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A blogpost with a piece by Mandelwerk :beer: concerning this important matter of Fractal Art being Real Art, plus some thoughts of my own  O0

http://mandelubber.blogspot.com/2011/09/but-is-it-art.html

The question is meaningless in my view.

It's Real Art to you if you say it is, and not if you say it isn't.

There will always be people who think the concept of "Real Art" has meaning, but they are all wrong.

There is no such thing as Real Art, for that implies the existence of Unreal Art, and I can think of no such thing.

Now, if the question were "Is this Good Art?" it would be meaningful, but that would mean admitting the answer is subjective and different people can have different opinions on it.

Those who argue if something is Real Art or not refuse to admit to the fact that ALL Art is Real, and the only question is whether or not you as an individual like it.   O0

My new response to the usual *root* of this question is:

Drawing and Painting are not "Art" because even a baby or a dog or a horse can put a mark on a piece of paper.

(http://www.beledi.ru/forum/images/smiles/haha.gif)

When a baby or a dog or a horse will learn to draw fractals, it won't be art too. :D

a problem for the horse would be eventually preparing/to-get the paper/colours..an assistant is needed ;D
http://boingboing.net/2008/10/17/cholla-the-horse-pai.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vvz_nUHfwE
and here we have the elephant drawing an elephant :o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk

to get this thing serious again, i'd compare fractaling with photography.
surely not every handy snapshot is art, but a photography (also a handy snapshot) could possibly be art. it's quite similar with fractals.
denying the artistic potential of fractals is like denying the possibility, that a photography can be art.

the line between is difficult to draw and a quite subjective thing.

The point of course being that the most annoying and ill-thought out statement that fractals are *not* art is essentially the same as photography not being art i.e. it's the camera that takes the photograph and it's the computer that makes the fractal so *anyone* can do it so it's not art - I've encountered this attitude several times *even before they've even seen a fractal* !

Wow, this is most amazing, thanks for the link!
At least this should be (one of) the most artistic animals ever, and if this not art, it must be zen!

Yeah Woha... If that video is for real I am truly amazed.
I would call that art any day, just because of the fact (?) it is made by an elephant!
What I was talking about in my text was not if fractal images can be considered to be art but if we ever will see a fractal image become a masterpiece.
Of course fractals can be seen as art, but I didn't want to get into that discussion...  O0

Tim, at the Orbit Trap blog (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3051 (http://orbittrap.ca/?p=3051)), talks about fractals not being art because they don't engender the deep emotions in viewers that "real" art does.  I'll agree that most fractals I've seen don't fill me with any sort of emotional response, but quite a few have.  And, many make me think.  It seems to me that causing viewers to think is certainly as worthy as causing them to feel.  How do you respond to fractals, if at all?

Woops! My bad  :embarrass: .. Have edited my post a bit now ;P
Though that's exactly the topic your post inspired out of me, especially since I've been showing friends my fractal work and many of them do go "Yeah, but can that really be considered art?" when I show them how it's done. Even if they were impressed at first ¬¬ ... Just because mathematical formulae generate the images we see... And as far as anyone's been concerned so far, maths and art just don't mix. Well, to me, even since high school, I was very inspired by the beauty of even the normal Euclidean maths.  :nerd:

I agree very much with fractal art being compared with photography. It's all about light and composition! But in fractal art, of course, we have the added dimensions of colour and shape/structure. This makes it more versatile and much more difficult, I believe.

As for what response they evoke out of me... Well, when I first saw Mandelwerk's stuff, I was pretty much blown away. Yes, I'll always have a geeky, maths side to me which was of course a big influence, but generally, everyone I show his (and others') works to are significantly impressed. Some really have a hard time looking away. :happy: So does it make me think? Certainly. And feel? Hell yeah. Some more than others of course, but that's art for ya.

well, you're right, it's similar not equal.
there's another similarity between theese two directions of art. like we are now, the early photographers were not well accepted as artists - wrongly...

i'd like to point out two additional differences between potography and fractaling.

the first is deirection. unlike the real world (or more accurate the earth), most fractals have no top and no bottom - at least when you bring up some inner structures. so the direction of an image has to be fixed by the artist.

the second one is time. photographers have the additional difficulty to catch a moment, that never returns - even in a dedicated shooting. a fact, that should not be underestimated.

all in all i do not see any more or less dificult in this comparison. photography and fractaling are still too different, to make that kind of judgement.
i'd be glad, if the acceptance of fractal art would reach the acceptance of photography as art.
let's work for this!  :beer:

