The Prodigal Thing (2002)
That goes back to the whole prodigal thing. The prodigal came home empty and ugly and smelly and stinking and being a long way from the dance.
--Laura Bagby, "Beauty is a Dance"
...with apologies to Ben Grimm.
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Made with Fractal ViZion. Post-processed until the image swore it would never come back.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, prodigal thing, it's clobberin' time, photoblog, blog with a view
Rover (2004)
As the winter lingered, Spirit [the Mars Rover] began producing thousands of pages of sometimes rambling and dubious data, ranging from complaints that the Martian surface was made up almost entirely of the same basalt, to long-winded rants questioning the exorbitant cost and scientific relevance of the mission.
"Granted, Spirit has been extraordinarily useful to our work," [Project Manager John] Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW?'"
--The Onion, "Mars Rover Beginning to Hate Mars"
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Made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until all crucial mineralogy data was lost.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, rover, mars rover, the onion, photoblog, blog with a view
Out for the Season (Remix, 2007)
Last night, Fox aired a montage prior its airing of the Red Sox/Rockies game that celebrated great moments in World Series history. “The story of the World Series is told in seven chapters,” the narrator said, “each with their old tale, each with their own hero. These stories take us back in time to the place where we witnessed greatness.” Fox highlighted famous individual accomplishments by baseball icons in World Series history -- such as Kirk Gibson’s game-winnning homerun in 1988 and Babe Ruth’s “called shot” in the 1932 World Series. Fox also deemed President Bush’s first pitch in Game 3 of the 2001 World Series worthy of inclusion.
--Think Progress, 10-28-07
Next season on Fox? Bush waterboards the first contestant on Torture or No Torture!?!
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Made with QuaSZ. Post-processed until the image became questionable and a game-time decision.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, out for the season, george w bush, waterboarding, photoblog, blog with a view
The Garden of Forking Paths (2001)
I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.
--Jorge Luis Borges
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Made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until the image was arrested and sentenced to death while still claiming to have "most abhorrently triumphed."
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, garden of forking paths, jorge luis borges, photoblog, blog with a view
Harpies (2000)
The Harpies were sent by the gods to torment a certain Phineas, whom Jupiter had deprived of his sight, in punishment of his cruelty; and whenever a meal was placed before him the Harpies darted down from the air and carried it off.
--from Crystalinks
Sounds a little like Michelle Malkin swooping down to torment a twelve-year-old.
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Made with Fractal ViZion. Post-processed until it dive-bombed me bearing claws and a hideous, weathered face.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, harpies, photoblog, blog with a view
Kill Filter (1999)
I have someone in my kill filter named Adam. I cannot remember why I put him there. Is he the loud mouth jerk who thinks he is God's gift to the world or am I thinking of someone else? Is he gone from this group? Thanks for reply, except of course Adam, who I cannot see anyway.
--Jeff on BoardReader
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Made with Tiera-Zon. Post-processed until the need for plonk.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, kill filter, photoblog, blog with a view
Future 7-Up (2007)
It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets.
--William Thomas
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Made with Vchira. Post-processed until it became a Sprite commercial.
Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, new year's, future 7-up, photoblog, blog with a view
Swirl Cone (2003)
Inert gas blanketing during melting in holding furnaces. The melt surface is blanketed with argon or nitrogen in order to keep oxygen away from the melt surface, using either a patented vortex sprayer or swirl cone. This reduces gas pick up and oxide formation.
--Technological product offerring describing molten-metal blanketing from Air Products
Mmmm. Tasty.
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Image made with QuaSZ and post-processed until dripping and melting became a serious obstacle.
Technorati Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, swirl cone, photoblog, blog with a view
Warhead Waiting Game (2007)
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
--W. H. Auden
Made with QuaSZ and post-processed somewhere between nuclear flash and thermal pulse.
Technorati tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, warhead, photoblog, blog with a view
Termites (2007)
Termites are morphologically uncomplicated insects, in contrast with their astonishingly complex social behavior.
