A small change in the layout

Based on a suggestion, I have modified the template so that the author's name appears under the title.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would like to hear them. I would rather make changes now than later. It's safer that way. I might do something to blow the blog off of the face of the earth while making changes and I would rather do it while there isn't so much investment in the blog.

Thanks,
Keith

The means of production

Further out-loud musings and unanswered questions.

Once someone has been told what a fractal is, or had artwork with a high ‘fractal quotient’ pointed out to them (see my previous blog entry) there’s a chance they’ll recognise that fractal factor when they see it again. Is that important?

What about when the artist has either heavily post-processed the work and/or has produced an abstract work that is shape & line & colour and so on with no recognisable pattern and a complete dearth of ‘fractal factor’? My – possibly contentious - opinion is that many of these works could have been produced by other digital means and did not necessarily require fractal software.

Is that still ‘fractal art’? Or is it digital art that happens to have been produced by a piece of fractal software? Does it matter? Is anyone, apart from other users of the software, even interested in how the work was produced?

There are artists who use fractal software but who deride the spirals and repetitions and patterns of what I would describe as ‘high fractal quotient’ art and whose own work has little to none of that, yet they still want their place under the umbrella that is ‘fractal art’.

The question arising in my mind from that situation is whether ‘fractal art’ will eventually come to mean art which displays specific (i.e. fractal) characteristics, or all art created using software which facilitates the generation and manipulation of fractal equations. Personally, I tend to think the former will happen: I don’t think anyone cares what method a surrealist artist uses – pencil, oils, PhotoShop – what gives the art its description is the style of the resulting work.

What I also don’t know is whether that would be good, bad or of no consequence whatsoever for ‘fractal art’!

Are we all too hung-up on the means of production?

Hello everybody

Keith, I was really surprised when I saw your invitation in my mailbox. Thanks! I don't know if I will be able to be a regular contributor, English is not my first language, but will try to do it from times to times.

Why combine fractal art with photography here?

It just seems like a good fit to me. They have always had similarities, at least in my mind. A photographer can created a scene using existing shapes and colors and do so in a way that can touch you from the inside. So can a fractal artist.

Photographers can also hold their cameras out of the window of their cars and snap pictures of whatever they are driving by. Sometimes they might get lucky and find an amazing shot. Fractal artists can also snap pictures of whatever they are driving by and find something amazing.

Nature photographers like to explore. They are looking for the right subject in the right light with the right texture and color, and placing it in the right composition. This is exactly what fractal artists do.

The days of film are over. It's time to get digital. This implies that fractal artists and photographers can have a common skill set. They need to know how to process images in order to prepare them for display.

They just seem to fit together

Thanks for reading,

Keith

What’s your ‘fractal quotient’?

Musing out loud. Part 1 of a long ramble.

How fractalicious is your art? Has it got that ‘fractal recognition factor’? Do other fractal artists recognise it as a fractal? Has it got swirls and/or spirals, do the shapes repeat? Even if it’s a representation of a real-world object, does it still have that ‘fractal factor’ (like the beautiful flowers adorning this page)? Is there a good chance that the average Joe or Jane – who knows nothing about UltraFractal or Apophysis or any of the other programs which can be used – will recognise something about it that’s different?

Ah, but different to what, you’re asking. (Aren’t you?!?) Different to other types of art, whether that’s oil painting or photography or vector work or digital painting. Different because of those spirals and repetitions, because of those often complex & intricate forms that the fractal formulae can produce.

I firmly believe that there is something intrinsic in human nature that responds to spirals and geometric patterns: think about Celtic knotwork, about Moorish geometric designs, about the spiral designs carved on NewGrange, about the paisley pattern, decorative art in ancient Greece and so on. It was certainly the fractal nature of those first artworks I saw made in Apo and UF that caught my eye and intrigued me (and came to obsess me, but that’s another story!).

So my ‘fractal quotient’, using my own measure, is pretty high. Yet I still hanker to produce work that is more abstract, less recognisable as fractal. I may be fighting a losing battle with myself because I seem to unable to resist patterns, but we’ll see ……

Saying 'Hello'

Just a test post as Keith has kindly made me a contibutor to the blog - thank you, Keith!

Watch this space .....

Thoughts about blogs

I have 2 blogs now. One is hosted on my site and requires an account that is similar to the account for the forum. Unfortunately it's not the same account as the forum. The other is the blog that you are reading. It is linked to blogger.com. To participate on it you need to have an account on blogger.com or a gmail account.

I am going to keep both blogs. The one that is exclusively on my site will be my personal blog. I am guessing that it won't get much traffic from anyone, including me. This one will be focused on art, like the forum is. I would like to open this one up to have multiple authors. I think that it would be more interesting and useful with more than just me contributing. As you can see, I have renamed it to "wedreamincolor".

Recent events on another fractal related blog have me a little nervous about creating a multiple author blog. That blog fell apart when the blog owner/authors attacked some key contributing authors. I really don't want that to happen here. I promise that I will not let it get to that extreme. I don't mind some lively conversation, but mutual respect will always be maintained. That is true for the forum as well.

If you are interested in participating in this blog as an author, please contact me at astrokeith@yahoo.com and let's talk. If you are not interested, I understand.

Oh, sorry about the background images in here. They're not exactly gender neutral, but I have been building those kinds of fractals for the last couple of years, so that is what I drew from. I am open for suggestions if you would like to see them changed.

Thanks for reading,
Keith

This is it!

This is what I am going with. I just need to get the rest of the background images layed out properly.

I like the UI of the blog software that I was using on my site better than this blogger.com stuff, but I really like the fact that here commenters and authors don't have to have an account on my blog site to contribute. They just need an account on blogger.com, which is just a gmail account.

Plus I still get to host the blog from my site, which is very cool. Blogger ftp's to my site when I publish, so it's almost the best of both worlds