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 "monsters" from that psychotronic gem Fiend without a Face.

I ain't got no/body since she left me
And I don't know why
But I'm startin' to cry
I ain't got no/body...
--"Ain't Got Nobody", Grand Funk Railroad

Another one of those remarkable strings of nuclear accidents in the 1950s unleashes a rash of caterpillaric brainstems snaking through the Canadian countryside and snacking on the locals' left and right hemispheres. Viewer empathy begins to leak into the mix as many of the spine-sucking creatures are dispatched with macho gusto by pistols at point blank range. When shot, their brainstems curl like ribbons, and their cerebrums emit leaking oil sounds as strawberry preserves dribble out of their lobes. Once the bumbling technicians have their skulls drained like unwanted swamps and the responsible nuclear plant is destroyed, each rampaging neck-clinger becomes a literal no-brainer and melts into what looks like bubbling custard.

Hi there. You're only the peripheral romantic interest in this film. So you won't actually be needing your brain for this role.

And you thought all you had to worry about were Chernobyl collateral damage and truly infinite waste storage in Yucca Mountain and elsewhere.

I've argued previously on this blog that fractals have attributes associated with fine art. I guess the reverse is true, too. Fractals can also take the low road. As we learn from hey I coulda written that crap on Wikipedia:

Camp has been from the start an ironic attitude, embraced by anti-Academic theorists for its explicit defense of clearly marginalized forms. As such, its claims to legitimacy are dependent on its opposition to the status quo; camp has no aspiration to timelessness, but rather lives on the hypocrisy of the dominant culture. It doesn't present basic values, but precisely confronts culture with what it perceives as its inconsistencies, to show how any norm is socially constructed. This rebellious utilisation of critical concepts was originally formulated by modernist art theorists such as sociologist Theodor Adorno who were radically opposed to the kind of popular culture that consumerism endorsed.

So can fractal art now be considered postmodernist? After all, someone once told me my art(ifact) was "all surface."

And, yeah, I think this post could be seen as a metanarrative...

Until someone totally deconstructs it in the comments...

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Image rendered in QuaSZ and mildly post-processed until my brain went missing and I stopped.

Technorati Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, postmodernism, metanarrative, fiend without a face

The Bed You Made

The Bed You Made (2007)

Old expressions from labs of lust
where spliced mice make nests from shredded
paper. Once you take off
your clothes reactions are tested.

You can't go back
and your skin is unlike a sheet
blank and type free. What is written
on your face is a maze

of fear
you run each day.

Upper left corner detail of The Bed You Made

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Image rendered in Sterling-ware and post-processed until the exercise wheel squeeked and the mattress sagged.

Please note my art web site has a new URL and domain:
Rooms with a View
http://wrightart.net

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, poetry, bed you made

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 why. It's just the way it is.
--Atom Films

This image has, well, guts.

There's been quite a bit of talk on this blog about breaking the traditional assumptions that fractal art is grounded in an aesthetics of beauty. Fractals are abstract. So how can they "mean" anything? And, if they are non-referential, does this imply they can only be wildly pleasing to the eye? Exhibit A: Another saturated spiral explodes from its slick paper as one turns over each new month in a Fractal Universe calendar.

Still, there has also been plenty of talk here lately about "ugly" fractals. Fractals "with dirty faces." Fractals that refuse to be eye candy. Fractals that assault rather than soothe the senses.

Is my image today in bad taste? Or merely a comment on the exaggerated violence found in many cartoons. After all, a far worse fate usually awaits Tom in every Tom and Jerry short. Lawnmowers shaving him from tail to skull. A falling iron transforming the top of his head into a landing strip.

Wile E. Coyote gets today's picture -- even if Itchy and Scratchy feel it doesn't go far enough.

One of Tex Avery's whistling wolves getting smashed with a frying pan that turns his face into a dinner plate is funny. Cartoon characters whispering to Andrea Yates and telling her to drown her kids in a bathtub is not funny.

And fractals, as art, can steer viewers either way.

So is my image today disturbing? Or as funny as being pulverized into an accordion shape by a falling anvil? Or is it just silly or pretentious or bland. Whatever. You -- the viewer -- get to decide.

But I'm betting it's not pretty.

Upper left corner detail of Who Dissected Roger Rabbit

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Image made with Sterling-ware and post-processed until I chased it off a cliff, waved goodbye, and disappeared downward leaving only a small cloud of smoke behind.

