tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-318573942024-03-05T17:46:15.153-08:00Form Follows Function: a fractal art sketchbookMr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.comBlogger175125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-90857649925816042982010-09-14T23:11:00.000-07:002010-09-14T23:37:09.240-07:00Hello (again) WorldDon't know if anybody's still out there reading, but just in case...<br /><br />This was a useful sketchbook in its time, and now I'm closing it and starting some new ones. Not thinking so much about Art (which still always makes me feel like I've crawled through a sewer pipe), or even just art (which is less overwhelmingly slimy).<br /><br />Instead, I've been playing with toys. Got out the remaining pieces of my old Spirograph earlier this year, messed with them for a while, was given a much more deluxe Spirograph than I'd ever had as a kid, messed with that a whole bunch, and eventually decided it was time to learn how to get things laser-cut. So then I spent a couple of months designing my own version of a spirograph. I made the pieces bigger, and fixed some small problems with pen-hole-alignment that had always bugged me with the original. The process of laser fabrication opened up lots of really cool and exciting possibilities that I hadn't been expecting when I started out, so that's been fun.<br /><br />It's still a work in progress, but the first three-fifths (of stage one) are available here: <a href="http://www.ponoko.com/showroom/mrvelocipede/">Velocipede's Cycloidal Scribbling-Engine</a>.<br /><br />Some pictures, Scribbling-Engine and otherwise, are available on Tumblr: <a href="http://mrvelocipede.tumblr.com/">mrvelocipede.tumblr.com</a>. I've even been doing a few fractals again lately.<br /><br />So that's where I am, if anyone's wondering. Thanks for visiting, everyone!Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-40808897084181639532010-02-25T09:47:00.001-08:002010-02-25T09:52:49.987-08:00Not known at this address...Whereupon our correspondent disappeared from the internet without a trace, and was never seen or heard from again. Poof.<br /><br />A large number of real-world complications have kept me away from posting, actually. And I'm increasingly dissatisfied with both fractals and art in general, which means that I'm not likely to come back to it anytime soon. At this stage of things, I can't really tell if I've given up in disgust, and am entirely done, or if it's just that I need a serious break after the relentless grind of school and the burst of activity that followed it. So I'm telling myself that this is a sabbatical. A sabbatical of indefinite duration.<br /><br />And maybe eventually I'll start making pictures again.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-77243200735786460192010-01-09T21:33:00.000-08:002010-01-09T21:55:47.089-08:00Hilarious is my middle nameIt's probably a little early in the season for this, but there keep being delays and problems with the project I've been working on, so as a short break I've added a bunch of <a href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/gallery.php?category=Hearts&sortby=tags">Valentine fractals</a> to the gallery. There were a few there already, but I've discovered that I had a surprising number from way back when. I think they were mostly made for an e-card site that a friend of mine ran for a couple of years. And then, in opening and rendering the parameter sets, of course I ended up messing with them and making a few more.<br /><br />The standard Valentine heart is such an iconic shape that it's tricky to put into fractals. It doesn't take very much distortion before it turns into a liver or a spleen or something instead. And it's kind of inherently cheesy and mawkish, full of memories of grade-school Valentine parties with messily hand-glued paper doilies and those chalky, inedible conversation hearts. Or worse, the high-school version, where you might actually hope for chocolates-and-flowers romance, and of course that doesn't happen so you wear all black and spend the day being sullen and everyone makes fun of you. Ahh, nostalgia.<br /><br />These days I find that I quite enjoy the campy exuberance of sticking fat red cartoony hearts into my pictures. I tell myself that it's out of character, but I think I'm probably mistaken.<br /><br />This one didn't make it onto the main gallery, though, because it turned out to be a little <i>too</i> foil-wrapped and sticky. So it's going in the sketchbook instead.<br /><br /><b>Harlequin Valentine</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/S0lrCZa_ZUI/AAAAAAAABHI/nvl0hp-hlWM/s1600-h/HarlequinValentine2010.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 187px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/S0lrCZa_ZUI/AAAAAAAABHI/nvl0hp-hlWM/s320/HarlequinValentine2010.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424984915072476482" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-90377536845103409782010-01-01T21:03:00.000-08:002010-01-01T21:21:24.363-08:00A project for the new yearThe Professor and I have been writing code for several days now, and have gotten most of a very rough version of my Exciting Fractal Project assembled. It's almost far enough along that it could be considered alpha-test, though beta is still some ways off.<br /><br />Having gotten this far, I am now reaching the stage where I start to completely panic and second-guess myself. <i>What if this is a completely stupid idea?</i> I ask. <i>What if no one wants to play with my internet toy?</i> And the huge, glaringly obvious question of <i>How do I prevent this from turning into a <strike>horrible snake pit</strike> bunch of tedious longwinded squabbling?</i><br /><br />Because the whole point of this thing I'm building is that it should be pleasantly entertaining (or indeed quite silly), and should provide a small, steady dose of interesting pictures and a small amount of feedback on same. I don't want to build it and then have it turn into either a sad ghost town or a battlefield. Neither of those is the kind of fun I'm interested in, so I'm struggling with questions of how much participation is enough for people to be interested, and how much is too much, and allows loud shouty people to just take over. I worry that what I'm planning is the equivalent of going down to the bus stop and inviting all the hobos (and that dude who appears to smoke crack every day at lunchtime) to come visit me for tea.