Seeking for a New Space on Fractals

When Manet painted The Fifer a new kind of representation has been brought to visual perception of the space in our culture. There a flat space rendered without shadows appeared “like in a deck of playing cards”, as has been said by an art critic. This return to a pictorial space similar of the pre-Renaissance became one of the main interests of most of the 20th Century artists like Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Mondrian, Klee and Miro among many.

A key point for some of these artists has been the interest for the far cultures of Asia, like the Japanese, and other cultures from non-Éuropean world, like African and the cultures from the islands of Oceania, where the space relies basically on the integration of graphical elements on the plane of the picture. The image is created with simple shapes and basic color relationships. The perception matters on considering the whole space, the whole pictorial surface “at once”, as the dominant “thing” the viewer is going to see. If the graphic element is isolated than the image will lose its impact and power of persuation.

Among the best examples of graphics are characteres and other forms of writing like we see in those “not to far alive” cultures of the North America (Navajo and many “prairie´s cultures” ,to the Canadian Northwest coast´s cultures, where today is the British Columbia); at Middle America, like the Youcatan´s cultures (the Maya Empire) and at South America (Inca´s Empire and some people of the forests). These cultures demonstrate how graphics have been intensively used. They also show how rich and varied basic shapes can be and how these variations of simple geometric repeatitions effect how we receive the meaning and mainly, how form and presentation come together. Could not be different if we consider that these works weren´t “art” in the same sense of today. Mostly they were related with the magic proprieties of lines and colors and the patterns were transmited to initiates from a generation to another.

Here we must to make a stop to remind that we are dealing with a long tradition of making marks that carry meanings. In this sense the recent destruction and smugglering of thousands of Mesopotamic clay tablets at the Bagda Archeological Museum must be complaint due they are among the earliest examples of mankind writings.

Where can we get themes and ideas for our modern graphics with meanings? I would say that everywhere in the history of visual culture “written” with images made out of strokes and filling. For us today, the “inspiration” is not limited to comics, cartoons and publicity. Sources extend from the graphic art of the cave´s men about 50,000 (guessing) years ago to contemporary street graffitis. Just a detail brought by the Italian writter Italo Calvino on a text in his book “Sand´s Collection” : the walls of the ancient Rome were fully covered with pornographic grafittis. The whole city was nastily “written”. Very inspiring!

But the list still continues: experimental typographic poems of the Dadaism to the numbers and letters in paintings, drawings and prints of pop artists like Frank Stella and Jasper Johns.

These are some few examples I can remember now. And these examples are comming to my mind after viewing some new works done with Mark Townsend’s recent project. I prefer to leave the commentary with Ron Barnett:

“In a related matter, Mark's Sprite program is integrating a whole world of images into fractal art. Kerry did some work along these lines a number of years ago, and Mark Hammond's BringItIn was another step in this direction. I think we are entering an expanded era for algorithmic art with the integration of several algorithmic types (traditional, IFS, raytracing, etc).”

Without going to far with my thoughts, I would say that the swirling eyes Mark is showing here appears to be the beginning of something new, perhaps a synthesis of fractals embodied by facts and matters of life and the merging inside a long cultural tradition. Let us see what we´re going to do with so many of that.