Rooms with a View. Please note the new address. Here's why I was forced to move.

Technorati Tags: fractal, fractal art, digital art, art, cartoon violence, roger rabbit

Minos

Minos (2007)

Hopefully, one day, Dick Cheney will have to stand before this dude...

From you could have written it yourself Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, Minos...was a mythical king of the island of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization has been named after him.

[...]

Minos reigned over Crete and the islands of the Aegean Sea three generations before the Trojan War. He lived at Knossos for periods of nine years, at the end of which he retired into a sacred cave, where he received instruction from Zeus in the legislation which he gave to the island. This included the establishment of pederasty as a means of population control on the island community: [They] “segregated the women and instituted sexual relations among the males so that women would not have children" (from Aristotle's Politics).He was the author of the Cretan constitution and the founder of its naval supremacy.

In Attic tradition and on the Athenian stage Minos is a cruel tyrant, the heartless exactor of the tribute of Athenian youths to feed the Minotaur. It seems possible that tribute children were actually exacted to take part in the gruesome shows of the Minoan bull-rings, of which we now have more than one illustration.

[...]

In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Minos sits at the entrance to the second circle in the Inferno, which is the beginning of proper Hell. Here, he judges the sins of each soul and assigns it to its rightful punishment by indicating the circle to which it must descend. He does this by circling his tail around his body the appropriate number of times. He can also speak, to clarify the soul's location within the circle indicated by the wrapping of his tail.

Upper right corner detail of Minos

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Made with FraSZle. Post-processed until the image proclaimed me to be a heretic, wrapped its tail around itself six times, and sent me to my proper circle.

My art web site is still off line. Here's why.

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, minos

So-So Shepherd

So-So Shepherd (2007)

Best keep an eye out for those wolves in sheep's clothing.

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Made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until it got lost and could not find its way home again.

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Please note that the address for Rooms with a View has changed -- and that my art web site is presently off line at this time. I'm not sure when sections of the site will be operational again. Moreover, most of the click-to-open larger versions of my posted images on this blog will no longer work. I am sorry for any broken links or inconvenience.

Why is my web site suddenly down? Here's why.

Upper left corner detail of So-So Shepherd

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Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, shepherd, wolves

Last Day as a Caterpillar

Last Day as a Caterpillar (2007)

Flicka Flicka beats my unhoping heart.
My chest harbors a pipe-laying assassin. Glue on heads
and wiggly legs. Pump my abdomen with poison.
I will never become a nervous chrysalis.

Face detail of Last Day as a Caterpillar

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Something newish. Made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until it molted its skin and silk glands spun a cocoon. Poem from my larval brain refusing to transform into an adult.

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, poetry, caterpillar

Dick Cheney Ascends into Heaven

Dick Cheney Ascends into Heaven (2007)

There's no need to stand on the shoulders of giants when you see yourself as a living god beyond the constraints of puny humans.

From RJ Eskrow's "Cheney's Not in the Executive Branch? Sounds Good to Me!" on The Huffington Post:

By now you've heard about Dick Cheney's fascinating new legal argument that he's not in the executive branch, so he doesn't have to comply with executive secrecy rules. I'm not always Rahm Emanuel's biggest fan, but his plan to cut executive-branch funding for the VP's office is a very sensible response. On the other hand, let's not be hasty about this. After all, if Cheney's not in the Executive Branch he can't claim executive privilege.

"If he believes his legal case," Mr. Emanuel wrote in an email, "his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch." But imagine how much light we can shed into the dark corners of Mr. Cheney's office if his argument holds.

Surely you remember that infamous energy task force, the one where Mr. Cheney let his oil industry pals and their lobbyists come in and literally write their own rules? Cheney argued that the public had no right to information about the workings of that task force - because of executive privilege.

How about those executive branch visitor logs we've all been dying to see? I'd love to know how much time Jack Abramoff spent in Cheney's offices, and who he visited there. And, of course, there's the matter of Scooter Libby. With executive privilege out of the way, we can finally figure out whether there was an "underlying crime" or not. (Extra! Othello exonerated for strangling Desdemona - there was "no underlying crime" of adultery.)

[...]

In fact, here's an even better idea: Since he says he's fundamentally a member of the Senate, why not bring him up on Senatorial ethics charges? Let the investigations commence!

Say. If Darth Vicer refuses to comply with releasing classified materials (other than blowing the cover of our own covert agents for craven political ends) could Congress arrange to have him tortured until he talks or some organs nearly fail?

