Great works of art and the miserable books about them

Oh 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.)

No bulbs, just flat

Wow, I've finally finished reading Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great. 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.

There seems to be all sorts of excitement lately about the Mandelbulb 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.

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.

untitled [mandel^8]

Anarchy 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.

(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.)

How to shuffle the pictures

And 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.

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.

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."

What it really needs to be is fun to play with. 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.

So I've been turning my fractal gallery into a thing you can play with. It's nearly done. Tonight it had a brief round of beta-testing I sent the test-link to my mom and she said it was wonderful. So it will probably go officially live pretty soon.

Hooray!

Time to build the Identity Crisis Booth

Today I read two articles on the New York Times website, one a complaint about some art being unsuitable for children, the other a description of a work of (performance?) art in which coffee was given away. Between the two articles, I've been reminded of a whole bunch of things in the current state of the art world that make me unhappy enough to deny that I am an artist at all. Really, I wish there was some better word to describe what it it I am, and what it is I do, because "art" doesn't seem to have anything much to do with it.

First, there is the kind of art that is supposed to be shocking. It isn't, anymore, but people keep making the stuff and insisting that it challenges people. As far as I can tell, the only challenge involved is trying to find something to say about it other than "Bah, another one about bodily fluids." If there is still any shock value to be had, it's limited to unsuspecting parents suddenly realizing that their afternoon's outing with the kids is going to involve a lot more explanation (and teachable moments—ugh, what a horrible phrase) than they had planned.

The difficulty with this over-saturation in shock art is that eventually it reaches a stage where if you're making something that isn't pornographic, or woven out of your dead grandfather's armpit hair, or saturated in your own menstrual blood, no one is willing to admit that it might be art. It will be dismissed as mere decoration, pretty-making, inconsequential, something to hang over the couch. It isn't art; it doesn't count. I really hate that particular aspect, mainly because it means it's hard for me to be taken seriously (hey, my stuff's often pretty!), but also because it's incredibly narrow and limited. It means there's not much out there that I want to look at, or be curious about, or be inspired by.

The coffee thing is much simpler to explain, I think. If people can't tell whether a thing is supposed to be art or not, and if when they're told it is art, they only become more confused, that work of art has failed. Yeah, there are artists out there who will say that the point of their art is to produce bafflement and to make people question their entire view of the world, and their place in it, and art's relation to them, and blah blah blah. As far as I can tell, that kind of art mainly produces irritation rather than insight, and as such, is completely full of shit.

Maybe I should write a manifesto.

Anyway, the image I'm posting today is only tangentially related to all this. Mainly it was an exercise in applying some of yesterday's shapes to an actual fractal. Arguably, it's also related to my recent letterpress License to Print Money.

Economic Debacle or Hardly Currency

Stripped Bare By Her Bachelor's Degree, Even

I've spent way too much time this evening reading about Marcel Duchamp, and trying to write down some of my own ideas about the things he did and why they're important. It's bizarre; it feels like I'm writing another paper for art history, and I'm having to grapple with some of my own lingering difficulties with school and with the art world in general.

Duchamp is one of those legendary people I've admired for as long as I can remember. I don't know how old I was when I first heard of Dada, but I was instantly a fan. It seemed so beautifully strange, so full of random oddness and cool typography. I loved how the Dadaists played with images and language and life itself. Duchamp has definitely influenced me in a number of ways. I didn't really think about it at the time, but I suspect the very existence of Mr. Velocipede has something to do with the Bicycle Wheel.

When I finally found myself in a real art college, I was somewhat taken aback at how much everybody seemed to take it all really seriously. There was a certain period of time when I hated Duchamp and everything he had inspired, and was disgusted with myself for having liked him. Eventually, I decided that I didn't necessarily need to agree with all of the things I heard in class, and that I still thought Duchamp had been brilliant—it was just some of his fans I didn't like. I do sometimes wish that more artists were willing to look at the strange sad wonderful world, and turn all the good and bad bits of it into surreal jokes.

In my early fractalling days, I had an work-in-progress that was a little like Nude Descending A Staircase. I later deleted the parameter files in the Great Purge of Ought-Four, but I think if I'd managed to finish the image, it would have looked something like this:

Dude Falling Down A Staircase

Getting away from the computer screen

This is the second night in a row that I've gone to an art opening event; it seems like they all decided to gang up on me at once. So now I'm absolutely brain-fried, and glad of the chance to go back into my anti-social hermit-like existence, wherein I only communicate with the outside world via the internet.

