String Quartet

Does this count as music to one's eyes??

All of these are "wires and tubes" made with Apophysis.

Synergy



Subtle Star



Ceramic Fire Pot



Magen Fire Flower



More "Wire and Tubes" stuff can be seen at the preceding link.

Ten Filters that Shook the World

Well, it's actually just one, but with such power, such awesome, earth-quaking power.

Ilyich the Toad's multi-crystal.8bf is a fairly standard distortion, multi-faceted, lens filter. We've all seen variations of this all over the place.

I've always thought stuff like this was just more cheap digital tricks, and for a while I was beginning to think I was losing my objectivity by using it so much. But there's something strange and intriguing to this gimmicky thing.

The DNA of seeing.

The what? The way we see things. We are at home in the housefly's eyes, so to speak. One fragment at a time is about all we can really handle. It is a picture of pictures.



That's why 3D rendering is so hard: our eyes are always seeing more than one thing -straight ahead, and peripheral.

We see a series of fragments, but they're stitched together by very sophisticated software in our brains to give the impression that we're looking at a single smooth image; a sort of mental panoramic photo making.

We see the object in front of our eyes and we see, vaguely, the area or objects around it. Ilyich's filter I think reproduces this natural way of seeing, although it probably wasn't his intention. It looks fragmented at first, naturally, but with several hours or days of practice...

That's why I thought I'd done something to my mind. But no, the effect is real and I think it adds an interesting quality to many images. There's a depth or movement-quality to them. The images of a flip-book, simulating animation, poured onto a page. Like I said, I thought the filter was just another multi-lens variation when I first tried it out, along with a lot of other ones, but now I find it's quite creative.


The Absinthe Drinkers (of Alpha Centauri)

Sometimes I like to look all over the image and focus on the "micro-images" in it. I've made a lot of junk, but like any other tool or instrument, one discovers it's potential by testing it out and trying to concentrate on it's greater talents.

The border is a nice touch. A careful eye will soon see that he's chopped off the bottom and put it on the top and similarly switched the left and right sides. So simple, but it generally makes for a more appealling image.

One of the things that's really surprised me is how it can often produce something "interesting" out of an image that isn't worth keeping around, or an image that is "nice" but nothing special. I've always got lots of those.

Tim Hodkinson

Technorati Tags:
fractal art, fractal, multicrystal.8bf, Ilyich the Toad

 

No Statement

No statements about politics or art today, or even number theory. Janet asked me to incorporate the ideas of Rose Range Lite into an embossing formula, and here is an example of the result. I hope to publish the formulas "soon." :-)

Wassa Matta U???

Boomslang

What's the matter with us???
I just got done reading a thing in Science News that Heather Lamb sent
me where there is this big argument as to whether the paintings - and a
large found cache of them - of Jackson Pollock are "fractal".Here's a link - http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070224/bob9.asp

Embrace
The provocateur, a Ms Katherine Jones-Smith, (no relation to Ms
Nickle-Smut) and her accomplice, a mathematician aptly named "Harsh"
Mathur, claims that she can make random scribbles that display "fractal
dimensions" and that either her "work" is worthless or worth $40
million like Pollock's.

mARThematics
The article was summed up with the statement, "The difference between
math and art is not as great as people think," Farid says. "There is an
art to mathematics and a mathematics to art."

I Read the News Today...
(or, Whatta Mess)

I read thru and came up with the after-taste that basically "we know a
fractal when we see it". Apparently, fractals and what qualifies as one
are still a loosely defined science. She described Pollock's paintings
by exclaiming, "They look like a complete mess, as far as I'm
concerned". A typically robo-human reaction to abstract and/or fractal art that I
am well familiar with, considering my line of work and the cultural
wasteland I call home. I'm probably a gross aberration within the
engineering community here...

Tribute to Guido
So then what, indeed, is the matter with our brains that we can look at
fractals or "fractal paintings" and SOMETHING speaks to us at a
visceral level and whispers, "coooooolllll", that a great many other
folks don't hear??? Are we mildy but harmlessly insane???

Cool as Jesus
Are we
"enlightened" and possibly channelling the creativity of God and we somehow, unconsciously "grok" the essence of the vibe of the forms of His Creation??? (Does that sound a bit over the top?) Does the math "speak to us" in some subliminal way?

Flashback

Are some of us
possibly suffering from damage to our grey-matter inflicted by too much
indulgence in the drugs that were a rite of passage in our, for some,
distant youth???

Snake-charmer

Have we been evilly charmed and lost our souls in the miasma of some fractal
pergatory and in dire need of absolution and a working copy of Terragen??? (no disrespect to those who've mastered that program!)

---------------------------

As they say nowadays, Wassup wit dat??? Why are we so "down wit the sickness" of fractal art when many others aren't??? Are we illin' or are we chillin'? Are we hip or are we square? Are fractals really so "sick" or are we just....to use an antiquated term....weird and they are a "complete mess"???? (Do I need to spend more time with my oldest nephew so as to get my modern, hip-hop slang straight?)

Why do we call it "art" when others just go "huh"? when they see a fractal. Is it just "elitist" to even ask these questions? (BTW - probably none of these pieces could pass the test as "fractals" but they're what I had on hand... :-)

BTW2 - this "dashboard" thingie is a bear to figure out. Hopefully I haven't got as many big gaps between things as my last shot at this...
Rick

Of Deceased Mattresses, Low-budget Spaceflight and Over-built Seaside Resorts...

