Blog Archives

Fractals of the Week: Shattered Worlds

Here are a few of my favorites from this and the previous week. I’ve been experimenting with scratch-built parameter sets using Mandelbulber…

Ripped

Helm of Orrn

Shatterlocke

Incoming!

Shredd

Moloch’s Bane

All JPEG, PNG & GIF images in this post are original works by the author,created by

Posted in Fractal Images

Fractals of the Week: Day of the Moon Edition for 2013/05/13

May 13

Posted by Troythulu

G’day! Last week was a bit slow for new images, until toward the weekend, so I’m posting the most interesting ones here.

I’m doing research on Mandelbulber for my upcoming tutorial, including work on the blog draft, and I’ve created a rather cool parameter set that I’ll use in it, an octohedral/cubic Mandelbox figure which has generated some rather strange images…

Then again, strange, eerie, odd, and yes, eldritch are par for the course for this blog, and this looks like it’ll be a lot of fun when it’s complete.

But I’ve babbled enough. Here are the images… Click to embiggen.

Lament Box

Feedling

Canoptis

Delta Spearoid

Stylus

Merite

IFS (Iterated Function System) Fractal in Space

via the creator of Mandelbulber, Krzysztof Marczak

All JPEG, PNG & GIF images in this post are original works by the author,created by

X is for XAOS (buddhakat.wordpress.com)
Z is for… ZEITGEIST (buddhakat.wordpress.com)
Fractal – Tunnels (iknowdubstepbetterthanu.com)

Posted in Fractal Images

3 Comments

Tags: Art, Beauty, Chaos and Fractals, Fractal, Fractal art, Fractals, Mandelbox

Fractals of the Week: Thor’s Day XaoS Edition…

May 2

Posted by Troythulu

Xegg-Yi

Nova Organon

Mandelbroticus

I was fooling around with customizing the formulas used for image generation in XaoS, trying out different settings, as you do with this sort of art…and even though I tend to hate my own stuff, I don’t really mind how these turned out. Not too bad. The video below is not my work, but it’s a beautiful example of what’s possible with fractal animation, in this case using Mandelbulber. Enjoy.

via Krzysztof Marczak

All JPEG, PNG & GIF images in this post are original works by the author,created by

X is for XAOS (buddhakat.wordpress.com)
D is for… Dance Galactica (buddhakat.wordpress.com)
G is for… GANESH (buddhakat.wordpress.com)
Algorithmic Art (ymfuranzima.wordpress.com)

Posted in Fractal Images

1 Comment

Tags: Art, Beauty, Chaos and Fractals, Fractal, Fractal art, Fractals, Portable Network Graphics, Xaos

Finding Darwin’s Fractals: Evolutionary Parallels and the Fitness of Images

Apr 29

Posted by Troythulu

Nocticulens

I don’t often generate my fractals from scratch, unless I’m sure I know what I’m looking for in a piece or feel adventurous and prone to fooling around.

But there’s nothing mystical about the process. Nothing to elicit awe save the resulting image itself when it’s fully rendered.

Usually, with Fractal Domains or Mandelbulber, I’ll use a previously saved set of parameters, or software settings ready-made for whatever I happen to have in mind. It saves me time and effort. But I’ve noticed that there’s an interesting similarity between my use of parameter sets, the process I use to create, keep, alter, and sometimes delete, with biological evolution.

The selective pressures for this evolutionary process, of course derive from the perceived coolness and beauty, according to the beholders, of the images…that particular set’s fitness for continuing to generate the best images over time. This selective pressure involved rests on esthetic evaluations and tastes, and tends to shift over time.

This has led to my continuously updating my stock of parameter sets to maintain image fitness by varying my content, whether by gradual modification accumulating into major alterations, micro-evolution that builds into macro-evolution.

And for other sets, there is relative stability over time punctuated by sudden and major changes, as with switching a set from one distinct fractal type into another with Mandelbulber by tweaking menu buttons.

Some sets exhaust their possibilities, or just aren’t viable for making good-looking images, and so lose their fitness, becoming ‘extinct’ by being sent to the trash folder and deleted, or by using the terminal window to delete them directly.

Others continue to evolve, but adjusting to the shifting in personal judgements of what’s cool and what’s not. I’ve come up with a term I use to refer to the best images, from those sets that continue to remain adaptive:

Horrific elegance.

It refers to the cold, stark, sometimes weird, and reportedly, the occasionally erotic ‘feel’ of the images, those whose coolness keeps their set of origin fit, and thus ready to pass its data to an update or when using one set to create another as its descendant, unless and until it is eliminated by unfavorable shifts in the selective pressures.

That, and my finger on the delete button.

I probably won’t need parameter sets for anything but the most data-heavy images using very complex code to generate them, but it’s really cool how an artistic endeavor, hobby or professional, so nicely fits with biology, and sometimes the images themselves have almost a life of their own.