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raevensdemise — Tree of Good and Evil II
Published: 2004-06-06 13:30:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 587; Favourites: 14; Downloads: 55
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Description
Made with UltraFractal and the Gimp.Built-in transformations in Ultrafractal rock...there are about 3 in this one and I think it's a marked improvement over the first version.
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Comments: 40
Tree of one, a source of the illusion of separation.
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*guh* wow ... wow ... wow ... just amazing! Love the colours - love the wavy diamond shapes going up the middle - love the Mandelbrot "tree" shape 
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that looks AWESOME!!! Have you had this piece layin around or something? Your avatar looks just like the center of that image.
judging from some older comments... i believe i must have missed the first release. 
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You're very observant, my dear...yes, my avatar is the center of this image
I resubmitted it as a print, but the first time I submitted it was long, long ago.
Still, glad you like it!
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Stupid? Never, m'dear...from what I've seen, you're far from it
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awwww you give me warm fuzzies.
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unfortunately I've never been able to get anything in UF to turn out decent after this...
I'm starting to think this is my one-hit wonder with the program
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the more i look at this here factal the more i love it the colours, the rippled image in the lower half 
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Thank you!
This is, undoubtably, my best to come out of UltraFractal...somehow I just never could turn out anything even close to it again
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That is gorgoues - looks like it's getting lots of comments. Yay!
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I love fractals like this. Very abstract and unique, and even harder to duplicate which makes them much more special.
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It's the improbability of ever getting two pieces the same that justify fractalling to me as real art....Thank you!
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Not a lot of fractal art impresses me (if you're really bored and want a more detailed explanation as to why, feel free to ask), but I really do like this. Your choice of colors works well, and the other non-fractal elements (the ripple effect, gradient background, and the like) make this more artistic, in my opinion, than just using a few fractals combined with various transforms.
Just out of curiosity, what fractal was used for the base of this? At first glance I thought it was either the Lambda map or the Mu-Inverse (not sure if that's the right name) map, but neither of these seem to be right.
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Heh, scratch the bit about Apophysis, although I would encourage you to check it out. Got messages and fractal pieces mixed up. This one was done in UltraFractal, and the main design was an inverse of...a Lambda (mandelbrot), mirrored over on itself. The other add-ins were sphere transformations and a lake transformation at the bottom
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Now I'm curious...
I would indeed like a more detailed explanation. As a person who is relatively mathematics illiterate, fractals fascinate me, and I'd like to hear your point of view on why you're not impressed. Ironically enough, this was all the work of a single fractal generating program called Apophysis, which is triangle-based and uses a series of equations to calculate flame fractals, none of which (i think) have a traditional base.
If you'd like more information on Apophysis, and to see people far better than I, check out the deviantart community at : [link]
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From a mathematical stand point, I love fractals. From iterated functions like the Mandelbrot map, lambda map, etc, to strange attractors to L-Systems (really fond of L-Systems right now); however, some fractal art has disappointed me for a few reasons. The chief reason is that some people will generate a series of fractals that look very similar and post them all. It just seems that they've produced these images en masse and haven't given much consideration to uniqueness, variation or novelty of the images.
(After writing a lengthy paragraph, I realized I was not doing a good job at describing my second issue, time to start again.)
To explain the second issue I would like to use an analogy. Consider a painter with a brush and paint. She has decided upon an algorithm to govern the shape/length/color/etc of her strokes. Now, consider a machine with a brush, paint and an embedded program that governs the shape/length/color/etc of its strokes, which is ultimately governed by a seed value it receives as input before it begins painting. Even though, fundamentally, these two creatures are doing the same kind of thing, the artist is still making conscious decisions about the algorithm and has, presumably, put a bit of thought into her algorithm and how it will affect the art she produces. The machine has not, it was built by someone who maybe did this, but the person who ultimately inputs the seed values may just be picking these values at random, without thought.
To me, the artist is someone designing a fractal by placing strange attractors, or deciding on the shape a line segment will be replaced with in an initiator/generator fractal or L-System. The machine is more representative of the complex recurrences such as the Mandelbrot set that, while complex, are completely determinisitic and require only the input of a seed value to produce their images (I'm really thinking of Julia sets here.) Hopefully that makes the point somewhat clearly (it is much clearer than the first stab I took at this.)
Now, what comment would be complete without a healthy dose of irony? The fractal in your gallery I favorited last night was "Arcana II", which as you said, was 13 out of 100 randomly generated fractals. So, do I consider it art? I suppose by my jibber-jabber, no. But, I do think it looks pretty, very pretty. So, does it matter, in that case, whether or not I classify it as art at all?
