I know the pieces fit
'Cause I watched them fall away
Mildewed and smoldering
Fundamental differing
Pure intention juxtaposed
Will set two lovers' souls in motion
Disintegrating as it goes
Testing our communication
The light that fueled our fire then
Has a burned a hole between us so
We cannot see to reach an end
Crippling our communication

I know the pieces fit
'Cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame
It doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other
Watch the temple topple over
To bring the pieces back together
Rediscover communication

The poetry
That comes from the squaring off between
And the circling is worth it
Finding beauty in the dissonance

There was a time that the pieces fit
But I watched them fall away
Mildewed and smoldering
Strangled by our coveting
I've done the math enough to know
The dangers of our second guessing
Doomed to crumble unless we grow
And strengthen our communication

Cold silence has
A tendency to
Atrophy any
Sense of compassion
Between supposed brothers
Between supposed lovers

I know the pieces fit


[link]

I added the full eponymous reference to one of my favorite Tool songs because it so effectively captures the essence of the infighting that I’ve been seeing going on here. To be honest, I had a lot of reservations about posting this article because I’m not really sure if people here are ready and willing to hear it for its intended purpose. For me, these lyrics speak to the importance of keeping communication open even when one disagrees with an opposing point of view. Adhering to the adage “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” will continue to atrophy and erode our sense of connection to each other if our silence is bought with lingering resentment and contempt. We need to bring a sense of mutual understanding and compassion back into the discussion if we truly want to grow and work together as a community. We can’t simply swallow back our bad feelings and only focus on the positive, nor can we allow our beliefs and passions to leave no room for “the other”.

This brings me to the heated debate over “bad fractalism”. To be fair, while this discussion came to a head when ~FarDareisMai expressed her concerns in a recent journal entry [link] , the underlying sentiments had been festering in silent resentment for quite some time:


“I have felt like this for a very long time now, but I have always had (and still have) a lot of reservations about voicing it…I am simply sick of only being able to say flattering things.”


As I understand its usage, this term describes a fractal design that was posted to our gallery without an appropriate amount of creative effort having been put into generating it. If one accepts that “bad fractals” exist and that they are growing in both abundance and popularity, it is only natural to blame them for a perceptible erosion of quality within the fractal gallery. It is natural to point the finger, blame the other. Natural - but is it fair?

The fundamental difficulty that one encounters with this definition is in its arbitrary nature. Let’s face it. Each one of us is in some stage of technical or artistic development. Each one of us is driven by our own aesthetic tastes, by our own artistic vision and our own motives. As a consequence, the question of what constitutes an “appropriate amount of effort” can only vary depending on who you ask. Identifying “bad fractalism” as a problem that needs to be fixed cannot possibly lead to any resolution. It will only lead to more confusion and divisiveness. It will cast doubt in the minds of many who realize that they still have a lot to learn:

“I suppose I felt upset by what I perceived as a criticism of my person. I'm not a perfectionist.”

It will alienate individuals who simply came here to dabble:

“I didn't come here to learn things. I came to find something to do, as I was bored stiff at home, and to express myself. I've achieved these two things.”

It will ignite the sanctimonious ire of the presumptuous and arrogant:

“You should really consider why you are here to begin with if it’s (for) "Personal Pleasure".”



Is there a way to address the problem of restoring quality to the fractal gallery without resorting to the rhetoric of “bad art”? I think that there is. To be fair, FDM has already revealed much of the process herself in a subsequent journal posting [link] I won’t re-hash everything that she stated here but do invite the curious reader to visit her posting for details. Despite some brief forays back into the negative rhetoric, she threw down a challenge for members of the community to avail themselves of resources and attitudes that will encourage their growth and development. =one-tough-one summed up the approach succinctly: “Learn...Teach...Comment...Critique...4 Very good things indeed!” I agree.

There is something else that we can do to help shed our resentment toward “bad art”. We can expose the true source of this resentment and work together to dispel its hold on us. You see, if “bad art” exists, it exists everywhere. I’m told, for instance that the photography gallery is replete with cell cam shots of teenager’s sneakers – hmmm…not exactly the height of artistic achievement in this medium I’m also told that the photographers aren’t especially bothered by this. They simply carry on with their own business and let the kiddies have their fun. Why does “bad art” bother us so much then?

