{"id":378,"date":"2009-04-04T00:54:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-04T04:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=378"},"modified":"2009-04-04T00:54:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-04T04:54:00","slug":"can-bad-fractals-be-good-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Can Bad Fractals be Good Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pantheon<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

Good software makes images that are too slick.\u00a0 It’s hard to get good software to make smudgy, jagged, off-color stuff.\u00a0 Purebred imagery is predictable.\u00a0 Artists often make junk and crazy mistakes but it’s a process of trial and error that leads to new styles.\u00a0 Good software and professional skills is a toxic combination that gets everything right the first time and inevitably leads to the best fractals — a dead end.<\/p>\n

I’ve given the fractal world many bad examples to follow and, unless my disciples are all off in the desert hiding, no one seems to be following my liquid path down the drain.\u00a0 But success and popularity are difficult obstacles to overcome.\u00a0 The encouragement of others is sometimes all it takes to keep someone going down a fruitless path to a heartless goal.<\/p>\n

If you want to help someone produce better art, not necessarily better fractals, challenge them with negative criticism and encourage them to give it up.\u00a0 When the lights of success and encouragement go out, only the glow of your art will be left.<\/p>\n

There is something that I call “Raw Style”.\u00a0 It’s imagery that looks better when it isn’t anti-aliased and when it’s not cooked and simply presented “as-is”.\u00a0 As fractal software has progressed, it’s become easier to process things and to do more to it.\u00a0 One would expect this to be a good thing, and it is if what you want to do is make better fractals, but it’s bad because users quickly fall into a routine of tidying and polishing everything they make like obsessive-compulsive cleaning maids.\u00a0 Imagine what news photography would be like if before anyone took a photo of someone, the subject’s mother appeared and combed their hair and straightened up their shirt collar before the photo was taken — every moment would be ruined.\u00a0 Good art is often ready-made; but we overlook it because we don’t expect it.<\/p>\n


The Great Seal
<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

I’m not saying you shouldn’t tweak and process fractals.\u00a0 What I am saying is that you should ask yourself “Why?” and try to avoid it because it leads to much better fractals and really bad art.\u00a0 Fractal art is the domain of the Ugly Duckling; stop choking your swans.<\/p>\n

The death of contests is good because contests take artists with talent and creativity and turn them into approval addicts.\u00a0 After just a few contests most artists already start to exhibit the symptoms of mental degeneration that accompany similar dependency disorders: restlessness; anxiety attacks; obsessive grooming; checking their mail every five minutes.<\/p>\n

The anti-art tendencies of contests are easy to spot: judges who don’t like art choose the best fractals and exhibit (no pun intended) an ingrained aversion to the bad ones.\u00a0 A good fractal art contest will present a very pronounced dislike of good fractals and show a real affinity for bad ones.\u00a0 But people like that don’t run contests — they run from contests<\/i>.<\/p>\n

A few rules of thumb: Great art is always unpopular because anything that’s so intensely specialized and focused alienates at least 90 percent of its audience.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s almost a law of mathematics.\u00a0 But it’s a good thing because it means that your own gut feelings about your work are probably more important and a more accurate measurement of it’s value than the other 9 out of 10 people who may look at it — if we can only stop deceiving ourselves<\/i>.\u00a0 The majority is always wrong because whenever a lot of people think they all see the same thing it shows they aren’t really looking very closely.<\/p>\n

Art is all about taking the trivial more seriously.\u00a0 We can start by making bad fractals.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pantheon Good software makes images that are too slick.\u00a0 It’s hard to get good software to make smudgy, jagged, off-color stuff.\u00a0 Purebred imagery is predictable.\u00a0 Artists often make junk and crazy mistakes but it’s a process of trial and error that leads to new styles.\u00a0 Good software and professional skills is a toxic combination that … 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-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":406,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=406","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":0},"title":"Fractal Art, Phase Two","author":"Tim","date":"3 September, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What? You didn't know even know there was a Phase One? Well, let me begin there, then. At the dawn of fractal art.Phase One, the first stage of fractal art, has been oriented around software. The big developments in fractal art came from developments in the software that made it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=406#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ambaka.com\/blog\/25\/phase2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":382,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=382","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":1},"title":"Realistic Fractals by Rich Jarzombek","author":"Tim","date":"28 April, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Senorita's New Attire by Rich Jarzombek.\u00a0 Click for larger image.The general field of Fractal Art abounds in pictures that may be largely described as beautiful random designs or geometric shapes. It is rare to find Fractal Art pictures that strongly portray substantive images such as people or specific objects. However,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3632,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3632","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":2},"title":"Phase 3: The Relentless Pursuit of Color, Shape and Pattern","author":"Tim","date":"20 December, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"We've all watched or taken part in, at sometime or another, that great quest to \"define\" fractal art.\u00a0 Although few members of the fractal world seem very interested in this sort of \"constitutional debate\" everyone operates with at least some sort of understanding of a boundary around fractal art.\u00a0 The\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 5 comments","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3632#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/pollock01.jpg?fit=460%2C362&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":333,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=333","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":3},"title":"Art Fist: The Brutal Code of Color!","author":"Tim","date":"21 July, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Sterli30.looI made this image in Sterlingware with only a slight hue shift in XnView, my trusty side-kick. Although Sterlingware is now over 10 years old, which is pretty old by software standards, and lacks many of the new features that extend the rendering powers of fractal programs (i.e. user formulas\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3510,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3510","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":4},"title":"Flame Fractals: Get the Fire Extinguisher!","author":"Tim","date":"22 November, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"My continuing Odyssey in the seas of Deviant Art has brought me to what I shall refer to as the island of Apophysis, that being the great flame fractal program created by Mark Townsend which utilizes the \"flame algorithms\" discovered or invented by Scott Draves, the author of Electric Sheep,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=3510#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/image2.jpg?fit=440%2C305&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2848,"url":"https:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2848","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":5},"title":"Rebooting Fractal Art: Part 3","author":"Tim","date":"4 August, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"What fractals fail to do... 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