<br /><br />But at least I'm working on it! Progress is being made. This is me reminding myself to dive in, and worry about hypothetical stinging jellyfish later.<br /><br /><b>Plunge</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sz7TuqulJfI/AAAAAAAABGI/nXqSxn6kKtI/s1600-h/plunge.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sz7TuqulJfI/AAAAAAAABGI/nXqSxn6kKtI/s320/plunge.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422003800097760754" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-72861803731593453882009-12-31T13:24:00.000-08:002009-12-31T14:04:18.065-08:00Running out of oughtsWe've made it to the end of another year; time to fill the air with showers of confetti and sparks. The blue moon is already up there, quietly taking care of itself.<br /><br /><b>Blue New</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sz0XDY_HqtI/AAAAAAAABF4/rsuOQPqzp_o/s1600-h/blue-new.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sz0XDY_HqtI/AAAAAAAABF4/rsuOQPqzp_o/s320/blue-new.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421514873438186194" /></a><br /><br />It's amazing to think that's it's going to be 2010 tomorrow. When I was a kid, the idea of a year with a <i>2</i> at the beginning of it seemed impossibly far away, some kind of fantastic science-fictional future. Now that we've had ten of them, the future has become the present, and an awful lot of it is disappointingly ordinary. But then I have to remind myself that I can type things that appear on a magical glowing screen, and push a button, and then people on the other side of the world can see them more or less instantly. And if I want to, I can carry around a thing smaller than my hand, that lets me access the world's largest and most random reference library. That's pretty awesome.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-6944041851425029852009-12-28T20:51:00.000-08:002009-12-28T20:54:06.318-08:00Turn the crankThis is a small offshoot of a project I'm working on: a distraction which turned out to be quite nice on its own.<br /><br /><b>untitled [mecha-noir]</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SzmLAK65meI/AAAAAAAABFo/bdQ77h7QKzE/s1600-h/mecha-noir.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SzmLAK65meI/AAAAAAAABFo/bdQ77h7QKzE/s320/mecha-noir.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420516461564762594" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-4985072818360876592009-12-25T18:33:00.000-08:002009-12-28T20:56:01.774-08:00Silent nightIt's been a beautiful clear day, not really cold enough to be icy, but with that perfect winter clarity of light. I love how quiet and deserted the city is on holidays: empty streets, empty parking lots, strange but restful stillness in every direction.<br /><br /><b>untitled [winterurban]</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SzV2A-moowI/AAAAAAAABFY/cXXOsboutfY/s1600-h/winterurban3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SzV2A-moowI/AAAAAAAABFY/cXXOsboutfY/s320/winterurban3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419367485787382530" /></a><br /><br />Merry Christmas to the internet, and to the internet a good night.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-27192961774947676602009-12-19T22:05:00.000-08:002009-12-28T20:55:36.488-08:00Happily, the snow is on the other coastOof, I seem to have abandoned fractals lately in favor of typesetting, furniture-moving, and hibernation. This is always my least-productive time of year. I'll be awfully happy once we get past the solstice and the light starts to increase again.<br /><br />Here is a picture made during some weather that seemed especially dark and inexorable.<br /><br /><b>Event Horizon</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sy2-4_AW1TI/AAAAAAAABFI/SORv1k9uga4/s1600-h/event-horizon2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Sy2-4_AW1TI/AAAAAAAABFI/SORv1k9uga4/s320/event-horizon2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417195812991456562" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-42603159399633566082009-12-11T20:53:00.000-08:002009-12-11T21:09:53.835-08:00Zoomable!Finally, with some help from my able assistant (who knows how to talk to the terminal window) I've gotten the process working, and put a large <a href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/openzoom/index.php?image=rustingdragon">zoomable fractal</a> online. If this one seems to work out all right, and doesn't give my web host trouble, I'll do some more.<br /><br /><b>Rusting Dragon</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/openzoom/index.php?image=rustingdragon"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 138px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SyMh6XkasqI/AAAAAAAABEU/r-icF0xfvWk/s320/rustingdragon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414208463672357538" /></a><br /><br />This was one of my contest entries. I like the metallic texture that becomes visible when the picture is magnified, and I also like the sort of hunched, brooding quality of the thing. It reminds me both of the shipping cranes down in the industrial end of town, and of my cat, when she's tensely coiled and watching pigeons. Motionless, but with the sense that it might do something if you turned your back and didn't watch it too closely. Or that it's only standing still because it's been there for an enormously long time, in all sorts of weather, and all its gears and pulleys have corroded and fused themselves into immobility.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-49102799618704970042009-12-11T11:00:00.000-08:002009-12-11T21:10:37.600-08:00Here we are againHome again, to all my favorite domestic conveniences. Here is a picture in honor of our beloved Coffee Engine (although strictly speaking, it refers equally well to tea, chocolate, or even cola).<br /><br /><b>Dark Stimulant</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/image.php?image=caffeine"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SyKW1fFN5xI/AAAAAAAABEI/tGYHd7cNgls/s320/caffeine9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414055547673372434" /></a><br /><br />I'm completely torn between Pittsburgh and Seattle lately. Pittsburgh is where I grew up; it has wonderful decaying-industrial architecture, rents seem ridiculously low, and many of my favorite people live there. Seattle, on the other hand, has a huge amount of delicious local food, a lovely temperate climate (only it's <i>cold</i> lately!), and plants that don't make me sneeze & itch for ten months out of the year. Now that I'm done with school, it's my big chance to decide where I want to end up establishing myself, and I can't decide where I want to be. Somewhere else entirely, perhaps.