Attached Link: "Dale - Stranded"

Armands Auseklis' "Dale - Stranded" (see the link above) shows how dilation symmetry can apply in art. The extreme depth in this image shows dilation symmetry in action. It's what makes it possible to have all that detail in the foreground, fading smoothly into the background, where there is pixel-level detail in features with a very different character. All these features are fractal. Being fractal, the program that creates the image (MojoWorld)--through some fancy math--knows exactly how much detail to put into the image at any given point, according to distance, FOV (field of view) and image resolution. Too little detail, and, well, you know what happens. Too much and it will alias, not to mention wasting processor time on computing information that's worse than useless. Ya' plugs in the math, and out come images like this. It's quite magical, to me! And I've been at it for 14 years... I just never get tired of exploring this new artistic, scientific and mathematical insight. All these images and worlds exist in the timeless truth of mathematical logic, just like the Mandelbrot set. Like fractal geometry, they are not "invented" so much as "discovered." MojoWorld simply performs the calculations that reveal them. It doesn't get much weirder than that... (Armands, the artist here, thinks of himself as an explorer, not a world-builder. That leaves me scratching my head in wonder.) -Mo

hey welcome to the fractal forum Doc! wonderful image. this person is mucho talented for sure! from my perspective, i am a total newbie when it comes to the theory behind fractals. (i just think them pretty and i try to incorporate them into my art...) but i've always wanted to learn more about what/how/who they are. you know, we've been looking for some good fractal discussions to go on in here. you game?

Attached Link: http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~ebert/book2e.html

"In my limited availability," yes. This week we're pushing out the 3rd ed. of our book (see link). It explains fractals to artists, how to write fractal (and other) shaders to technical artists, and how to implement MojoWorld to programmers. Whole lotta work gettin' that bad boy out the door! Sunday I'm off to Sedona to teach at Bryce Camp. And generally, running Pandromeda keeps me off the streets pretty well pretty much all the time. But I'll try to keep my finger on the pulse of this group. Good fun! And educational, which is *very* important. -Mo