A fractal is a fractal is a fractal, or is it?

A few weeks ago, I asked this question in my forum: What's new in fractal art? Ken Childress reminded me of that question when I read his blog entry: Outside the box??? Ken was responding to criticism that fractal artists have not been coming up with anything new. I agree with Ken's assessment of that particular criticism, but I also believe that the question of newness in fractal art is a good one to ask.

"Newness" is so subjective. I still remember anticipating the Fractint "bleep" when it indicated that the image was finished rendering. When I heard that, it meant that something new was ready to be viewed on the screen. Sometimes I wasn't impressed with what I saw, but most of the time what appeared was pretty cool. This page has some of what was new to me back then.

I make a living working on Catia, a high end CAD/CAM system. I learned about CAD systems on a system called Applicon back in 1983. What a thrill it was for me to see my first geometry appear on that big green CRT. I created a single line, and it was new and exciting to me.

I think that the same sort of thing happens in fractal art. As we learn how to touch the software knobs and buttons, we create things that we have never created before, so it's new and exciting to us. With fractal art, maybe thousands of other images have already been created with that single line, but it is still new to us.

I posed the newness question in my DeviantArt journal and someone was kind enough to reply with a list of what they thought was new or unusual. When I looked at that list, it looked familiar. See for yourself. The links on the left are new images and the ones on the right are ancient:

This and this

This and this

Can you see what I see? that the image couplets have the same basic structure? Don't get me wrong. I am not being critical of the person that provided me with the list of flames, nor am I slamming the flames themselves. They are beautiful, but even when you compare different fractal types, made with different software, in almost different decades, there are similarities.

Part of my problem with newness is the definition that I choose to give to "fractal art". Before I give it, I want to be very clear that this is just my definition and that I am not trying to impose it on anyone else. It is, that fractal art should have fractal elements in it. If it does not have fractal elements then it isn't fractal art. Fractal elements are self similar objects with repeating structure. The software that is used to create the image is irrelevant. If it does not look like a fractal, then it isn't fractal art.

I am not saying for a split second that art that is created with a fractal program, that doesn't look like a fractal, is bad art. Some of my favorite art was created with Ultrafractal, but it does not contain fractal elements. It's cool art, it's just not fractal art.

So, with that definition, it should be pretty easy to see why I am struggling to see anything new in fractal art. A fractal is a fractal, and after seeing a few thousand of them, they start looking the same.

I understand the advantages of using a fractal program, like UF, to create abstract art. I think that any software should be used in any way to create any thing that any one wants to create.

I just wonder if we have seen all that there is to see in fractal art and if that is a problem. It doesn't seem to be a problem in other types of art. For example, is there anything new in photography? Nope. Should we give up on Photography? No. What about watercolor or oil? Not much new there either. This lack of newness thing seems to be the nature of art. Does that make all newly created art bad, or ugly, or uncreative? I don't think so.