Now that spectacle of stress positions would make past Congressional hearings seem truly "quaint."

Lower right corner detail of Dick Cheney Ascends into Heaven

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Made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until its last throes became a slam dunk.

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, dick cheney, executive branch, ascension

A New Leaf

A New Leaf (2007)

Burning out in Swedish foliage
improves fitness. A chaste boarding school
for problem girls shows abstinence, steady profits.

Biodiesel fuels box in solar florists.
I compute my rising investments on special
days. Pump up Exxon earnings with each used printer

cartridge. The slickest oil boutique
unstresses Fox News pundits. Our kids stay
doubly diagnosed: perpetually in debt, always treeless.

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Something new. Image made with Fractal Zplot. Post-processed until it turned different colors and blew away. Poem a hodge-podge of Google threads of a search of "new leaf" and my own blossoming brain.

Lower left corner detail of A New Leaf

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Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, poetry, found poetry, new leaf

Inside Arkham

Inside Arkham (2007)

Something new. Made with Sterling-ware. Post-processed until the Joker jested, the Penguin pouted, and Mr. Freeze froze.

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From hey I could have written that Wikipedia:

The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane is a fictional psychiatric hospital that appears in the DC Universe. It is located near Gotham City, and is where those of Batman's foes considered to be legally insane are incarcerated (other foes are incarcerated at Blackgate Penitentiary). Although it has had numerous administrators, its current head is Jeremiah Arkham. Inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft, the asylum was created by Dennis O'Neil and first appeared in Batman #258 (October 1974); much of its back-story was created by Len Wein during the 1980s. In the foreward to the book The Dark Ages: Grim, Great, and Gimmicky Post-Modern Comics, Jack C. Harris clarifies that it was he who conceptualized the idea of Arkham Asylum, and any other such claims are false.

Arkham Asylum does not have a good record, at least with regard to the high profile cases; escapes are frequent (on at least one occasion, an obsessive-compulsive multiple murderer was signed out of Arkham into the care of an incontinent, alcoholic vagrant, on the grounds that he "looked like a responsible citizen"), and those who are 'cured' and released tend to re-offend. Furthermore, several staff members, including at least one director, have ended up as residents, notably Dr. Harleen Quinzel, Lyle Bolton and, in some incarnations, Drs. Jonathan Crane and Hugo Strange.

Face detail of Inside Arkham

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Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, arkham, arkham asylum

Inkwell

Inkwell (2007)

I gave her my heart. She gave me a pen.
--John Cusak in Say Anything

From David Sirota on The Huffington Post:

The American people gave Democrats their heart in November 2006. In return, Democrats gave George Bush a blank check in May 2007. We gave them our heart, they gave him a blank check. That will make May 24, 2007 a dark day generations to come will look back on -- a day when Democrats in Washington not only continued a war they promised to end, but happily went on record declaring that they believe in their hearts that government's role is to ignore the will of the American people.

Why, indeed, did some of us work so hard to elect a Democratic majority last year if they'll just give away the farm to the robber barons?

Why did we send you in our places in this supposed representational democracy? To condone the immoral madness of the Iraq War in our names?

No. We sent you with the primary objective to do whatever is necessary to end the Bush/Neocon horrific war of lies that is killing and maiming our friends and families and draining our economy and national spirit.

And did you hold firm and stay true? Or did you (including my two spineless senators -- Lincoln and Pryor) hand over a blank check to George Bush and his associate cronies to continue his war crimes (let's not be afraid to call his lies and actions what they really are) with your blessing? Did you notice the inkwell was filled with the blood of our loved ones who have died and suffered?

And for what? Bush's stubborn ego? Halliburton profits? For the brazen lie, unquestioned by a compliant media, that standing firm translates into a lack of support for the troops?

Hasn't Congress been keeping up with current events? Visit here for a refresher course detailing how deeply heartfelt Bush's support for the troops is. Sadly, the list is incomplete.

George Orwell. Come on down. Ignorance Is Strength. Supporting the troops apparently means rolling belly up enabling BushCo to continue surging them into combat and systematically whittle away their pay and benefits while extending their deployments.

So, Dems, rationalize away as you sign blank checks in blood. At the end of the day, the "long war" endlessly reaps along. Oh, and there's another constant with such bargains. The Devil owns your soul.

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Keith Olbermann apparently also has a few issues with both Bush and the genuflecting Democrats:

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Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, iraq, support the troops, democrats