I apologize for not keeping a closer eye on the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2006. If I had, these comments of mine wouldn’t have come a whole year late, but it’s just recently that I was able to view the entire exhibition (PDF Catalog here) which includes the works by the judges which wasn’t … Continue reading
Contests and other Circuses
Before I start to comment on this year’s Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest, I should tell you something: I don’t like contests. I think they trivialize art by turning it into a sports competition. The only redeeming features these self-inflicted events have is they create a compilation of artwork whose average level of quality is … Continue reading
Fiends without a Face
Fiends without a Face (2007) Weird for the sake of weird… Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons We know fractals are said to be supposedly infinite, highly recursive, and sometimes interpreted through aesthetics. But can the exaggeration and irony of camp be one of those aesthetic crash dives? The critters in this image reminded me of the … Continue reading
Scratchy
If you’ve ever driven on a highway in a snowstorm you probably know that the best way to stay on the road is to drive with one wheel just off the edge of it. I think that’s a good technique when it comes to creative activities: stay half off the road. It’s slower, but ironically, … Continue reading
Three Cheers For Jock!
Browsing fractal sites usually leaves me with a feeling best described by the fancy term, “Ennui“. There just isn’t much originality. I don’t know why. Maybe most fractal artists makes fractal art for reasons other than creative expression or any of the usual motives that lead people to produce artwork. There’s a few notable exceptions, … Continue reading
Ant Works
It’s always amazed me how careful and disciplined insects can be. One of the many wonders I saw when visiting the tropical Gulf coast of Mexico were leaf-cutter ants. Up here in Canada (Toronto), ants don’t do much except crawl around and occasionally make an anthill. Leaf cutters make Canadian ants look primitive. Although leaf-cutters … Continue reading
Who Dissected Roger Rabbit
Who Dissected Roger Rabbit (2007) The function of art is to disturb. Science reassures.—Georges Braque Andrea Yates believed that cartoon characters told her she was a bad mother who fed her children too much candy…—Court TV News For some reason, disembowelment and bloodshed is a helluva lot funnier when it’s animated. We have no idea … Continue reading
showFoto 0.5.0: Doorway to the 6th Dimension!
Made from the original, below, using Block Wave with default settings on a resized (enlarged) version I wonder how many of us, capable of doing so many things, would be reduced to only one single, useful, function if the people we live or work with could custom configure us? That’s the way I’ve come to … Continue reading
Phoenix
The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a … Continue reading
An Open Call for New Contributors
As Orbit Trap rolls towards its first anniversary, Tim and I are looking back — and also looking forward. Initially, we used a by-invitation-only process for selecting contributors to Orbit Trap. We have decided to change that policy in order to hopefully allow broader and more vigorous participation in the blog. To this end, we … Continue reading
A Written Record
What follows is a complete transcription of a series of email exchanges between Damien M. Jones and myself discussing topics recently posted to Orbit Trap. The correspondence begins on Sunday, July 8th, 2007, and ends on Wednesday, July 11th, 1007. The only editing I have done is to remove all email addresses, street addresses, and … Continue reading
Has Ultra Fractal become the Walmart of fractal art?
“So radically innovative are Ultra Fractal’s capabilities that they have literally redefined fractal art since the program’s debut.”(From Ultrafractal.com) It’s complicated. Believe me, it took me a few years to come to such a radical and harsh conclusion. I mean, what could be bad about a program that has been used to create fractal artwork … Continue reading
Take It to the Limitations
I was really glad to read Damien’s recent entry. I completely agree with him that all fractal artists post-process and that no one fractal tool is proprietary. He is absolutely right. It makes no difference whether I knock my fractal around with masking and layering in Ultra Fractal or import my fractal into Photoshop and … Continue reading
A Dream of Post Post-Processing
Yes. I’m returning to rant again on my favorite pet peeve: the never-say-die stink surrounding post-processing. I know some of you feel this is a dead issue. We all get along now… …except we don’t. The old biases just keep cropping up. From “Recent Evolution in Fractal Art” from Ken Keller’s site: I consider the … Continue reading
Why I don’t use Ultra Fractal
In a nutshell, it doesn’t do what Inkblot Kaos, Sterlingware, Tierazon or Xaos does. I want something that sprouts artwork after a couple of clicks. Ultra Fractal? It’s just too much work. Too many layers. Too many moving parts. Too many moving parts that I have to move. My first attempt at Ultra Fractal was … Continue reading
Colorful Desert
Before there was only sand and the Shat al Arab. But now, plumes of color from the petro-chemical plants. From oil comes the pigments and inks of modern industry, turning the sombre land into oceans of color. The nets of the fisherman have given way to great cables of oil, shipping lanes and refinery ports. … Continue reading
Electric Cabbage
I have wanted nothing elsebut to release the machinefrom its stall I have told ityou are better than the othersfaster than the others,they paint with sticksand they talk like fools Sure, a lot of it’s junkbut there’s a thousand sidesto a sheet of digital paperand the machine is never discouraged Batting one in a millionto … Continue reading
Twisters
The Twister Forms (2000) My dream starts to get strange on The Plains. Blue balloons drift over my town as rain mode begins and gusts curve. In one fictive package hot moves up when I swing my armsdemolishing clever word games. Shuffled letters soon drown and my notebook paper returns driven back into trees. ~/~ … Continue reading
The Gold Mirage
Sometimes the past fails us, and we have to write our own ancient legends. The 8th voyage of Sindbad, and other things that were probably imagined, but never recorded. How many books could be filled with the things that are unwritten? Ideas come and go. Swirling, returning. Maybe a story has to be told several … Continue reading
I am become Klimt!
When Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the first nuclear explosion, a project which he personally managed, he apparently said, “I am become Death, the destoyer of worlds”. When I first tried out this photoshop filter, I said, along the same lines, “I am become Klimt”. I didn’t say it out loud, just like Oppenheimer, I suppose, didn’t … Continue reading
Ways of Seeing — Part One
After all, every picture is a history of love and hatewhen read from the appropriate angle.–Leopoldo Salas-Nicanor, Espejo de las artes, 1731 I’ve been spending time lately with an interesting book — drinking in one chapter at a time some nights just before turning in for sleep. Reading Pictures by Alberto Manguel explores the various … Continue reading
Little Images
There are the few that are Great, and there are the many that are Little. The Great are classics, or well on their way. Everyone knows them. They have a following. They have names. They get stolen. The Little are sparks. Bright, in a tiny way. A glowing grain of sand. The Great grow from … Continue reading
The Persistence of Sierpinski
The smaller you look, the larger you see. There are two modes I apply when working with fractals or graphic software in general. One is to keep a close eye on what does what, and when I find a good combination of effects, write down the sequence like a script: scripting mode. In fact, in … Continue reading
Mysteries of Faith and Art
Why did the fractal cross the road? To travel back in time? Compare this image: The familiar Mandelbrot Set form. With this image: An Ottoman illustration of the sacrifice of Ismael (1583). The resemblance should not be a surprise. We’ve all seen fractal forms embedded in nature — trees, river currents, lightning, cauliflower, cacti. These … Continue reading
Ten Filters that Shook the World
Well, it’s actually just one, but with such power, such awesome, earth-quaking power. Ilyich the Toad’s multi-crystal.8bf is a fairly standard distortion, multi-faceted, lens filter. We’ve all seen variations of this all over the place. I’ve always thought stuff like this was just more cheap digital tricks, and for a while I was beginning to … Continue reading
Vader on Vacation
Vader on Vacation (2007) This year Tonya will party downat Helm’s Deep. After car rentals, tummytucks at the Salem Witch Museum,she plans for a better security video. Carrying all that bionic gear makes the whole Lord Vader thing look silly. Our travel agent left bad maps to the Death Star Bed and Breakfast and all … Continue reading
Baba Yaga and the Sierpinski Roundabout
Some filters make mountains, and some filters make dust. More about Illyich the Toad’s multicrystal.8bf. I start with a fractal, and then smash it up. I smash some more. Not much fractal left now. If I smash further? Less fractal stuff right? No. This is where the filter gets pretty weird. Ashes to ashes, dust … Continue reading
Oracle of Evil
Orwellian, 1984, Mouthpiece of Baal, Howling Telescreen. My latest fractal Rorshach test. It looks a bit like an old “Victrola”. They were one of the earliest record players, before electricity was widely available, and relied on a hand-cranked mechanism that turned the record after it was wound up. The sound was amplified mechanically (not electronic) … Continue reading
"O, be some other name!"
What’s in a name? that which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet;–William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I do like naming images. While it’s true that viewers will stubbornly resist an artist’s prompt and make their own meanings from images, I still enjoy suggesting places to start. Since many fractals are … Continue reading
Coaches and Artists
I dislike the “artist” label. Maybe it dislikes me, too. Original from Tierazon 2.7 To me, the word, “artist” conjures up the image of someone who works hard and approaches their “work” with discipline and dedication. They are the subject of biographies and documentaries; art emanates from them. That doesn’t describe me. I’m more of … Continue reading
Enemy Combatants
Enemy Combatant 1 (2007) “Put it all together, and last week’s passage of the Military Commissions Act is ominous for those in the US. As Bruce Ackerman noted recently in The Los Angeles Times, the legislation ‘authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. … Continue reading
One-eyed Madonna
Alright, it’s not historically accurate. Traditionally, I think, Mary has always been portrayed with two eyes. None of the Bible accounts mention how many eyes Mary had. Da Vinci’s Madonna had two eyes. Of course, if Da Vinci was such an expert, the Last Supper wouldn’t have been painted with table and chairs. I took … Continue reading
Dragonfly Saloon Girls
Dragonfly Saloon Girls (2001) We had gunslingers in deluxe tuxes and knit jackets with shoulder straps. We had military girls and sailor girls but sexy Red Riding Hood was a no show. Smothered in daisies she came out of the planet of green love in the late 90’s. Her cowgirl costume tanked in Jamaica but … Continue reading
The Wells of Abraham
I saw a documentary on Middle Eastern wells. A well is a big deal there. Everything happens because of water. Some of them are quite old, even supposedly dating back to the days of Abraham. A well is so important that there are men who dive down into these narrow tunnels and remove debris when … Continue reading
"Fractals Don’t Look Like Anything"
Alien Supplicant (2007) I go on a quaternion fractal kick for a few weeks almost every year. There’s something very special about these sculpted, rolled in Play-Doh, Tootsie Roll forms. I find them fascinating because they seem more tactile and three-dimensional than most other kinds of fractals. They can also be more visually evocative. Maybe … Continue reading
I spent my future building a star
We worked as a team. A huge team of scientists and builders like me. No one had built a star before. We were going to be the first. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? We know now. We built very special pins and we saw things that no one had … Continue reading