Film Overview

Did you know fractals can be soothing, inspiring, and lively all at the same time? How they are perceived is largely dependent on the person looking at them, the environment where the fractal is viewed, and the music (if any) that is being played. Fractals are like clouds. Some people may see flowers or bunnies. While others may see viking warlords frolicking in the snow. A unique experience awaits to be discovered. What do you see?

Many of my fractals have been described as being both 2D and 3D at the same time, as being trippy or wildly cool. How can a unique experience be had by each person? It is quite simple really. When you factor in their personality, age, gender, social experiences, cultural heritage, the vibe of the current setting (music, ambiance, location, etc), whether or not they are sober, etc it is easy to see how you or someone else may see something completely different.

These videos are recorded without soundtracks. They are ideal for virtually any genre of music you wish to play, if any. The music you play when watching my videos can change your perceptions or interpretations of what you are seeing, even if you have watched it before. Many of the animations present optical illusions such as 2D and 3D qualities co-existing and clashing simultaneously, interference patterns that create the illusion of motion, motion that creates the illusion of standing still or moving in and out when you may be thinking the opposite is happening. How you think about an animation, focus your eyes, and the setting where the DVD is played can also influence your perceptions. Each of my fractal exploration animations is designed to flow from one to the other. They incorporate elements that make it difficult to know when an animation has transitioned. Titles to each of the forty seven animations are included on the back of the DVD case.

My fractal animations have been used as visual and sensory stimulation for developmentally delayed infants and children, I have shown them before thousands of people at sci-fi cons such as Dragon Con (2007-2008) and Sci-Fi Summer Con (2007-2008), I have presented them at many of my art shows and openings, Roswell CABYs arts awards ceremony (2008), for 800 students at Roswell High School (2008), 90 fourth graders at Centennial Place Elementary in Georgia Tech's Ferst Center for the arts (2008), and for musicians at Kavarna in Decatur, Georgia (2008-2009). At Georgia Perimeter College I ran three different animations from August-September (2009).

The DVD has a multitude of uses including entertainment, fractal education, inspiration, relaxation, party video (sobriety optional), and background visuals for setting a mood. So sit back and get ready to enjoy forty seven examples of fractal animation as I take you through a journey of discovery into a variety of fractal realms. Can't wait for the physical DVD? Try the digital download and enjoy my video art today!

What is a fractal? Here are some definitions:

1) A shape that can be repeatedly subdivided into parts, each of which is a smaller copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar and independent of scale.

2) A fractal is a geometric object which is rough or irregular on all scales of length, and so which appears to be 'broken up' in a radical way. Some of the best examples can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object. Fractals are said to possess infinite detail, and they may actually have a self-similar structure that occurs at different levels of magnification.

3) A term coined by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1975 to refer to items with fractional dimensions as opposed to the integer dimensions such as 1, 2 and 3 associated with length, area and volume. Often used to refer to a structure bearing statistically similar details over a wide range of scales. Fractals describe shapes that are "self-similar" -- that is, shapes that look the same at different magnifications. To create a fractal, you start with a simple shape and duplicate it successively according to a set of fixed rules. Oddly enough, such a simple formula for creating shapes can produce very complex structures, some of which have a striking resemblance to objects that appear in the real world.

4) Fractals share holographic properties.

5) A geometric shape or pattern that is self-similar and has fractional dimensions. Natural phenomena such as the formation of snowflakes, clouds, mountain ranges, and landscapes involve patterns. Their pictorial representations are fractals and are usually generated by computers. They are repeated at every scale and so cannot be represented by classical geometry. Fractals have statistical self-similarity at all resolutions and is generated by an infinitely recursive process. An algorithm, or shape, characterized by self-similarity and produced by recursive sub-division; more generally the branch of mathematics named and explored by Benoit Mandelbrot.

6) Fractals are like clouds. When looking at the same cloud some will see flowers, while others may see bunnies, or viking warlords frolicking in the snow. Each person sees something different. What do you see?