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-53488990647688532312009-12-04T19:06:00.001-08:002009-12-08T21:12:10.902-08:00TinsellitisAll is madness and chaos. I'm slinging a couple of quick pictures onto the internet before I leave town. Man, I mostly can't stand holidays in their usual overwhelming & commercial form, but that doesn't stop me making pictures of them.<table border="0"><tbody><tr><td><b>Evergreen Holiday</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/image.php?image=evergreen"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk7n07_FDZ5lUyyaPdJD2DME5_OBY94xcPKk-uEvJdrp5d7nTDdlNL1GmD617ONlPGYx8ijFVSfEQYItJtdu33dZhDk4j9qPGAOn5NWdp2wmTQWPIY_qP-j8fHz0eFf2bqRiZMbw/s320/evergreen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411584437763443442" border="0" /></a></td><br /><td><b>Aluminum Holiday</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/image.php?image=aluminum"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 280px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SxnPYHvdMEI/AAAAAAAABDM/Aeg8jZPH_Js/s320/aluminum.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411584440564265026" border="0" /></a></td></tr><br /></tbody></table><br />Fortunately, this upcoming trip isn't actually for the holiday. So I'll be able to get home and go back into hiding before the full onslaught hits.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-70973969605016303402009-11-27T22:57:00.000-08:002009-11-27T23:39:39.580-08:00Great works of art and the miserable books about themOh man, this horrible book. I keep wishing I could somehow just sum it up in a couple of pithy, brief paragraphs, but so far it hasn't worked. And the more energy I spend thinking about it, the less I bother to make pictures, so that it threatens to cut off my productivity altogether. (Although it has also gotten me away from the computer for a bit, so maybe that's not so bad.)<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />I suppose the main thing that's on my mind is how much the writing reminds me of a number of troll-ish blogs I've come across over the last several years, and also the similarly troll-ish (is there an equivalent non-internet word for such behavior?) people I've had run-ins with during my time at art school. It's that what the author <i>says</i> he's doing and what he's <i>actually</i> doing are two very different things. Here are three excerpts from the preface:<br /><br />"In order to make this book effective, it is necessary that some strong statements should be made, in order that certain truths should sink into the public mind. But no statement will be made merely to create a sensation; life is too short for such stupidity."<br /><br />"I have no private axe to grind, no grouch to ventilate, since I am content with my modicum of success in life and art."<br /><br />"I trust the public will regard as entirely unprejudiced the views I shall lay before it as to what constitutes a work of art, and what makes it truly great."<br /><br />Ruckstull definitely makes strong statements. He hardly does anything else, in fact. He spends chapter after chapter repeating all the (two or three) reasons why his half-dozen least favorite artists are sadists, symbolic sadists, masochists, suffering from mental degeneration, or otherwise crazy. He has one chapter titled "The Gospel of Ugliness" in which the author is listed as "Mephistopheles," which turns the rise of "degenerate art" into some kind of epic battle of Biblical proportions. I would argue that this particular chapter is largely meant to create sensation. (I suspect it's also meant to be humorous, but mostly it just sounds like the guy is getting really carried away with his own cleverness.)<br /><br />It's hard to tell whether or not he really is content with his own successes. I don't get the impression that he is. There's a chapter of biographical information at the end, in which he describes a number of ambitious sculptural projects and laments the impossibility of finding anyone to sponsor or fund them. And his writing seems full of angry bitterness at the undeserved fame and success of various Modernists, particularly his fellow sculptor, Rodin. He devotes an entire chapter ("Deformation of Form a Menace") to a lengthy discussion of Rodin's character, morals, and personal habits, and seems to have a very specific personal grudge against the man.<br /><br />Given what his writing is like, it seems unlikely that the public would regard him as unprejudiced. I'm not exactly his intended audience, since I'm living in the wrong era, and since he does specifically say that the book is meant for people without formal art training, but even without that, his not-quite-logic and apparent obsessive hatred of a small number of people and specific styles does not seem unbiased or detached. He seems to have some delusions of grandeur, too. "We have no hesitancy in saying that we regard this definition of art as the most important slogan ever announced in the world of art." (p.89) I suppose it's possible that Ruckstull was famous and influential enough, in his day, to be able to make a statement like that, but even if that was the case, it seems awfully arrogant. There's a similar section (which now I can't find again) where he's really pleased with himself for being the first artist <i>in the history of the world</i> to have come up with some idea or other. Which is unlikely to the point of being ridiculous.<br /><br />So, with all that in mind, I find it's not at all surprising to discover that the chapters of the book were originally articles in a magazine that Ruckstull founded and published himself. Aha! It's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine">zine</a>, at least in the sense of being a self-published work of minority interest. And the number of subscriptions was "not sufficient to make the Magazine sustaining" (p.ix) which means he was basically a blogger with not too many readers outside his own circle of friends.<br /><br />What I really want to know, now, is how he managed to get picked up by a real publisher. My copy of the book says Garden City Publishing Company which Wikipedia says is part of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubleday_(publisher)">Doubleday</a>. And somebody apparently reprinted it recently enough for it to turn up on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Great-Works-What-Makes-Them/dp/0766171086">Amazon</a>.