[Photograph seen on Manshion.] Here are some selected shorts. Apparently, I have no grand vision to impart to start the New Year. ~/~ Orbit Trap has published several recent posts exploring the nature of fractal art, and Tim explicated an image by Guido Cavalcante and analyzed its artistic expression. In response, several commenters wondered why … Continue reading
Here at Orbit Trap we’ve been accused by some of being too “preachy”. Maybe it’s true. Consider this: A recent reader and veteran fractal artist, Marcos Napier, has credited Orbit Trap with helping him to usher in “A New Era” for his fractal artwork and his website, Fractalland.com. Somehow inspired by things like what has … Continue reading
I was reading a very erudite New York City art blog a few months ago. One of its postings came up in the results of a Google search I made. As is often the case with websites like this, after reading the initial posting that my Google search had brought me to I checked out … Continue reading
Good evening, and welcome to This Week In Opera. Tonight’s special offering comes from the world of fractal art, an email list for the fractal program, Ultra Fractal. What makes this opera so avante garde is that the performers believe they are actually participating in a online discussion, while only the audience knows they are … Continue reading
A framed print of To the Joust. My cat studies its intricacies for hours. I’d like to talk about my experience with making prints. Let me begin by making clear that I’m not claiming to be any kind of expert in this area. There are plenty of professionals who know more about the ins and … Continue reading
“Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the colour blue…” –Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy What could be more intelligent and etherial than a clever java applet like this one made by Jerry Huxtable. It’s creative and … Continue reading
La Pietà (1499) by Michelangelo Michelango’s statue is beautiful and well-crafted. But it is also a widely recognized example of representational art. It can also be interpreted as meaningful. Even Wikipedia gets it: The Madonna is represented as being very young, and about this peculiarity there are different interpretations. One is that her youth symbolizes her … Continue reading
Art and photograph by adak’76 Repeat viewings of the 2009 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest winners consistently leave a bitter aftertaste. I’m convinced, especially after reading Tim’s latest OT series on the distinctions between art and craft, that very little of what BMFAC will exhibit next year merits being called art. The winning works are, … Continue reading
I think the recent image by Guido Cavalcante, made in Ultra Fractal and used in a posting to illustrate the oceanic garbage dump phenomenon, is a good example of the contrast between art and craft, two concepts which I discussed in a recent post. In a nutshell, I defined art as expressive imagery and craft … Continue reading
Wait! It’s not me. And it’s got nothing to do with Orbit Trap this time either. Curious who could be having seconds thoughts about the glorious Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2009 besides Orbit Trap? Well, it’s none other than Mr. Velocipede! Here’s what she says: I’ve finally had a chance to take a better … Continue reading
I got a couple of comments to my previous post, Art, Craft and Fractals, which raised an issue which I think needs to be clarified. The term, Craft, is used in many ways and most of them are probably derogatory in the context of art. But it’s not my intention to bad-mouth craft, only to … Continue reading
Art is a term that is used very loosely these days. I happen to think that this casual application of the label, “art” to everything graphical has produced some confusion in the digital art world and obscured what has traditionally been known as Fine Art, submerging it beneath a flood of what I think is … Continue reading
Have we got a deal not for you… Photograph: The Scam Truck by jepoirrier I know how exciting it is when someone contacts you and wants to purchase your work. Who among us doesn’t want to be discovered and sell or display our art? Just make sure those who come knocking have good intentions. In … Continue reading
“I had to stand up for myself alone, and you saw what they did to me… Until all men can stand up for what they believe in, THE SAME DAMN THING CAN HAPPEN TO ANY ONE OF YOU!” – Sheriff Buford Pusser, 1977, Walking Tall: Final Chapter Okay, I think I’ve got it all figured … Continue reading
In Part 1 I had said that Part 2 would be the Guild in action, but I think I need to clarify this whole notion of a Fractal Art Guild a bit better before going on. I really think most of the fractal art world functions like a large association of craftsmen whose closest analogy … Continue reading
In order to understand the current fractal art world you need only to learn a bit about the concept called a guild. I believe the majority of fractal artists are members of a rather pervasive fractal art guild. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that almost all of the angst expressed … Continue reading
Ups and Downs. Design by Roller Coaster Tycoon. The 2009 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest results have been announced. If you’re a regular OT reader, you already got this news. We announced it on Thursday — apparently before the contest itself was ready to do so. When, on the UF Mailing List, one of the … Continue reading
Yes, the winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot 2009 Fractal Art Contest are now out (and this time it’s final). I’m skipping the usual clever art critic review for now because there’s something that’s just too outrageous not to comment on right off the bat. If you’ve seen the 2009 winners page you might have missed … Continue reading