Anywho, those are my confused and muddy thoughts on the matter, hopefully I have not bored you to tears by now
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At the beginning, when I started working with fractals, I didn't consider myself an artist, precisely because of what you say; I was taking something already generated (with Fractal Explorer, it wasn't even really randomly generated) and modifying it to an unrecognizable state, then adding in my own effects, etc. No, this isn't creating art, in the same way that, say, a painter creates from a blank canvas. With fractal flames, Apophysis in particular, I've found that fractals can be completely customized though- even with randomly generated lists, I can customize the starting equation, then go into it looking for something I have a vision of, and finally, make it what I want.
Glad that you found Arcana II "pretty" :-P
I could also make the argument that there's nothing new or original under the sun, and even for things that you consider "real art", the artist is merely putting together concepts that have been repeated a million times over, and appreciated a million times over; that's why we're attracted to art, and exclaim "wow, that's pretty!"
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Ecclesiastes 1:9 is a fair argument, and a large exception to my point is if someone is choosing/building the equations that generate the pieces. That comes down to fine-tuning the math to create things that look good/original, and would make the resulting fractals as original as any other form of art.
So, I think with those revisions, we're in agreement, and I have a more coherent grasp on what kind of fractal art I think is art and what kind isn't.
Of course, I'm a computer scientist/mathematician trying to nitpick over what is or is not art, something I'm not sure I should've been doing in the first place
Thanks for asking for my opinion on the matter then taking the time to make some fair points so that I might revise said opinion
- Ian.
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no prob...I enjoy a good informed (or at least semi-intellectual) debate any time and I'm always interested in probing other's points of view!
As for the question of what is or isn't art....it's been argued over for centuries, and will probably continue to be argued over for centuries in the future.
Fractals are a borderline topic...are they art or are they mathematical?
We both bring different perspectives to the table, me being more into the artsy aspect and you being more of the mathematical persuasion.
Thank YOU.
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No, thank you! You add me to your friends list and suddenly at least 2 people are interested in things I posted quite a while ago 
Shameless plug aside, I enjoyed the discussion as well, and would like to point out that you're right, "what is art and what isn't art" has been debated for a very long time, and I also do not expect a resolution of this any time in the near or distant future.
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Heh, sorry for the extra popularity
I love the way DA routes people around.
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interesting conversation. beleive it or not, i dont really like 3d generated art as art either (unless 100 percent made from scratch) it just seems so easy to plop down a few triangles or a tree or a whole scene and click render there by making the artist obsolete. maybe thats just a pessimistic point of view but just because something is pleasing to the eye, does that make it art, or does the application of human interaction make it art. i have a milluion times more respect for an artist that can draw (even with just a pencil) than someone who can make a computer render. (and i just made both of us obsolete!)
just my two cents!
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Yep I've heard this debate many times... The argument that,"whoa, that must have been tough to do, or 'I could never do that'" is a bit of a cynical view of the skill involved.
Conversely, something pretty to the eye, whether it be human or computer-made is simply pure aesthetic if there is no feeling behind creating the artwork.
Most Fractal artwork, it occurs to me, yearns for purpose, yearns for an explanation to exist. This I feel is the core purpose of all artwork. In doing so the artwork has a life of its own, and the artist, a god.
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Haha... ironic that digital artists can be proved obsolete faster than traditional ones. You're right though...it takes far more talent to draw what we render than throwing a few pieces of landscape down, tweaking them, and hitting "render". Still, I have a vision, and if I can express what I want to digitally better than by drawing it, it's still a part of me.
So I suppose I would have to take the position that it is the human element that makes seemingly random mathematical things like fractals and basic shapes become art.
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yes but what about people that start with no cleaqr vision. i see a lot of peices that are just 30 seconds of work that look nice. then i people who try to make their visions workl that do worse. i mean sometimes i just play and come up with something, where other times i actually have a visiona and try to make what i want. is one art and the other not?
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Tough question...and Tough to know the difference...
Hmm. I would have to say that they're both art...but I might have more respect for a piece that was worked on for longer, and "customized" more.
Example: some of my fractals came straight out of the program, and I didn't feel like I could make them better than they were. Others...a rare few...I spent hours tweaking because I saw the potential for something else, and wanted them a certain way. Where do you draw the line between what the program should be given credit for, and what the artist should be given credit for?
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p.s.
I know what you're talking about when you speak of the people that generate several fractals that look almost the same, and then call each one of them new and original pieces. Believe me, that bores me just as much.
I hate doing the same thing, or even something similar to the same thing, twice
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A quick defense of my pretty vs. art comment: I don't typically consider a woman's application of make-up or her choice in clothing to be art, but I do consider the end result to be pretty.
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This image is awesome.... I absolutely love the colors!
The ripple... the fractal... everything!
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Oh wow! This deserves to be at the head of the class too. It is an awesome piece of art and I congratulate you for creating your vision. A Fav.
Tom
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wonderful....and I do like it better than the first one, though they are both good!
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Stunningly beautiful. The colors, the image itself a masterpeice!
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