<br /><br />I think I've got most of the analysis out of my system now. Maybe soon I can go back to making pictures.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-39011161496971561522009-11-18T22:28:00.000-08:002009-11-18T22:46:54.745-08:00No bulbs, just flatWow, I've finally finished reading <i>Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great.</i> By the end it was more like skimming than reading, and even more like picking through a sticky heap of chicken entrails in hopes of reading someone's fortune. An unpleasant bunch of prose, especially when taken in large continuous doses. I definitely have one more installment to write about the book, but I'm taking a break from it for now.<br /><br />There seems to be all sorts of excitement lately about the <a href="http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html">Mandelbulb</a> formula. Lots of interesting pictures to look at. I tried one of the formulas myself, but my computer is way too old and slow for me to do any reasonable exploring. The eighth-power bulb pictures did make me curious about what an eighth-power regular old-fashioned Mandelbrot would be like, and since I've never done much messing with higher-power Mandelbrots I thought I'd have a look.<br /><br />They're less immediately satisfying to zoom into the the standard power-two image. They're so dense with little seven-lobed minibrots that there's practically no room for them to develop the intricate patterns that you usually see. But by zooming fairly deeply, some interesting forms do appear.<br /><br /><b>untitled [mandel^8]</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SwTpDWY2wBI/AAAAAAAABC0/PBYBrqi0Ezc/s1600/mandel-8-nice-effect.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SwTpDWY2wBI/AAAAAAAABC0/PBYBrqi0Ezc/s320/mandel-8-nice-effect.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405701696510148626" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-63045372871843207512009-11-12T22:28:00.000-08:002009-11-18T20:27:14.363-08:00Anarchy reigns in the world of art today*After four semesters of art history classes, one of the biggest questions I had was "Wait a minute, what exactly was such a big deal about Modernism anyway?" We had looked at a fair number of the better-known Impressionist paintings, and proceeded from there through Matisse and Mondrian and Picasso and the usual famous names, and it all seemed like just a bunch of familiar, slightly dull stuff. More dates to memorize. The teacher was telling us that it was really earth-shaking and revolutionary, but since I'd been seeing these paintings reproduced on a million coffee mugs and tote bags and umbrellas my whole life, that didn't make any sense to me at all.<br /><br />(Good heavens, the ludicrous verbosity of the book I've been reading seems to have rubbed off a bit. Let me see if I can put this behind a cut.)<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />And then there was the question of the giant gap in the timeline: art history classes start with the caves at Lascaux, and go through the styles of Egyptian, Grecian, Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque, and then sort of skim over Neo-Classical and briefly mention Romanticism. And then all of a sudden you're elbow-deep in the beginning of the twentieth century, wondering what happened. The Impressionists were actually late nineteenth-century, but the Baroque had mostly finished by the beginning of the <em>eighteenth</em> century, which left about a hundred and fifty years unaccounted for. What were artists doing then, that set things up for Impressionism to be shocking? Surely the painters didn't all just decide to sit those decades out and loaf around drinking wine or something.<br /><br />I was too busy and distracted to think about it much at the time, but over this past summer I found (at the Goodwill of all places!) an edition of the book that had been my art history text, only this was the <em>first</em> one, from 1926. <em>Art Through the Ages, an Introduction to its History and Significance,</em> by Helen Gardner, A. M. So I was slowly working my way through that, and finding it very gentle, pleasant reading compared to the more recent art commentary I'd had to slog through, when just a couple of weeks ago I found an even more interesting book: <em>Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great,</em> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ruckstull">F. W. Ruckstull</a>. That's the book that's currently in the process of turning by brain completely inside out, and making more sense of the Modernist movement than any part of art school ever did.<br /><br />It's an enormous volume, resembling a dictionary in size and bulk. Its stated purpose is to educate the general public in the correct methods of looking at and judging works of art. What it actually does is spend hundreds of pages shouting violently about how terribly hideous, dangerous, insane, degenerate, and wrong the Modernist movement is. Ruckstull was a sculptor, and very much a part of the old established culture of art that the current histories never mention. He accepts nothing but smoothly idealized realistic depictions of human beings and landscapes. He believes that the highest (and only appropriate) function of art is to uplift the spirit of mankind, so as to create a paradise on earth, for the greater glory of God and the human race.<br /><br />At least I think that's what he's getting at. His prose isn't terribly easy to wade through. But it's clear that he feels very strongly about abstract art. On page 213 he says:<blockquote>"Abstract," inscrutable, incomprehensible art, therefore, is naught but the product of artists who have gone mad, or who have turned charlatans, and are engaged in "putting over" on the public such "<em>creations</em>" as appeal only to abnormal morons or to speculative, gambling collectors of exotic, weird, pathological things, a class of men of whom there is, unfortunately, always a sufficient number, in the insanity breeding metropolises of the world, from Paris to Tokio and from Peking to New York, and who, sooner or later, unload their collected "creations" on other collectors, until they end by finding houseroom with some dealer in "junk," along with desiccated heads from Peru; dried starfish from China; and rotting mummies from the Nile; and, finally, pass out into oblivion!