It's disconcerting (in a sort of nice way) to see some of my stuff hanging up in real places, outside of school. It made me a little sorry that I hadn't been brave enough to submit a fractal, but I reminded myself that at the time they were taking delivery of stuff, I didn't have any fractals that were suitable—nothing very current, and nothing printed large enough. So it was a woodcut instead, and I flatter myself that it looked pretty good in amongst all the other artwork.

Besides the art-going, I've got a project started. So far it seems to be working the way it's supposed to.

Time-and-motion studies

...Or I could get completely sucked into Apophysis (and also distracted by side projects in mold-making), and not post anything for weeks on end. Bah, phooey.

Apophysis really is nicer to use than the last time I tried it. I've been using the 2.08 3-D Hack version, and it's now to a point where I feel like I'm starting to have some control over the image, and can start thinking about things like composition and framing and color placement, instead of just blindly pushing triangles around, hoping something good will happen.

The nature of flame fractals is such that once you've made a good image, the obvious thing to do is make many small adjustments, to generate more good images. It often doesn't take much adjustment of a transform-triangle to change the image quite a lot. So you can quickly end up with a whole series of related things. Changing the color palette also has a surprisingly large effect, and pretty soon the whole evening has gone by and the hard drive has filled up with a ridiculous number of pictures.

This has got me thinking about the question of How long does art take? For some reason, this is one of the most frequent queries about a given work of art: "How long did that take?" The possible answers are as infinitely variable as fractals themselves.

  "About fifteen minutes."
  "About fifteen minutes, plus an hour of render time."
  "A week of preliminary sketches, plus fifteen minutes and an hour of render time."
  "A couple of years learning to use the program, a week of preliminary sketches, fifteen minutes, and an hour of render time."
  "A decade of studying fractal mathematics, a couple of years to learn the program, a week of sketches, fifteen minutes, and an hour of render time."

...And a partridge in a pear tree.

To which the response is often something like "What the hell? Fifteen minutes? And you think this thrown-together crap is worth something? You're an idiot. And a fraud."

And I don't know. Sometimes I feel like a fraud. But then I think about photography, in which the actual image-capturing part takes a fraction of a second. Or those beautiful Japanese paintings done in ink on silk, that happen so quickly and fluidly, and are breathtaking.

Flame fractals make really lovely elegant curves. I find many of them aesthetically pleasing. And I'm even starting to have enough control over what I'm doing that I think it counts as intentional. But somehow, it still seems too easy and quick. Is it art? I have absolutely no idea.


Ink in Water by mrvelocipede on deviantART

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.

Prizes Will Be Awarded

Burning down/out ?

The fall semester is over, hooray. I started this term with the idea that I would try to incorporate some fractals into the things I was doing at school, and did, in some small ways, succeed at this. But somehow I'm still unhappy about the whole question of fractals, and I still haven't quite put my finger on why.

They do always have a certain sameness, and that's part of my dissatisfaction. But I think the real difficulty is larger and wider-ranging and also more nebulous than the simple fact of fractals being computer-generated and therefore predictable. There's the question of what they mean. Are they abstract? Well, not exactly. They're a completely accurate picture of a very complicated and tedious bit of math. Even if I were to post-process the original image, all the filters are still algorithmic in nature, so the end product is a sort of insanely complicated and glorified graph. These I find pleasing (sometimes), but they're tough to explain to an audience of math-phobic or math-bored artists, or to the general public.

Then there's the larger question of whether art even has to mean something. I don't have a good answer for that one. Not even a definite personal philosophy, really. I could argue it either way.

A lot of the fractals I make are pretty, too. Hell, a lot of the non-fractal art I make is pretty. One of my final critiques this semester was that the installation I'd made looked like it could be a Christmas decoration. Pretty still seems to be a bad word in the current art scene. Or maybe it's just at my school. In any case, it leaves me at a certain disadvantage. I'm not much interested in the sentimental kinds of prettiness associated with, say, Disney or Hallmark, but I definitely prefer harmonious color combinations to harsh jarring ones. I like subtlety. I'd rather be calmed or inspired by art than confronted with hostility. And all of that stuff shows up in the things I make. I hope for strength in my work, but not brute force.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's the brute force aspect of fractals I do dislike. All those calculations are right there in your face, reminding you that you're not a computer or rendering engine, but just another human being trying to make sense of the world.