Examples of fractal properties - From Quantum Theory Made Easy (part one):

Quantum physics

"....shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated 'basic building blocks', but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way."

Chaos theory

“The fractal geometry of chaos theory offers a curious picture of wholeness, rather than sheer disorder or perfectly crafted design -- something between symmetry and anarchy: broken symmetry. These fractals are like the fragments of a shattered hologram. If a hologram should be broken into pieces, an approximation of the whole picture could still be seen in each of its many shards. Woolley suggests that the universe is like the many fragments of a shattered hologram, and scientists can discover secrets of the whole "enfolded" universe by examining these fractured crystals that are "unfolded" and consequently accessible to our investigation. Holography, like fractal geometry, is of great practical value in the compressing and decompressing of digital data and images.

Let's take a moment to regroup. There should be some sense of non-local connection emerging here entangling Dali's illusions, fractals, spirals, holograms, compaction's dimensions, encoding, symmetry, asymmetry, broken symmetry, stereograms, and all those ideas yet to materialize. Chaos puts our fragmented world back together as a crystal of broken symmetries with many facets -- as fractals . We must come to appreciate the mystery of the diamond mind, which attains its true beauty only when it is broken by the hand of an artist. These swirling images of the whole raise us to dizzying heights, but the wholeness we experience is not the limitless expanse of the universe, but a passageway through creation in which we also have a hand to play.

From Fractals In Nature:

Most mathematics that we study in school is old knowledge. Around 300 B.C. a mathematician by the name of Euclid organized the geometry we have been studying this year in class. You can thank him for all the beautiful postulate and theorems that we now have in our math toolboxes. Much of fractal geometry, however, is new knowledge. Fractal geometry and chaos theory are providing us with a new way to describe the world. Many objects in nature aren't formed of Euclid’s squares or triangles, but of more complicated geometric figures. Many natural objects - ferns, clouds, seashells - are shaped like fractals. Fractal geometry is a new language used to describe, model and analyze complex forms found in nature. Chaos science uses this new fractal geometry.

How it all works:

The basic technique of these fractals can actually be explained without resorting to confusing mathematical equations and jargon. It's rather simple, really.

First, give every point on the screen a unique number. Now take that number and stick it into a formula; you'll get a result from the formula. Take that result and stick it back into the formula. Keep doing this and watch what happens to the numbers you get. Color each point based on what happens.

That's it. Really—that's it. Now, with most formulas it probably won't do much of interest, but with the formulas used in fractal creation, some interesting things happen. Sometimes the numbers you get by feeding the results of a formula back into the formula (iterating) explode into enormous numbers, that just keep getting bigger and bigger. Those points get colored one way. Other times, the numbers "home in" on a number, getting closer and closer to it. They get colored a different way.

The interesting thing—and the reason fractals work at all—is that sometimes, just a tiny little change in the number you start with can completely change what happens as you keep iterating the number. And the boundary between numbers that explode and numbers that home in is complicated and twisted—it's the shape of the fractal.

The enormous task at hand:

Calculating fractals this way involves a lot of work. A small fractal image—perhaps only 640x480—contains over 300,000 points. Each of those points may require running a number through the fractal formula more than 1,000 times. This means the formula has to be computed more than three hundred million times. And that's a mild example. Extreme images (such as poster-size fractals) can involve more than one trillion calculations. Fortunately for the impatient among us, modern computers are fast enough to do the job in a few minutes. Large fractals might take hours or days, but exploring fractals has never been easier.

Not quite so similar:

Many fractal types get wildly different as you zoom in. They're still self-similar, but they're not rigidly self-similar. This is what makes fractal exploration so intriguing. The features you see as you zoom are always changing—teasing you with a little bit of familiarity, and tantalizing you with new and unexpected twists. With just a single fractal shape, you can explore forever and never see everything it has to offer. The further you zoom, the more likely you are seeing something that nobody has ever seen before. And with modern computers, it's very easy to zoom and zoom and zoom. With just a few clicks you can have zoomed so far that the original fractal image is larger than the sun.