</blockquote>It's quite a wonderful description, actually. I like the idea of my own abstract artwork being tucked away in some abandoned warehouse along with a bunch of dried starfish and heads and things.<br /><br />But he's concerned that maybe this stuff isn't going to be as easily forgotten as he thinks it should. The art that so revolted him wasn't showing any signs of quietly, tactfully, passing into oblivion. In fact, a bit earlier in that same chapter, it was worrying him. From page 204:<blockquote>This would not be so reprehensible and so dangerous socially if, in the propaganda in favor of this newest aberration, they did not try to <em>undermine the foundations</em> of all sane, healthy, and enduring art, by saying that "<em>representation</em>" has no place in art, even idealized art; that sanely stylized "<em>representation</em>" is totally undesirable; and that creation in art means that the <em>abstraction</em> from the truth of nature should be so <em>extreme</em> that a man is made to look like a wheelbarrow and a woman like a monkey-wrench! And this topsy-turveying is defended by such glib, metaphysical-bunco reasoning, so plausibly done, so well calculated to capture the nouveau-riches morons in the art world, and so many of them as to become dangerous, that we feel it a duty to once for all show the fallacy of the doctrine that <em>representation</em> should not be the basis of all art, especially since the speculators, who have loaded up a stock of this art junk, are now making herculean efforts to <em>force</em> our museums to <em>buy more and more of these aberrations,</em> to show to future generations the "<em>Zeitgeist,</em>" the spirit of the age, which prevailed in the world, from 1864 onward!</blockquote>Horror! The public was buying it! The museums were gathering it into their collections, and corrupting themselves hopelessly thereby! In fact, the new stuff was getting way more attention than his own pure and high-minded work.<br /><br />And suddenly Modernism makes much more sense to me. If Mr. Ruckstull is a representative of the art establishment of his time, I can't imagine a more perfect target for ridicule. He gets all upset over relatively minor things (like an early sculpture of Rodin's, which was the realistic portrait of a common working man, instead of an idealized god or hero), and so the obvious temptation is to do weirder and more shocking things, just to see how loud he'll squawk. Any kid who's ever dealt with a stuffy teacher or parent or sibling knows this. And of course the public was getting a lot of entertainment out of the bizarre new art, too. Not only did they have unusual new things to look at, but they got to have strong opinions of their own, for or against, and get really passionate about it. I imagine in some ways it must have been a little bit like cheering on your favorite sports team, but with added bonus points for being cultured and up-to-date.<br /><br />There's lots more to say about Ruckstull. I have a theory of my own, which is that he was a sort of proto-blogger, working within the limits the available technology. And I'm not done with the book yet, so who knows what else I'll turn up. For now, I will give it a rest, pausing only briefly to point out that it might improve the field of art criticism considerably if more people employed the term "bunco."<br /><br />. . . . . . . . . . .<br /><br />* First sentence of the Preface.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-69467663906887004242009-11-10T19:33:00.000-08:002009-11-10T22:57:43.213-08:00Hmmm.I've finally had a chance to take a better look at the <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/entries.php">contest</a>, and I find that I'm left feeling a little bit let down or disappointed. Not with any individual image, necessarily (although as several people have pointed out, a couple of them aren't even really fractal), but that this year's selections seem to be heavily weighted toward texture-fields and minimalism.<br /><br />"So, which one was your favorite?"<br /><br />"Oh, I liked that one that was textured all over, mostly orange and white, with just a little blue."<br /><br />"Yeah, that was my favorite too. We'd better make sure it gets printed."<br /><br />The thing is, out of twenty-five winners, do there really <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=333&return=winners">need</a> <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=359&return=winners">to</a> <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=198&return=winners">be</a> <i>three</i> that fit this description?<br /><br />With <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=75&return=winners">the</a> <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=95&return=winners">more</a> <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=327&return=winners">minimal</a> <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/showentry.php?entryid=297&return=winners">ones</a>, I mostly just wonder what advantage there is in printing them very large, since there's not particularly any new detail to be revealed. Graphically, they will no doubt be quite effective, but they seem to ignore the specific potential of fractals to be full of interesting surprises when magnified.<br /><br />It's all gotten me started thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of fractals as a medium, and why I like them, which seems to be maybe different than why other people like them, and what the implications are for my own future work and the fractal-art world in general. It's too much for me to process! And it's all mixed up with a book I'm reading lately, written in the early 1920s and intended to explain why Modernism was (a) degenerate & evil and (b) doomed to be quickly forgotten. There seem to be some possible historical parallels, but I suspect it's going to take me some time to sort them out.<br /><br />Still, it does reinforce my idea that it would be really good if there were more fractal events than just this occasional big contest. I'm beginning to wonder if I might be able to organize some kind of small-scale thing. It's an intimidating thought.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-5966082889509144782009-11-07T22:26:00.000-08:002009-11-07T22:39:58.073-08:00Less grit, more dissolveOne more, the same flavor.<br /><br /><b>untitled [glowing phoenix]</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SvZk7IjsrDI/AAAAAAAABCo/WyYJK5PRfQk/s1600-h/glowing-phoenix.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SvZk7IjsrDI/AAAAAAAABCo/WyYJK5PRfQk/s320/glowing-phoenix.