FDM provides us with a most revealing answer:


What is wrong with a lack of effort please?

This is actually a very good question, so I'll try to explain why a lack of effort bothers me so much.

I think it's because people who make fractals get pegged as doing "easy art" a lot. I can't even tell you the number of times I've heard someone say, "Fractals don't take any artistic talent" or "Fractals are not art at all, just button-pushing" or "The computer does all the work." And I think when people who make fractals treat their own art form as if it's not worthy of respect and learning, then we play right into the hands of those ignorant attitudes.


Even though fractal art has existed since the early 80s it seems that we have still not managed to shed the stigma of being misunderstood by other artists. In fact it was only very recently that the creative significance of parameter files was acknowledged by the dA admin. True to their human nature, the uninformed will also often jump to erroneous conclusions about the things that they don’t understand. Instead of simply saying “I don’t get it” or “This is why I don’t get it”, they will say astoundingly stupid things like “Its just button pushing.” or “The computer does all the work”.

It is equally human to want to respond to such declamations with the knee-jerk attitude of “Oh yeah? I’ll show you! Fractals take lots of effort. Its hard work and so totally worthy of your respect!” But is this really the most constructive approach to take? If the original premise is wrong, why validate it by getting twisted up in knots trying to equate technical effort with artistic merit? No other artists do this. Take [link]rev=/images%3Fq%3Dvoice%2Bof%2Bfire%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den and [link]
Which one do you think required more technical effort to achieve? Now guess which is by far the more prized painting?

Let’s be honest. If the act of generating an image with the push of a single button invalidated a medium as a genuine form of artistic expression, where would the photographers be? Similarly citing the extensive use of computer-driven calculation would exclude pretty much any form of digital art. By devaluing and discouraging the artistic expression of simpler fractal designs are we not ultimately depleting our gallery of a legitimate source of diversity? Isn’t it possible that this collective act of standardization may be contributing to the impoverishment of our gallery? Suddenly it becomes much less clear as to who is really playing into the hands of our ignorant detractors.

If we truly want to be understood better by outsiders, it seems that we should be asking ourselves different questions. Questions like “How can we make our art easier to understand?”. Once again FDM and friends have been gracious enough to help pave the way by suggesting a simple and useful paradigm when evaluating fractals: follow one set of guidelines to evaluate technical merit [link] and another set of guidelines to evaluate the aesthetic merit [link] I think that these guidelines are a great start but could use further refinement. I think that it would be more useful to group only criteria that a fractalist would care about under “technical merit”. This is where a piece could be evaluated based on level of mastery with specific program elements such as render crispness, color separation, uniqueness of design (getting the program to burp, cough, walk, etc…, number of transformations, xaos, post-work, script seeding etc… This would give us a common reference point to turn to for critiquing each other’s work. “Artistic merit” would conversely contain compositional criteria that outsiders would also value (e.g., rule of thirds, golden ratio, lines, texture, space, contrast….

Random Flame Challenge

A good friend of mine quotes the following: “The secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life, and in elevating them to art”.
I believe that these are good words to live by. For me this equally implies that not everything we do with our medium has to be a shining reflection of our technical mastery of it. There is nothing wrong with conveying a genuinely compelling vision using some well chosen random Apo squiggles (sorry I don’t know if UF has an equivalent). To show that fractal art can stand on its own merit, I’d like to propose the following challenge. Run your random flame generator repeatedly until it coughs up a flame that you find visually appealing. Render it without tweaking a single thing. Then apply any amount of layering or post-work to tease it into a work of art that adheres to the fundamental principles of composition listed here [link] , here [link] and [link] . Note me with your submissions and I will feature them in my journal and a subsequent News Article. I will also invite the participants to visit this subsequent article and use it to constructively critique each others work by using only aesthetic criteria as a measure.

Let’s see if we can elevate some simple every-day elements to art. Lets find the beauty in our dissonance, bring our fractured pieces back together and show the others that fractal art can stand on it’s own merit and doesn’t need to be qualified by anything – least of all their preconceptions.



Sasha aka