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| Colleen's Shell Fractal | Terry's "Coral" Structures | Ruth's "Newton's Towers" |
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Spot Light Corner: Colleen's "photographic" fractal
I looked at it a second time and then again, and for a few seconds I was not sure wether it is a photographic montage, or a processed photo. Only after realizing the presence of the repeated symmetry I rest assure, that it is mathematics and not optics. The shell pattern is not so common in fractal's math, and quite difficult to achieve. In the dozens and dozens of galleries that I have visited I found only a very few examples: You can see the beautiful "Coral" quaternion fractal revealing the skeleton construction of sea shells, that was created by Terry W. Gintz with his "Zplot" software. As Terry told me: "I imagine the shell structure is more commonly seen in quaternions and lsystems. I was originally inspired by Clifford Pickover's digital art, especially his shell series." Well, here is the "Snail" for example. And then you can see the work of Ruth Antwine's "Newton's Towers". Well, Ruth rather thought of Newton then of Neptune while creating this nice composition, but the resemblance is unavoidable, especially when you are looking on the smaller right row of "shells". If you are looking for a realistic fractal, Colleen's shell is it! It sure has photographic qualities, like light and shadow, close up position, varying focus sharpness on the extremities, and even an unbelievable small oval light reflexion. And it is not an artifact, check and see its repeating symmetry! But if you think that this shell is extraordinary, well you have a big surprise coming.. wait till you hear how this fractal was born. Here is the full story, as Colleen has told me, from the conception of the idea, throughout the elaborate working to the rewarding end, and with Colleen's permission, here it is: "My fractal «shell» is also a fractal that to me has special qualities, which sets it aside from other fractals. It is one which I spent MANY hours working on. It was created using Ultra Fractal. The formula used to create the Shell was Nova-l (Mandelbrot). Three transformation formulas were added which brought out the figure of the shell, and also helped to reduce the busyness in the background. When I created the fractal, I wanted it to have a realistic quality, but for an odd reason... Strangely, I had a dream prior to creating this fractal. In the dream, I descended down a treacherous cliff side in the darkness of night, to an ocean coastline. I knew in the dream that I might not be able to make it back up again and was at risk of death from rising high tides, yet I went down anyway. As I walked the shoreline, I saw a seashell barely visible in the night and picked it up. The orange color in my "dream shell" suddenly jumped out at me as I picked it up. It is the same color as the shell in my fractal. In my dream the shell was like a beautiful treasure to me. I managed to make it back up the cliff and onto a dark seedy city street. I wandered about in the darkness of the streets, carrying my shell. Then I realized the beautiful shell was just an object without any real value... I know it's strange, but this dream is what compelled me to create this fractal. It determined the coloring, mood, realism, and content of the artwork. This is kind of an odd description for how this shell was created, but it's true :) " The curator April 2000 |