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401615770149760050" /></a><br /><br />And the <a href="http://www.fractalartcontests.com/2009/winners.php">contest results</a> have been posted, so there's a big pile of new pictures to look at. Hooray!<br /><br />I really do wish there were more fractal events. Not huge major contests, necessarily, but some kind of regular checking-in kind of thing. I'm not sure what format I would want it to have; the main thing is that I like when there are a whole bunch of new pictures to look at all at once, and I would be glad if it happened more often. Every so often I go look at the fractal section at DeviantArt, but it's not sorted out very well, and I get tired of wading through all the anime sketches on scanned notebook paper. And I hate the site's graphic design, so I don't go there very often in any case.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-47081324529684341172009-11-05T22:14:00.000-08:002009-11-06T19:29:16.436-08:00Hard gritty rainbowsI think a large part of the fascination with these grainy inside fractals is how difficult I find them. The Mandelbrot set, by now, is quite familiar: I've explored it very thoroughly, and learned a lot about how its patterns fit into each other. I know it well enough that I can fairly reliably navigate to any kind of pattern I decide to look for. With coloring methods, too, many of them have become familiar enough to be very precisely controlled, which is what allows me to make those literal, illustrative images that I still can't decide whether I like or not.<br /><br />But these Nova insides are unknown territory, strange and foggy, and (at least so far) nearly impossible to get a grip on. Patterns stack up on top of each other, sliding in and out of focus as the maxiter changes. It's clear that they're following some kind of deeply-structured logic, but so far I haven't been able to understand it well enough to predict what it might do in any given spot.<br /><br />So working with them is hard. And it turns out that I've been somehow <i>craving</i> something hard, something frustrating, something impossible to understand quickly. Maybe it's because I'm free of school. School was horrible in a whole bunch of ways, but it did at least give me a fair amount of hard stuff to bash at.<br /><br />I have conversations with the Professor sometimes, usually around exam time, when his students are complaining bitterly that things are too hard. And I sympathize, except that when I'm only doing easy things, it's as though I can feel my brain cells shriveling up. Doing something hard helps keep me in shape, so that I don't turn into a sad dull boring person, full of complaints about how hard everything is.<br /><br />With these two images, I'm trying to see if some of my comfortable, familiar techniques (like the three-layer spectra) can be used on any of these infuriating sandy fractals.<br /><br /><b>Dragon & Phoenix Soup</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhfaKl5vHaRrRczQn90moEBMibsTiEQ2yNb-iGP8ZOkJlhKPxzGI9U7_rW74bLVxBiZKD02Blsr-s9s3ZqEsOeGEaJdt-m4RQP4Dpw9L9ArrZxS7k_Le3Hce5rDP_6ZEZuUy8oIg/s1600-h/dragon-and-phoenix-soup.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhfaKl5vHaRrRczQn90moEBMibsTiEQ2yNb-iGP8ZOkJlhKPxzGI9U7_rW74bLVxBiZKD02Blsr-s9s3ZqEsOeGEaJdt-m4RQP4Dpw9L9ArrZxS7k_Le3Hce5rDP_6ZEZuUy8oIg/s320/dragon-and-phoenix-soup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400870353330540546" /></a><br /><br /><b>Chain Reaction</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgujUAuI7_wLERG_KJwLKsh7DWDLKIIQpRcaX0rw6v0qxricfMnHZs2RBMbKF6QaeFUhlcMTcndi5HHjW4zQgyDBUlv1va4dKd_-PYbEqbkI1JP60BGQnal_BuOjwB8XmqtMrkw/s1600-h/bright-chains5.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 192px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgujUAuI7_wLERG_KJwLKsh7DWDLKIIQpRcaX0rw6v0qxricfMnHZs2RBMbKF6QaeFUhlcMTcndi5HHjW4zQgyDBUlv1va4dKd_-PYbEqbkI1JP60BGQnal_BuOjwB8XmqtMrkw/s320/bright-chains5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400870347560659090" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-66091417902691392622009-11-01T22:10:00.000-08:002009-11-02T22:00:34.968-08:00Infinite exoskeletonsThis is really a better Halloween image than yesterday's. It's all full of centipedes and crawly wriggly things.<br /><br /><b>Medusa</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQdEcTtjSaD-Y_B9dpgPRTJa_Jo3z3so6ixSIp3HwZmp4MReZrvYAWHQ2GGLgUL9Zad-7YT3dZCm_Jm3cTPiXSTar0GeEMLQKdlHEocqOrBhWZZw0DBGM3ok_A0FHNrdfpxXecg/s1600-h/medusa.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 192px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZQdEcTtjSaD-Y_B9dpgPRTJa_Jo3z3so6ixSIp3HwZmp4MReZrvYAWHQ2GGLgUL9Zad-7YT3dZCm_Jm3cTPiXSTar0GeEMLQKdlHEocqOrBhWZZw0DBGM3ok_A0FHNrdfpxXecg/s320/medusa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399384925900429010" /></a><br /><br />I'm still wandering around the extra-relaxed, exponentially-smoothed insides; this one's a PhoenixDoubleNova. They're so incredibly full of detail that framing an image becomes very difficult. There's stuff <i>everywhere,</i> and in a lot of areas the density is fairly uniform, so there's nothing to act as a focal point. Not very many coloring methods work well on the insides of sets, either, so there aren't too many options for getting variety in the layers. It becomes more a matter of changing the gradient density and the maximum iterations, and then just a lot of exploring to find good places.<br /><br />I seem to remember reading once that astronauts wanting to take pictures from space ran into similar difficulties. When you're in orbit around the earth, it doesn't matter which direction you point a camera, because there's always something spectacular. Foreground, background, everywhere, all around. Sometimes working with fractals feels that way too.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-89994218560633681562009-10-31T19:14:00.000-07:002009-11-02T22:00:13.116-08:00All Hallows' Eve<b>Bonfire Sparks</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SuzvI1E3fyI/AAAAAAAAA_w/LIga6hsz5XI/s1600-h/bonfire-sparks.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 192px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/SuzvI1E3fyI/AAAAAAAAA_w/LIga6hsz5XI/s320/bonfire-sparks.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398952988275867426" /></a><br /><br />Another Double Nova inside image. This one is mostly Pseudo Lyapunov instead of Exponential Smoothing.