Year: 2013

Snow Art by Simon Beck [Click to view images at higher resolution.]   The artwork improves the mountains. And the mountains improve the artwork. –Simon Beck I wrote last time about the ways snowflakes are…

Photographs of Snowflakes by Alexey Kljator   Nothing better reveals the pervasiveness of underlying fractal patterns that lie beyond the scrim of our sensory perceptions than microphotography. The medium digs gold mines for fractal treasure…

The work of some surrealist artists back in the early 20th century involved the use of creative methods that are almost analogous to many of our modern computerized algorithms and effects.  For people like myself…

The Creative Device Synthetic art has only one principle to it: the creative device.  As a result, the synthetic aesthetic is not bound to any particular medium but rather is a way of being creative…

This is the third part of a series on The Synthetic Aesthetic: artwork which is mechanically made as opposed to handmade ( Part 1 / Part 2 ).  Fractal art borders on this synthetic realm…

In the first part of this series, I introduced a few new ideas which have a central part to play in my concept of the Synthetic Aesthetic.  I believe it might be of great benefit…

Shoes by Barry Rosenthal [Click to view images at higher resolution on source sites.]   Trash has given us an appetite for art. —Pauline Kael Today’s post is a quasi-photoblog entry that knocks together two…

This is another one of those theoretical postings; you might want to skip it and go look at some fresh fractal art instead.  But if you’re still interested, in this posting I intend to examine…

What shower of insults and rotten tomatoes are provoked up by such a play on the expression, “Paint by Numbers”?  And yet, to those who know what galactic boundaries are quickly traversed by just a…

Two Prints: Geisha Remix (2012, Left) and Cleopatra Worries Remix (2012, Right).   I’ve written before about making prints. I don’t want to rehash what I said previously. However, my thinking has "evolved" a bit…

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…

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…

Earthscapes. United States Postal Service (2012) [Click on images to view at higher resolution.]   The last of three posts about postage. You can skip the short context-setting intro section if you’ve already DVRed this…

Earthscapes. United States Postal Service (2012) [Click on images to view at higher resolution.]   The second of three posts about postage. You can skip the short context-setting intro section if you’ve already DVRed this…

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,…

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…

I created. I uploaded. I published. [Image seen here.]   The so-called "little magazine," or more generic mainstream literary/art journal, has long been a tried-and-true avenue for artists and writers to distribute their work while…

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…

A Shocking Fractal   I have previously written about both fractal fields of lighting and about shocking flowers, but here is an experiment that merges the two topics. A Pratt Institute student, Melanie Hoff, attached…

From the developer’s, Tim Day’s site: Fracplanet is an interactive tool for creating random fractal planets and terrain areas with oceans, rivers, lakes and icecaps. The results can be exported as models to POV-Ray and…

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…

Dave Makin, in a thread over at Fractalforums.com suggested that the mandelbulb deserves more attention: Anyhow, while still shaking my head and wondering (like taurus66 in the quote) why anyone would be interested in that…

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…

Mosquito eyes. Microscopy courtesy of Oliver Meckes.   I first wrote about microscopy on OT back in September of 2009 when discussing Luke Jerram‘s glass sculptures. I said then that microscopy "frequently reveals fractal characteristics…