For the Solstice, I made a cake shaped like a Yule log. Tonight, I've made a fractal that looks like the burnt remains.

Embers



I'm almost tempted to call my semester's experiment a failure, and decide that I'm just done with fractals. Let them go, let them be simply a part of my past. But maybe there's something more I need to try. I will have to consider the possibilities, before the new semester starts.

And I'm an idiot

The effect of art school (and too much internet-reading) on the fractalist.

Distractions

I've been studying for my art history test, which means I'm looking at my expensive textbook for the first time since I bought it a year and a half ago, and I've found this very interesting picture:

God as architect of the world



This looks really impressively fractal to me. I'd heard about the Mandelbrot Monk a few years ago, and was entertained by it; I always like a well-done April Fools joke that's had some effort put into it. But this one's apparently from an illuminated Bible done in Paris around 1220 or 1230, so I guess it's legitimately medieval, even if it's not actually anything to do with fractals.

Of course it's not remotely related to the sections I'm supposed to be reading for the test tomorrow. So it goes.

Manifestos are for schmucks

What is your main message in 'Life, the Universe, and Everything'?

No message. If I'd wanted to write a message I'd have written a message. I wrote a book.
— Douglas Adams

A depressing meeting with the department chair today, about my independent study project. I wish I'd taken different things for him to look at, and I also wish I'd been able to explain to him that the short illustrated book which he dismissed as "whimsical" is also an observation about what it's like to have your life come apart in painful unexpected ways, and then to have your so-called friends refuse to acknowledge it.

In any case, I'm not convinced that whimsical is a bad thing.

The art world seems overly concerned with concept, and schools seem especially interested in how good you are at coming up with the concept ahead of time and then manufacturing some object or artwork to convey it to the public. Probably this is a good working system for some kinds of people, but in my experience it leads to stiff, forced, awkward pieces. I seem to be more successful if I encourage my brain to turn into warm mush while I'm actually making things, and worry about concept later. But it's no good trying to convince administrators that.

Revenge of the Tokyo Bubblegum Princess



This one is bubbly, giddy, cartoonish, and cute. But it's from a time in my life when I was very angry at someone who thought he didn't need to take me seriously as a human being, and so it's intended to have some undertones of radioactive menace, such that if you patronize it with baby-talk, it will smash your city.

Blue-green space

Back to school tomorrow, where everybody talks about societal significance and political awareness, diversity this and cultural that and environmental the-other-thing, post-post-modernism stuffed down your throat and in your ears and crammed into every possible orifice until it makes your eyes bleed.

Going back to school always makes me tense.

A fractal, before I disappear into the trackless wasteland of homework and projects and critiques. I don't know how much time I'll have to frivol away on pixels once things get started. The light in this one reminds me of the chilly filtered sunlight that happens in the downtown library, where the outside is glass, so it should be bright, only the ultraviolet is bad for the books, so the glass has some kind of coating that makes it all dim and strange and unpleasant. A library should be warm, and sepia-colored, and smell like the ink and dust of old books. This one is grey-green, and vast, and unwelcoming. I hear it has won awards.

Sustainable Architecture



Ploom formula, five layers of recycled pixels in the rain.

Aesthetic demons

Today I am once again unhappy about spending so much time messing with fractals, when I know perfectly well that the world mostly has no use for them and no interest in them. It's not just the fractals, I guess, it's all art in general. The present culture fundamentally disapproves of anything that cannot be made to generate vast piles of cash. Art doesn't count until you can sell it to somebody.

I don't know what it would take to interest any major art buyers in fractals. The only time fractals seem to show up in a museum is when it's a science museum, putting together an exhibit to try to interest gradeschool children in math. Balls.

I also ask myself why I don't put my energy into a medium that's more readily accepted. Try paint, dumb-head, I say to myself, make some etchings, do some more woodcuts. (The big woodcuts have to wait until the school year starts again, and I have access to the big presses, but smaller cuts would work perfectly well using the spoon-burnishing technique.) But no, I keep coming back to fractals, because there's something about their complexity and precision that I still find pleasing. It is a hideous addiction.

In this spirit and frame of mind, it's probably not surprising that I've come up with an image that reminds me of some of the levels of Dante's Inferno.

Just Another Nightmare



Seven layers of a formula called deimos. I'm definitely getting a lot of mileage out of jock.ufm lately. The basic shapes are two layers of sine coloring, the rest is mostly texture.