Fractal architecture

Not only abstract images can be created with fractals, but also very impressive images of strange towers and temples. Some time before I posted fractal image of a fractal temple. Now, the next some surrealistic images of fractal towers are represented below.

Medieval fractal (by Ramiro Perez)

Sunset Castle (by Ramiro Perez)

Ivory Tower - 2 (by Stefan Vitanov)

Airy (by Stefan Vitanov)

More images of fractal architecture can be found at

http://rfractals.net/?page_id=64 (Ramiro Perez)

http://www.fractalexperience.com/show_gallery.php?gallery=18&range=5&page=1 (Stefan Vitanov)

Mandelbulb

The Mandelbrot set is one of the most known fractal. It can be seen on many sites and images over the Internet. It was represented in many variations. Today, many fractal artists create beautiful images, which are based on it. But all this time it remained only a two dimensional fractal.

Of course, many artists created 3D images with it. Below you can see the Mandelbrot fractal (to the left) and such pseudo-3D. But as you can see, the figure to the right is the same 2D fractal, in which values of the fractal are representes as levels above the base plane.

It remained two-dimensional until Daniel White and Paul Nylander constructed a three dimensional analog of the Mandelbrot set, using an hypercomplex algebra based on spherical coordinated, when in classic Mandelbrot set algebra of complex numbers were used. They called their creation Mandelbulb.

You can read about history of creation of Mandelbulb and many images of it at http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.html. Here, there are very large image of the fractal wholly and images of some it's parts.

The Mandelbulb opended the door to a new class of wonderful fractals.

Artforms of Nature and fractals

The nineteen century German biologist Ernst Haeckel is famous for his fantastically illustrated book Artforms of Nature. The copyright for this book from 1904 has now expired and thanks to Wikimedia Commons it is available for everyone to appreciate.

Haekel's artistic interpretation of the biological forms he studied have a clarity of symmetry and detail that has been a source of inspiration for many artists and engineers over the years. They provide the perfect subject matter for Photoshop plugin Pixel Bender Fractal Explorer. The plugin was created by Tom Beddard.

Below, you can see the original image of Ophiodea (to the left) and fractal based on the original images, which created with help of Pixel Bender Fractal Explorer. The fractal has the same symmetry as the original image.

Another example, the Phaeodaria and two fractals, which are based on it. Fractals have another type of symmetry, but, nevertheless, they are look very natural.

Mini books of Anatoly Konenko

Yesterday, I received the smallest book of those that I have ever hold in my hands, which is entitled as "Secrets of impossible figures". The dimensions of the book are 3x5 cm. You can compare it's size with a 1 euro coin on the photo above. The book is filled of images of impossible figures. It was published in very limited edition, only 30 copies.

The author of the book is Anatoly Konenko from Omsk (Russia). He is famous for his mini and micro works. He began to create mini and micro artworks since 1981. He invented technology of writing on rice and poppy grains and later on human hair. He have done many micro works in various styles - graphics, sculpture, carving on wood and bones, juvellery and knitting.

The field, in which Konenko is well known, is creating and publishing of mini books. He have done more than 200 mini books since 1994. All his books have high quality binding and inimitable elegant ornaments and decorations. With the publication of his books Anatoly Konenko is an artist, designer, engraver and bookbinder at the same time.

In 1996 he created the smallest book the world with sizes 0,9 x 0,9 mm, which was signed in the Guinness book. The photo of the book you can see below.

Visit web site of Anatoly Konenko to see more photos of miniatures, books, and impossible figures.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Some time ago, talking about fractal waves I referred to the artwork of XIX century The Great Wave off Kanagawa by japanese artist Hokusai. It was very interesting to see in old artwork selfsimilar shapes like in fractals. This artwork is of great importance to Japanese.

So, it was printed on postage stamps and became inspiration for many designer works. Even more it's motif was used in Nintendo game The Demon Blade. It's 2D adventure game with many traditional Japanese scenes. Two of them show the Great Wave in sunny day and in storm.

Another painting based on the famous artwork is The Great Monkey Wave. From afar it looks like an original image but nearby we see that the wave is filled with numerous monkeys.

It was found at http://www.thinkforward.org/gallery_mosaics2.htm .

Calendar 2010

Today I would like to promote an outstanding issue, to which I attended. It's a bloc-calendar with illusions. Every page contains unique graphic work, photo or photomanipulation image with illusion or impossible figure. Arworks of such famous artists as M.C. Escher, Jos de Mey, Sandro del Prete, Istvan Orosz, Oscar Reutersvärd and many many others. Also, some my figures were printed in the calendar too.

The bloc-calendar was created in Paul Baars Design studio. Most of the Dutch museums will have it in their shops.

New set of fractal trees

A new set of fractal trees open images by Nirolo. Nice gradients give mystical glow to trees. Probably, these trees should grow in the foresests of the elves. Curved branches look very unusual for fractals.

Fairy Tree

A tree of Fire and Ice

The next tree is like a lightning. Branches have rough outline like real lightning. But it still variation of Pythagoras tree. The image was created by Cory Ench. Author also created several variations of this fractal.

The last image show us apocalyptic sunset with a fractal tree of very regular form. The image was created by George13.

Impossible constructor online

A new online constructor of impossible figures was opened as a part of community of the site Impossible World. The constructor allows to design your own impossible figures from cubes in Oscar Reutersvärd style. The figure designer is on the screenshot below.

You can choose, which corners you want to cut from the cube by selecting appropriate cubes at the line of blue cubes at the top of the toolbar. Then you can drag cube by mouse from the drag area to workspace. Cubes on workspace overlaps each other in order of drop.

You can save your figure by clicking on diskette button, and then post your figure to the common blog of the Impossible World community.

Note, that impossible figure constructor is supported by Google App Engine and you should have a Google account to create your figures. But you can see figures by other members of community freely.

Visit the community to create your impossible figure here http://im-possible.appspot.com

Cubic pyramid

A nice pyramid of cubes was modeled and rendered by David Pearson (fpsurgeon). Each lower level of the pyramid consists of smaller cubes, which are four times more than above. So we see a simple but elegant fractal. This nice rendering was created as a further development of studing by author an open source program Structure Synth, which provides creating 3D structures from a set of user rules. One of preliminary studies you can see below.
Imagine if the top cube of the pyramid is too heavy, and the whole structure will collapse.

Fractals by Manny Lorenzo

Some time ago I've published one fractal by Manny Lorenzo in the post about Pythagoras trees. Today I would like to show some his fractals.

Let start from new kinds of Pythagoras trees. He created a tree with spheres and a very strange kind of Pythagoras tree, which has infinity symbol as a base part of fractal. It looks unlike Pythagoras tree, but it is true.

Also he created a set of wonderful fractals of Nautilus shells. Nautilus shell is one of known examples of fractals in nature. 

Except these ones he created another fractal shells.
Visit Manny's Flickr phostostream to see more beatiful fractals.

Escher-like mosaics

M.C. Escher is well known by his artistic regular plane divisions and artworks of impossible constructions. But he also created several artworks with irregular mosaics, which consist of shapes of various animals. Two of them you can see below. As you can see every animal in mosaics are fit all its neighbours without any gaps.

Today may artists follow the way of Escher in creating complex mosaics. Images of Bobby Bogl are worthy, which you can see below. Take a notice of how all parts of his images accurate match to each other.