It's not that kind of contest

I've been frustrated lately with the internet, and with fractals. I keep wishing there was some good source for news or commentary or criticism about fractal art. Once in a while, the Orbit Trap guys have a review of somebody's pictures (they even mentioned my stuff once), but too often the result of their writing is that people are irritated and the whole business degenerates into pointless fights. I really don't know what their intentions may be, so I suppose it's possible that they are genuinely trying to be interesting and/or useful, but they don't seem to have had much success generating an atmosphere of friendly exchange.

And maybe it's just that there aren't any current events to be interested in. The last major contest was years ago. There's apparently a steady flow of new stuff onto Renderosity and DeviantArt and such, but the balance of stuff posted vs. comments on same is lousy.

There are some specific reasons that fractal art is difficult to talk sensibly about. It lends itself well to the category of things generally referred to (derisively, dismissively) as "decorative arts." The current fashion in art and architecture is to leave most decoration out entirely, but even in times when everything was heavily decorated, there wasn't a lot of critique for that aspect. "Say, Joe, those are some totally sweet acanthus leaves on the third column from the left." It also seems like the vast majority of fractal art looks quite similar, so it's tough to come up with any comment beyond "Nice colors on that spiral." I'm all in favor of nicely-colored spirals, but I find myself longing for something with more depth, more intention, more layers of meaning, maybe some entertaining allusions to classical motifs or mythological themes or popular culture.

I've been largely ignoring the fractal world for the last five years while I concentrated on school, and now that I'm back, and all ready to be interested and enthusiastic, I'm finding there isn't any there there. So I'm thinking about giving myself the assignment of writing a brief essay every so often, to talk about fractals and art and decoration and color theory and whatever else seems like it might be worth thinking about. I would love for there to be responses, if anyone else out there is interested as well. I would also love for it not to turn into the kind of nit-picking, side-taking, back-biting tedium that Orbit Trap so often generates.

For now, here's some more Apophysis.

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