All about the first year of the Orbit Trap fractal art blog. Candid, behind the scenes commentary never before published. Initial planning; Exciting launch of the group blog; Things get rather quiet; Cut bait or fish; Comments and Cutlasses; New sailing orders; Land ahoy! Continue reading
OrbitTrap.ca is our new address. Update your bookmarks and check out the new site! Actually, it’s all older stuff transferred from our archives over at the old, Blogger site. Why did we move Orbit Trap to this site? Well, like any online publishing venture, we’ve changed and grown over the years and our web hosting … Continue reading
“It was already dead, so I didn’t see any point in keeping it around.” One of the few extant group blogs on fractal art got its plug pulled recently. This was no surprise since the wedream(ed)incolor blog, run by Keith Mackay, had been on life support for some time. In fact, Tim wrote an OT … Continue reading
The Garbage Path by Guido Cavalcante [Click on the image above to see a large-scale version.] Editor’s Note: This is a guest posting by Guido Cavalcante. His image was made using Ultra Fractal. Excerpts in this post were taken from “Our Oceans Are Turning into Plastic…Are We?” by Susan Casey. For more information about the … Continue reading
In keeping with the Phase 2 idea that the essence of fractal art is found in the imagery and not in the tools that made it, I present a mixed bag of things I found while taking the paths less traveled, or never traveled, to find fractal art. I followed a number of categories during … Continue reading
halleyDetailTwoPointNine… by Dan Wills, 2008-Click for larger view- Like a needle in a haystack, or a glowing needle in a fractal formula, is the rumor of a continent over the horizon or the possibility of some new and intriguing fractal artwork out there, somewhere, on the internet. My impression after browsing over Dan Wills’ Picasa … Continue reading
lesson_2_atmosphere_isolation_for_janet Click to Enlarge I found this in the Student Galleries section of the Visual Arts Academy. 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. In fact, I fished it out of all the student works there … Continue reading
Whether you’re a fractal artist or simply just a fan of fractal art, you’re bound to eventually notice similarities in style and develop preferences for this kind of art or that kind of art. Fractal art is still what I would consider to be something of a niche art form, but thanks to the internet, … Continue reading
“I’m the decider!” Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.—Lord Acton The recent revelatory leak that a pre-sorted “winners page” was being built by the director of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest leads to an inescapable conclusion. The competition is indeed a one man show. The director, Damien M. Jones, appears to … Continue reading
How is the judging actually done? I’ve always assumed that in order to give every submission an equal chance of winning, the judges independently viewed the submissions and then chose the ones that they thought ought to be included in the exhibition. The choices of all the judges would then be tabulated and the images … Continue reading
Verdict first. Trial later. I showed in my last post what OT found: a winners page for the 2009 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest that displayed current contest entrants placed into three categories: exhibition winner, alternate, and honorable mention. How could some entrants already have won when the contest does not close until October 10th? … Continue reading
And the winner is… Elvis’ alien clone better move over. What is one to make of this? Just by accident, OT wandered into the “winners” page of the current (and ongoing) 2009 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest and found it active and showing thumbnails of entries listed as exhibition winners, alternates, and honorable mentions. You … Continue reading
Several questions Is the entire digital art medium just too new and different for the art gallery world? Has the art world, that great destroyer of cultural norms and traditions, found a free-flowing, anarchic, internet-based digital medium too ab-normal and un-traditional to dive into? Is it because digital art can’t be cornered by track lighting … Continue reading
Swine Flu by Luke Jerram I think Tim’s recent observations that fractal art is about to undergo into a new Phase Two paradigm shift are on target. Fractal art will never evolve beyond a curious, trippy, decorative craft until it moves away from being defined by software and instead starts thinking and acting like a … Continue reading
One of these is from the Museum of Bad Art It occurred to me while browsing some of the greatest art of the 20th century to ask this question: Why don’t we see more art like this today? For instance, it ought to be very easy to imitate the famous drip paintings of Jackson Pollock … Continue reading
Could this work be described as …Fractal?Admiral Otto Von Howitzerhead by Kris Kuksi 2009 Samuel Monnier, writing at Algorithmic Worlds, his new website – gallery – and blog, said some very interesting things about the fractal nature of sculptures done by Kris Kuksi. Sam said that Kris Kuksi’s scuptures “are very interesting examples of non … Continue reading
Editor’s Note: This is a guest posting by Rich Jarzombek.I’m always fascinated by what I call “The Infinite Powers” of fractals. Most fractalists know that the fractal computational process is iterative and therefore could go on to infinity but intentionally terminates when a programmed condition is reached so that an image existing at the time … Continue reading
Even my own homemade recipes leave me with an unsettled stomach. I used to get a thrill out of making some colorful lollipop of an image, but that stuff is for kids. If you still crave candy, then you’re still a kid too. Call it Decorative Art, or The Decorative Arts, it’s still the same … Continue reading