I still remember when I calculated my first fractal one cold winter night in the late Eighties in a dark room in a CAD facility in Stockholm, Sweden. The company had a lot of powerful computers and large color printers, providing graphic services and presentation prints for architects and advertising agencies.
The computers and printers were the reasons I worked there, spending most of my time trying to learn all things digital, often working far into the night. I found the whole process of designing something on a computer screen and having it emerge in physical form magical, and I still do.
After the program had finished drawing the Mandelbrot Set on the glowing monitor, I drew a little zoom rectangle on a part of the fractal that looked interesting. The screen went dark, and then gradually started filling up, line by line, with a wild explosion of shapes and colors, carrying withing them even more shapes. I drew another little rectangle, and the same process repeated - only this time the shapes had mutated into new forms.
Out of the multitude of fractal worlds discovered after Mandelbrot’s breakthrough discovery of the Mandelbrot Set in the late 1970s, I've always retained a special love for that first, glittering world, with its infinite, swirling rain forests, crystals and algorithic chasms, and am still after so many years of exploration awed by its infinite, mystic beauty, and I'm still finding unexpected regions, shapes and patterns.
I find my solitary travels through the infinite depths of the Mandelbrot Set to be both meditative, challenging and rewarding.
Sometimes I document my travels, and over the past few years have also started to explore 3D fractals using Mandelbulb 3D.
I hope to be able to share my explorations with you and learn more about these worlds together.
August 21, 2011, 07:55:48 PM
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