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-60491812658889062472009-10-31T00:18:00.000-07:002009-11-02T21:59:55.053-08:00Following Columbus in a rowboatAha! I think maybe I am starting to get the hang of this a bit.<br /><br /><b>Mysteries</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Suvky2VraPI/AAAAAAAAA_k/C6A8iMDIpYU/s1600-h/mysteries.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 274px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/Suvky2VraPI/AAAAAAAAA_k/C6A8iMDIpYU/s320/mysteries.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398660140564703474" /></a><br /><br />And all I had to do was take a small wrench to the Exponential Smoothing. It's always pleasing when that works.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-86409867572408012202009-10-25T18:02:00.000-07:002009-11-02T21:57:25.756-08:00LightbendingI've been working on uploading fractals from 2002 to my <a href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/">gallery</a>, and finding many that are full of rainbows. That must have been when I first started experimenting with my three-layer technique. I remember being all interested in <a href="http://www.atoptics.co.uk/">atmospheric optics</a> around that time, so probably that was what inspired me to try making pictures with that kind of look.<br /><br />And it also reminded me that I've been meaning to write a page about <a href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/spectra.php">how to put spectra into fractals</a>, and now I have. I hope somebody out there may find it useful.<br /><br />Here's a new fractal that I made while I was messing with some of the tutorial images.<br /><br /><b>Glass Rings</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/spectra/glassrings.html"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZGN8bs7DD47e-Dg9ONQf-Pe6DR5d6NC74CCkyfoUlc_37ZSHxWXaOswv9GY8fL7e59f5Ks72kY8kWRbCsXJcReNrqw5ahJEZ2CITcrV-YLsqRWH127X87GDfn_KM5aIDZxM9HrA/s320/glassrings.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396707861237430082" /></a>Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-34933831837635870792009-10-21T19:15:00.000-07:002009-10-24T12:50:32.537-07:00Quantum effectsToday I came across an interesting page about <a href="http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/%7Ecsk/projects/alias/">aliasing artifacts</a>, and it got me thinking about artifact patterns as applied to fractal art. Where does this op-art, moiré effect come from? Well, it's all because of quantum, you see. Writers of popular fiction like to use quantum as a sort of shorthand for <i>stuff that's way too scientific and complicated for us to explain or you to understand,</i> but it's actually quite simple when you remember that <i>quantum</i> has to do with <i>quantity.</i> A quantum is a small discrete unit of something. In physics, the something is physical matter or maybe energy, and the weirdness associated with the word comes from the fairly weird behavior of tiny discrete particles (or maybe waves) of energy (or maybe matter). Really, it's probably too scientific and complicated for me to explain.<br /><br />But in thinking about on-screen digital images, the quantum is the perfectly familiar and understandable <i>pixel,</i> the small discrete dots of light that make up the picture. And the weirdness comes from the inability of computers to display any details smaller than will fit into one pixel. If the image has some black and white stripes that get smaller than one pixel wide, the computer will use various methods to guess whether any given pixel (which really contains part of a black stripe and part of a white stripe) should be all-black or all-white. This means that the patterns are completely scale-dependent: if you add more pixels, more detail will fit; the computer's guesses change, and the pattern changes also. Maybe it resolves into lots of parallel fine lines, or nested concentric circles. Whatever happens, the original effect is altered or lost.<br /><br />The (im)practical result of all this is that if you've made some interesting image full of aliasing artifacts, you can't print it at any size larger than a postage stamp. Or can you? I started wondering how it might be possible.<br /><br />First I made this picture:<br /><br /><b>Quantum 400x400</b><br /><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-RW9bwsPDVOzPnA5f5AVU3B964e5tMEx755Z1V2ckSuTTU0mB22YyokG0T6LJimVuOhRaYyM-JY3YljqYWCWhjYPZoMNqjrQl7m3akezJtC2h-0wHYP2GpfThLLpKy-c3oue7-g/" /><br /><br />Then I rendered it as a 1600x1600 Photoshop document in layers, leaving out the one with the aliased pattern. The pattern layer I exported as a separate file, 400x400 pixels, which I then re-sized without resampling, so as not to let it get all blurred. I dropped that into the appropriate place in the layered document, did a bit of tweaking and tidying, and got this:<br /><br /><b>Quantum 1600x1600</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLVXIJyu4syGTUxvD2NLONa5f4wj9g4Z4IM1hloTR0lQ81__vHfAGKx3GuyJhT0qAC4daXYTHtv3IQ72f31Dw98Iqhkhj1nRoEhP11vsypss98xtQSyzw1xt5Cyil2Nnyim4qSA/s1600-h/quantum1600x1600.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRLVXIJyu4syGTUxvD2NLONa5f4wj9g4Z4IM1hloTR0lQ81__vHfAGKx3GuyJhT0qAC4daXYTHtv3IQ72f31Dw98Iqhkhj1nRoEhP11vsypss98xtQSyzw1xt5Cyil2Nnyim4qSA/s320/quantum1600x1600.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395299962607813218" /></a><br /><br />That seemed to work well, so I tried it again at 2400x2400, big enough to print an 8" square at 300dpi.<br /><br /><b>Quantum, printed</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/St_ArkBc3yI/AAAAAAAAA98/afdFHpOpmEs/s1600-h/quantum_print2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/St_ArkBc3yI/AAAAAAAAA98/afdFHpOpmEs/s320/quantum_print2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395242733249814306" border="0" /></a><br /><br />There doesn't seem to be any particular reason that the technique wouldn't work at even bigger sizes, although with any large file you do eventually run into the limits of your computer's memory. And there's the difficulty of merge modes. Ultra Fractal has some merges available that Photoshop doesn't, so some effects can't be duplicated precisely. For some kinds of images, it would be easier to render a single layer and simply scale it up. The large pixelation would lend itself well to some interesting non-computer interpretations, too: I can imagine amazing woodcuts, or intricate careful drawings on graph paper, or brilliant neo-pointillist gouaches. The thing I like about today's experiments, though, is that it combines the blocky old-school computerized look with the infinite fractal detail available. The gradients around the disc are smooth, the line of wavy blobs has its proper intricate edge, and there's some subtle texture in the inside region that shows up on the print.