Is it art? This seems to be the question that rules the fractal world these days. And if emotion is an essential part of art, then the discussion that follows this question must be a masterpiece indeed :dink:. Maybe we should start from a definition of art. I've found several, some more explicit then others. The first one is from dictionary.com, the second from Wikipedia:
 

• Art is the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
• Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect

The first definition is rather interesting since it implies that beauty, appeal and significance are quantifiable qualities. It reminds me of my university days, where I lived in a house with a larger then average amount of architecture students. One of them had been to the World Fair in Sevilla and he arranged a viewing of the countless slides he had made. Thoughtlessly (as I found out later...) I remarked that I found a certain pavilion beautiful. All of the architecture students told me that it wasn't. Not that it didn't appeal to them, no, it was ugly. Because they had been taught so at university. Quantifiable. The same seems to apply to art. At least, according to some...

I like the second definition better. It indicates that creating art is an intentional activity with the purpose of influencing the way the observer feels. And to me these two ingredients are the heart of art. There is no judgement in this definition and it doens't quantify in any way. It also implies that it doesn't matter which tools you use. And maybe here we can find the solution for the rift between the "fractal is art" faction and their opposers. Because a fractal pur-sang will never be art. Some people can make it art, though, by consciously manipulating the "bare fractal" (by changing colours, FOV, DOF, backgrounds, etc) into something that influences the senses or the emotions of the observer.

Another nice touch to the second definition is that art doesn't necessarily have to be beautiful. In the extreme: If an artifact is such an affront to your eyes that it makes you throw up, it most definitely is art, since it has an influence on your senses ;D. This surely explains why "Who's afraid of Red Yellow and Blue" classifies as art...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y7Vuv4ScRuU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The painting elephant is amazing. Not only can it copy what is in front of it but it also apears to be able to paint from memory, imagination and can even draw abstract forms which I think shows a high level of cognition than simply copying. But then again what do you expect from a creature with a brain the size of a basketball?

As for what is art and what is good art...

Sure whether something has artistic merit is largely subjective but I don't think something becomes art just because someone proclaims it so. For example I saw a youtube video where a woman was naked in front of the camera and proclaimed "this is art."

Another example is a local art gallery I frequent which had some "paintings"
by an England cricketer which were made by him dipping a ball in paint and throwing it at the canvas, a couple had semi interesting splash patterns but I defy anyone says they are anything more than a guy throwing a paint covered ball. It tells you nothing of his emotions, dreams, ambitions and certainly doesn't represent anything. Maybe I should sell my clothes next time I paint ball!

As for good art, sure it's largely subjective but the fact that people pay for art lessons, buy more expensive equipment and spend a long time on a piece of work kinda prove that there are some objective elements (which can be agreed apon to decide whether something is "good".

I'm going to go with the non-politically correct thing and say that beauty is Universal.   AT least in this one respect: The Golden Ratio.  i.e. it's math!  It exists in all of nature (at least emulated by nature) and the PHI number.  Beauty in this way is the subconscious intuition of health and vitality.

Not sure if this topic is long dead, but I'll chip in my thoughts.

Art is a term that cannot be defined. Individuals can determine that they have a meaning for art that makes sense to them but it tends to simply boil down to opinion. Something most art that would be categorized as "Gallery Art" or "Contemporary Art" seems to require:

- Not being exactly defined. Some level of mystery is almost preferable because a viewer has to make it up as they "experience" the piece. In this sense fractal art struggles because it is extremely well defined. In fact, it is so well defined that someone with sufficient math / programming skills can reproduce a fractal artwork exactly if they know the settings / input.

- Not being purely digital. Many people poo-poo art without second thought if it was completely computer generated. This to me is a bizarre tendency but one I think is very true. It happened to me quite a lot in college (I recently graduated The School of the Art Institute) as I was in the Art and Tech department there and made programmatic work. People seem to have some kind of bias for handmade work. The other problem with digital art is that it can be copied or reproduced as mentioned in the last bullet (which also should not discredit work but does).

- Not being too technical. The amount of learning required to understand what is happening in a fractal image is beyond most people's understanding. Almost no one (short of maybe some people on this forum) looks at a fractal image and understands what is going on. They either label it as "math" and then decide that math and art are two different things or exclaim "That looks like a such-and-such!".

I don't label fractal images as strictly being art myself. They are often beautiful and usually provoke more thought than something I would see at a gallery or museum but they don't challenge how I think about the world or provide me with a new point of view. On the other hand they are a lot of fun if you are technically minded and a method of creating composition just like invented landscape or still life representation aesthetics. In this sense I prefer to think of fractal art as I way to improve my sense of image generation but not concept sharing.

