{"id":1338,"date":"2010-06-25T14:09:27","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T18:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2010-06-25T14:18:22","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T18:18:22","slug":"fractal-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1338","title":{"rendered":"Fractal America"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been looking at some mash-ups<\/a> lately on Flickr ….and I was browsing around on Samuel Monnier’s site<\/a> ….and July 4th, Independence Day in the States is coming up, …which is similar to Canada’s own national holiday on July 1st called Canada Day<\/em> … I thought, “America Day” …and here’s two images of that great icon of America, the American Flag<\/em> …and they’re both fractal, sort of …here’s Fractal America …the deeper you look, the more you see ...how close can you get?<\/em><\/p>\n

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20091103, by S. Monnier<\/p><\/div>\n

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United State of Art, by qthomasbower (on Flickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Click on either one to see a larger version with much more detail.\u00a0 Samuel Monnier’s image leads to a page where you can view the image in enormous <\/em>detail.\u00a0 He uses a special flash applet that allows you to practically explore the image to the same degree you would be able to if you were viewing it in the original fractal program (Ultra Fractal) that made it.\u00a0 If you haven’t seen one of these before, it’s well worth a look<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Can the image of a national flag (especially the American<\/em> flag) be purely something to look at and not have political overtones?<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 Absolutely not. \u00a0 And why is that?<\/p>\n

Because it’s a symbol.\u00a0 Our minds just refuse to look at it as if we’d never seen it before.<\/p>\n

In social situations, if you want to avoid controversy, “don’t talk about religion or politics”<\/em>.\u00a0 But the American flag is both\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>politics and religion<\/em> to many people –and not just the Americans.<\/p>\n

In Canada (where I live) you will probably hear much more said about Americans and America than you will in America and among Americans.\u00a0 Canadians are funny that way.\u00a0 And so is much of the world.\u00a0 No one see America (and Americans) quite like foreigners do.\u00a0 And no one seems to talk about them as much as foreigners do.\u00a0 Canadians, however, see America in a more powerful way because we are both foreigners and yet, in many ways, very american<\/em> ourselves.\u00a0 I won’t get into it right now because it’s too convoluted and confusing, but suffice it to say that Canadians embrace America with one hand while at the same time trying to get in a punch with the other.\u00a0 It’s very hypocrital and juvenile and, I’ll come right out and say it: it’s very colonial<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Colonial-minded peoples are afraid of independence —they think they’re going to lose something<\/em>.\u00a0 Americans, on the other hand, enthusiastically fought for independence –because they thought they would be gaining something.<\/p>\n

And there, in a nutshell, is the difference between Canadians and Americans.\u00a0 Canadians like to complain about the government and you can’t do that when you’re independent because you’re only complaining about yourself.\u00a0 Americans like to fix the government and to do that you need independence and self-government.\u00a0 America wrote it’s own constitution.\u00a0 Canada was content to let the British Parliament do it for them.\u00a0 As a Canadian I’ve always found it surprising that my fellow Canadians don’t seem to see this as a huge national embarrassment:\u00a0 Canada is an act of British Parliament.<\/em> America was a reformation<\/em> of the acts of British Parliament (“new and improved”).<\/p>\n

See?\u00a0 Already things have gotten political.\u00a0 I’m so glad that art doesn’t have to be that way.\u00a0 Let’s talk about art instead.<\/p>\n

Samuel Monnier says<\/a> that fractal art doesn’t have to embrace social and political themes in order to be considered “serious art” and that if you browse through artworks of the past you’ll find many examples of good art in which these sorts of themes are not involved.\u00a0 Maybe he didn’t say it exactly like that, but he’s right.\u00a0 The works of Joan Miro and Paul Klee would be considered “serious art” and yet they (rarely) had any connection to what one would call social commentary.<\/p>\n

Of course it would be a great compliment to fractal art if it also had some artwork that did engage in social commentary.\u00a0 It’s not necessary (as Sam says) for fractal art to be earn the label, “serious”<\/em>, but it would add another dimension to the genre.\u00a0 And political themes can be quite engaging and thought provoking.<\/p>\n

Back to the art:\u00a0 Sam’s “pattern piling”<\/a> version of the American flag is really without any sort of intended meaning (assuming that’s possible with the American flag).\u00a0 It really is just an interesting, richly detailed, experiment with the geometric qualities that this flag possesses.\u00a0 He does the same thing with the Swiss flag (Sam is from Switzerland) although the results aren’t quite as interesting because the Swiss flag’s elements are all right-angled and lack the variety that the stars of the American flag give to it.\u00a0 And there’s an extra color in the American flag which in turn provides for more combinations and permutations when pattern piled.<\/p>\n

Qthomasbower’s flag is, on the other hand, a deliberate attempt to provide social commentary:\u00a0 A vast mosaic of many artworks forming (by overlaying an image<\/a> of the flag) a diverse but united nation waving majestically in the wind.\u00a0 I think the technique is easier than it looks.\u00a0 Nevertheless the result is fascinating.\u00a0 It really has the detailed and intricate wonder of an image made by the iterations of a fractal formula.<\/p>\n

Qthomasbower has some more<\/a> of these on his Flickr pages.\u00a0 Unlike Monnier’s image, Q’s doesn’t look so hot when you zoom in.\u00a0 It’s kind of like the “digital zoom” on a camera;\u00a0 the picture just becomes chunkier and cruder as you move in.\u00a0 I’m sure he’s not implying that the state of American art only looks good from a distance and when covered by the imprimatur<\/a> of The Stars and Stripes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Two of Arts by qthomasbower (on Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

I find these mash-ups of Q to be very interesting because of the detail and texturing they give to the image when viewed at large.\u00a0 I think almost any sort of half-decent image would look fantastic when treated this way.\u00a0 It gives a large-scale and massive appearance to the image because of the non-repeating and highly detailed texture all the individual image “tiles” contribute.\u00a0 The mash-up contributes really only a texture layer, but the effect, as I’ve said, is very impressive.<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 Is America a fractal?\u00a0 Does it have self-similarity at many levels?\u00a0 Do parts of it descend down to zero while others escape to infinity?<\/a> And why does a Presidential election with only two candidates take so long to render?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been looking at some mash-ups lately on Flickr ….and I was browsing around on Samuel Monnier’s site ….and July 4th, Independence Day in the States is coming up, …which is similar to Canada’s own national holiday on July 1st called Canada Day … I thought, “America Day” …and here’s two images of that great … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/monnier-flag.jpg?fit=600%2C316&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":362,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=362","url_meta":{"origin":1338,"position":0},"title":"Fractal Woodburning","author":"Tim","date":"28 January, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not making this up.\u00a0 I went surfing about to see what I could find in the fractal world and lo and behold at Flickr, a couple of pages into a search on the term \"fractal\", I saw wires, boards and strange, curly burn patterns.photo by AetherPhoto caption from Aether's\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3498,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3498","url_meta":{"origin":1338,"position":1},"title":"Fractal Paintings of Tralfamadore","author":"Tim","date":"21 November, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"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. 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