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-72256093058533205922009-10-20T18:35:00.000-07:002009-10-24T12:48:56.498-07:00Old FavoritesThe <a href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/">new fractal gallery</a> is up and running, in a small way. If everything is working right, it won't look too enormously different than the old version, but the navigation and inner workings are substantially changed. Right now, what's in it are pictures from the first year and a half (or so) that I was making fractals. I have one or two small things to smooth out still, and then I'll be adding more pictures. So far I'm very pleased about how it's working; it's very easy to add new stuff. (And the stylesheets don't render properly in Internet Explorer 6! Of course! Bah phooey. No one should be using IE6 anymore anyway. This means you, Mom.)<br /><br />It's been a little strange, going through all my archives of ancient fractals. I'm a little taken aback by the simplicity of color, the frequent clumsiness, the obvious lack of knowledge about the program. But at the same time, they have a kind of raw direct energy that seems good. And in some cases, I've been interested to see the beginnings of ideas that I now have spent many years developing in all sorts of directions. It's a sort of cross between archaeology and navel-gazing, and probably of no interest to anyone but myself.<br /><br />This picture was made after I'd been using Ultra Fractal for less than a month, I think.<br /><br /><b>Chebyshev Avocado</b><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://polychroma.com/fractals/image.php?image=avocado"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3zIxeZxGYDY/St5lv6GQ66I/AAAAAAAAA9w/reD5Deew_aI/s320/avocado.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5394861277360221090" /></a><br /><br />Before UF, I'd spent a couple of months messing with Fractint, and the sharp-edged areas of bold color give the UF image a similar style.<br /><br />So now I just have another eight years' worth of parameters to sort through, and decide what else to include. And a small amount of code still to tweak. I will probably need to make more tea.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-56748707227906113152009-10-18T21:11:00.000-07:002009-10-24T12:49:42.320-07:00How to shuffle the picturesAnd then there's my poor neglected website, which I've been feeling guilty about since before I started my senior year at Cornish. All summer I've been telling myself I need to add some new stuff to it, and I keep putting it off and not doing it.<br /><br />Eventually I realized that I'm not updating it because it's a complete drag to update: I have to gather together some small collection of maybe-related images, arrange them in some suitable order, write a new HTML page (or at least dump them into the template), update links, etc. I practically always post things on this weblog instead, because it's much simpler and requires less thought.<br /><br />I started thinking, "What I need is a gallery that works more like the rest of the internet. It can be more interactive, more content-driven, it can have an interface that's more responsive to the user." And then I said "Ew, you're thinking like a horrible graphic-designer marketing wonk. Stop that."<br /><br />What it really needs to be is <i>fun to play with.</i> If it's fun to play with, I'll play with it, and so will my prospective audience. I can scrape off the clinging shreds of my graphic-design training, stop thinking like a damned artist, and just make internet time-waster toys instead.<br /><br />So I've been turning my fractal gallery into a thing you can play with. It's nearly done. Tonight <strike>it had a brief round of beta-testing</strike> I sent the test-link to my mom and she said it was wonderful. So it will probably go officially live pretty soon.<br /><br />Hooray!Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31857394.post-38948324830720269492009-10-14T23:02:00.000-07:002009-10-24T12:50:19.327-07:00Flame onFollowing the example of a couple of people on the UF mailing list, I wanted to try using an Apophysis-generated flame as an imported image. Flames, being of course fractal, tuck themselves rather neatly into the overall composition, and function more or less as texture. It seems like a good way to add a certain depth and complexity of color without piling up an unwieldy number of layers or adding a lot of slow-rendering distortion algorithms to the basic trap.<br /><br />Gosh, this means I'm going to have to open up Apophysis again, and try to remember which bits I'd worked out how to use, and make some stuff to use as components. That would solve one of my ongoing difficulties with flame fractals, actually, which is that I'm never able to decide how they should be cropped, or how much of the edges should be visible. As a finished image, a flame often looks a little isolated and weird when the entire form is surrounded by an area of solid color. But zooming them is problematic, and I'm always sad to lose the overall shape of the thing; they have a kind of satisfying completeness when you can see how all the parts fit together into a coherent entity. As a plugged-in image trap, that wholeness would be an advantage.<br /><br /><b>untitled [flame trap test]</b><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7nfLXA-wUfzcSdKWzkLpAyXYBwhu7mi_taEAlv2QyHB_8_nWQVzF6Os56hg5X8KZ36wY_A-777IqKFGLol8zbMV1Ylo3CKV13P6kQTwILmcbRwpZ_ITNV1b1eHRRCZRcrVA_fg/s1600-h/image-traps3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7nfLXA-wUfzcSdKWzkLpAyXYBwhu7mi_taEAlv2QyHB_8_nWQVzF6Os56hg5X8KZ36wY_A-777IqKFGLol8zbMV1Ylo3CKV13P6kQTwILmcbRwpZ_ITNV1b1eHRRCZRcrVA_fg/s320/image-traps3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392703415169340818" /></a><br /><br />The flame I used in this one was almost perfectly circular, so it's not actually all that useful a test. But I didn't have one with a more irregular shape handy, because all my existing renders are too carefully cropped and zoomed. That'll teach me to try and frame things artistically.Mr.Velocipedehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11878004049870676421noreply@blogger.com1