpg?fit=600%2C437&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/master.jpg?fit=600%2C437&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}