Is it art?  Who cares!  As an artist, my only concern is to express something in a way that satisfies me.  I think you would be stretching things to call a fractal "art" by itself but there is an art to in the composition, colouring etc.  I once expressed to Kraftwerk that the simplest blob could look good if carefully composed and coloured, which is why I work in greyscale until I find an interesting shape.  How broadly do you want to use the term?  The building I live in is art.  Making sense of reality is art.  Bringing up children is art etc.  Art is basically having an idea and expressing it and that means everybody is an artist and all art is real art.

Most of this have to do with art as teen paintings in staircase room. Most of are just pics, pastime, whatever, some pictures withaout meaning as almoust all of deviant art content. But this don't means, there are no art at all, there are some great pieces of art.

PHI is sayd to be beautifull, realy but is this so? I think, other ratios too can create eyecandy as good as PHI. I think, some symmetry is more beautifull than phi.

This is art
http://www.ultrafractal.com/showcase/etienne.html (http://www.ultrafractal.com/showcase/etienne.html)

Most of deviantart pictures are not the art.

Whenever you ask people to define art, it is never a short answer.

Until now.

Art = Things that humans make.


Done.

I would disagree.
The Ultra Fractal mailing list has gone through a process of answering the question "Are fractals art" many times - the answer of course being that it's a stupid question, one may as well ask are pencil marks on paper "art", the correct question (if any) would be "can fractals be art" to which of course the answer is yes !
Anyway after considering "art" itself my own conclusion is:
If *any* human thinks something is "art" then it is "art". Whether it's good or bad art is an entirely different question.
To put it another way - the recognition of the "art" in something by a human defines the something as being art *at least to them* - whether this is recognised by others is irrelevant to the definition *but not to the value* in either an aesthetic or economic sense - these of course depend on the opinions of others.

For instance I reluctantly accept that a pile of bricks with one slightly dislodged (Tate years ago) is "art" though personally I think it's cr*p - the same goes for an installation that's just a room impersonating a fridge by having the light go on and off automatically......
Of course some would say disliking these makes me a philistine !

I think a problem with these kinds of conversations is that "Art" is way too broad of a term. It might be more meaningful to talk about specific fields of art. Good fractal art can successfully achieve art status as composition for example but may have a difficult time comparing to say that "pile of bricks" (which, I also think is crap). However, there are many examples of good Contemporary Art, some of which are mathematical (Sol Lewitt comes to mind), which I think Fractal Art does struggle to represent.

No, it is not art,
                    It´s an artistic procedure, and, as such, can be used to do a lot of different things, cover a canvas with pigment can be art, or not, this depend on a lot of other things.
                   

well spoken!

I for one am very good at expressing exactly what i want in my fractals

I make mine with Photoshop by copying and pasting and measuring using "smart objects"

people have told me this is called the "infinite copy machine method"   (aka old school fractals )

but I am sure many of you mathematicians know exactly what you are doing too

I have tried some fractal math and find it a lot easier than regular algebra mainly because of the visual feedback

my favorite programs for mathematical fractals are ultra-fractal and   apophysis-7x for the most part i use them for fractal science (aka manufacturing parts for my other fractal style)

and leave the art to the "infinite copy machine method" but I can see how you make art with them (I am just too much of a control-freak to do it my self)

i
     

Great Scott! How many different ways are there to say "yes" and "no" to a yes-or-no question?  Oh, well.  I learned a definition for art in my senior year of high school that I shall never forget, because it is simple, and because it makes sense: Art is Communication.  Therefore, for something to be art, it must communicate.  I would go further by saying it ought to communicate something that cannot necessarily be stated in words, or at least in quite a few.  I'm sure you've heard it: "A picture is worth a thousand words."  If those words happen to be gibberish, sorry, you're not communicating.

So the big question is: Does what we post on Fractal Forums communicate?  I say yes.  Every picture on this forum was deliberately chosen out of limitless possibilities.  Why was it chosen?  Because something about it appealed to someone, and in stead of saying, "Ooh, that's nice," they took that image that appealed to them, arranged it with colors and lighting that appealed them, and posted it.  What are they communicating?  Themselves, and what appeals to them.  Taurus's work, for example, is, to me anyway, is instantly recognizable, because certain fractals appeal especially to him.  The same applies to everyone else's work.  Communicating is the reason we post these images.
 :snore:
Forgive my waxing eloquent.  I know I'm a new guy, but I couldn't leave it alone.

LAR I agree with your definition but have to add gibberish is sometimes the only way to communicate confusion - disorientation. Most of my favorite art contains elements of gibberish.

The point is well taken.  My bad.  In my defense I did state that art should be able to communicate more than mere words, and its true: some people like gibberish.