--Robert L. Smith, Termites
Several weeks ago, while commuting to work, I was listening to Dana Gioia, director of the National Endowment of the Arts, chatter away on National Public Radio about how no one reads anymore. He claimed that the majority of Americans had not read a single book (including technical manuals) in 2006. Apparently, other amusements have replaced a good read -- films, video games, and (probably) making digital art.
Which is too bad. Reading is a wonderful way to gain insights into the world -- or even into something smaller -- like the (assuming it exists) fractal community.
Last weekend, I found myself reading a collection of essays called Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory (edited by Marie-Laure Ryan). One essay in particular stood out: "Virtual Termites" by Lance Olson. Olson was talking about the influences that led author William Gibson to pen his groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. According to Olson, one of the primary influences on Gibson was an essay by iconoclastic film critic Manny Farber called "White Elephant Art and Termite Art" (later compiled in Farber's book, Negative Space, 1974). Olson summarizes Farber's argument as follows:
Farber distinguishes between two kinds of art. The first, for which he holds contempt, is White Elephant Art, the sort that embraces the idea of a well-crafted, logical arena, incarnated in the films of Francois Truffaut. Proponents of this near-school produce tedious pieces reminiscent of Rube Goldberg's perpetual-motion machines that exude a sense of their own weight, structure, and status as masterworks. The second kind of art, which Farber advocates, is Termite Art. This is the sort that stands opposed to elite aesthetic culture, embraces freedom and multiplicity, is incarnated in the films of Laurel and Hardy. Proponents of this near-school produce pieces that gnaw away at their own boundaries, leaving little in their wake except traces of enthusiastic, assiduous, and messy endeavor.
See any parallels to Fractaldom?
I would argue that White Elephant Art can easily be seen in the Fractal Universe calendar selections and the overall UFractalus "school" that dominated the exhibition selectees of the first two Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contests. After all, are not these two entities the most public displays of the aesthetics of contemporary fractal art? Are these competitions not spun to the masses as the best fractal artists currently have to offer? Run the verbal footage from the 2006 BMFAC page:
It will exhibit high quality works by the most important fractal artists in the world [emphasis mine].
There's your ruling cultural aesthetic -- spelled out clearly and definitively. A pastiche of self-selected, self-proclaimed masterworks by our community's White Elephants.
The Rube Goldberg analogy fits, too. UFractalus school images are more built than made. Raid the parameter file repository and start stacking and connecting the elaborate pixellated parts. 100 layers. No post-processing. Better yet -- sign up for UF courses so you too can duplicate the reigning, assembly-line, "correct" fractal forms.
Or don't. Just make your own art. Explore the road not taken. Use programs other than Ultra Fractal. Post-process with wild abandon until you discover something you made and you like. Let accidents happen and embrace them for their surprises and suggestions -- like Laurel knocking Hardy on the head with a 2x4. In their films, the accidents make the meaning -- not the construction of the plot.
Gnaw away at the calendar swirls and the pre-fab UF look. As Farber observes:
Termite Art has no goal except to chew through its own limits, fuse and confuse, create zones where "culture" can't be located precisely, and where the artist can be cantankerous, extravagant, pushing creative possibilities and not caring what the results might be. It just keeps gnawing outward.
Keep gnawing until the foundation that houses the school of "the most important fractal artists in the world" begins to buckle. Then, just maybe, the prevailing aesthetic of fractal art will cherish personal vision and idiosyncrasy, value vitality over methodology, and be unselfconscious of its origins as either a "program" or a "style."
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Originally posted at Orbit Trap.
Image made with Fractal ViZion and post-processed until the Orkin Man arrived.
Technorati Tags: fractal, fractals, fractal art, digital art, art theory, termite art, white elephant art, manny farber, fractal universe calendar, benoit mandelbrot fractal art contest, ultra fractal, gnaw away at the borders