Waypoint

...Due to the inherently fractal nature of all creation, the arrangement of available galactic hyperspatial connector points is of course somewhat chaotic as well. And in order to get around, one inevitably must travel in a convoluted Ikenaga/Henon-like path to get from say, the hypermandel slipgate nexus in the busy, dog-eat-dog New York giga-urboplex to the softly singing, crystalline waves and a nice cool sierpinski-colada on the voronoi-plaz beaches of Lyapunov IX. Which, unless one is part of the uber-class of not so idle rich like the scions of the heirs of the inventor of the Ultrafractal 4.4208 hyperspace flightpath generator, F. Slijkerman VIII, could neccessitate overnight stays in some fairly hellish and definitely unsexy locations like the Cosmo-tel 6 here on a minor moon of Arrakeen IV.......we'll leave the light on.

Lyapunov IX

...And at last we come to the be all and end all of every galactic citizen's aspirations and dreams - the fabled voronoi-plaz beaches of Lyapunov IX! Aaahhh, to bathe in the crystalline vibrations of the waves, carefully modulated by the serendipitous result of a random Pyotr III Apo-matic flame-o-sys batch adapted from the old Kowabunga Bonzai-shred wave maker parameters that were first implemented on the public beaches of the "Denver" urbo-plex in the first century after the Global Warming of a planet with the decidely self-absorbed name, "Earth", had stabilized.



Oddly enough, this would never have occured but for the election of a particularly and adamantly ignorant leader in the planet's most industrialized socio-political geographical construct apparently called "US" or "US-A". (It is presumed by scholars at Big Think specializing in the study of that temporal period that the remaining areas of the planet went by the name of "Them"). It is surmised that he couldn't fathom the large amount of consternation in the scientific community about "Gerbil Warming" and considered it at worst a religio-personal affront to his deity and sensibilities, at the least very inconsiderate treatment of small defenseless rodents, and so he ignored it by and large, fought it when he could or hoped it would just be a passing fad like swallowing goldfish and so no programs were implemented early enough that might have lessened the amount of climate change and commensurate rise in sea levels.

(From the Inter-Galactic Thumber's Guide: Apparently, the denizens of this nondescript little world adamantly believed their's to be the only sentiently inhabited planet in the cosmos and hence gave their home-world the name meaning "ground" in their most widely used tongue. Predictably, there was much gnashing of dentalware and rending of housecoats by teachers of semantics and language after the malfunction and forced detour to their planet by the trans-galactic tour ship belonging to the hyper-neural zydeco/rock art band, Ziggy and the Arachnids, when it became painfully evident that their's was not the only "earth" one might set foot, hoof, motile protuberance, or otherwise like-functioning appendage upon. And that the security detail at the Waldorf-Astoria was woefully inadequate to prevent trashing of the premises by a determined band of drug-crazed, trans-pubescent Rigellian hermaphro-mollusks freshly in the throes of hormonal gender phasing. Thereafter, when speaking to other galactic citizens, they wistfully referred to their homeworld as "Terry"... or something akin)





Lyapunov IX was originally settled by Msr Peapod Bobblebrix esq, the half step-brother's cousin's grandfather of our illustrious Galactic President, His Puissant Hip-ness, Zaphod Beeblebrox. Concerning the provenance of Msr Bobblebrix's considerable fortune - It seems that, somewhere in antiquity, his great great great great great (enough already, nimrod!) .....grand-dad, one Rykkyrick Fracspix, a native of planet Terry, was the winner of a planet-wide "Who's Yo Daddy???" lottery that sought to determine the paternal lineage of the infant offspring of a demised female pleasure-drone named Analee Nickle-Smut and the disposition of approx. a half billion "dollars" from the residual estate of said deceased mattress. Actually, Mr. Fracspix vociferously asserted his compleat and utter innocence and uninvolvement in the whole "affair" - or lack thereof - to the world and to his apopleptic and heavily armed wife but the funds were given him anyhow and the lad sent on his way in order to clear time slots in the major "news" media for the display of odd somethings called "talking heads" who needed to get on with justification and promotion of the next batch of socially deviant candidates in an upcoming leadership selection ritual.


Oddly enough, again, (One begins to develop the distinct impression that almost EVERYTHING about the history of this "Earth" or "Terry" planet seems, well.... odd...) the matching of Mr. Fracspix's DNA to that of the offspring of Ms Nickle-Smut was again attributable to the same President (Yes, we know - The title sounds quite like a brand of toothpaste to us as well - or tuskpaste for you Vogons whom might be viewing - smile!) whose misunderstanding brought on the rise in sea level on his planet. Seems the duly appointed dividecider had little patience for such things as reading or thinking without boxes or other supporting constructs and whiled away the time he held office by being on vacation, playing with small toy soldiers in his oval play-room or by watching the planet's rather crude form of tellyvid. For the sake of expediency and to accommodate the man's woeful grasp of events, he had two cheerily blinking red buttons installed on his desk. One to launch a "thermo-nookyooler" strike upon a socio-religio-politico construct locus labelled "I-ran" (Assumed to be a location somewhere within the other main geographic area, "Them") and the other to view his favorite tellyvid broadcast, Imus-in-the-Morn, labelled "I-man".

("Thermo-nookyooler": The Thumber's Guide is a bit at a loss as to the meaning of this word but it is widely supposed that it had either to do with a small temperature controlled storage space for teapots or possibly something concerning enthusiastic Eskimo sex and the resultant ambient temperature rise within an igloo)



One ill-fated morning, the leader's second in command rang up to ask permission to pretty-please, huh?huh?, can we?can we?, launch a strike on "I-ran" as he did weekly - having forgot he'd asked already the week before, and the week before, and the week before... - and directed his superior to "just push the button" on his desk if this was acceptable. On his way to not push the button, the poor man was distracted by an intern returning a bit of cranial adornment or chapeau, his "cowboy" hat, from the local cleaner's. He thought,"cowboy hat .... ranch .... Imus Ranch .... ooh,ooh, time to watch the I-man!" and pushed the "I-man" button on his desk. Immediately, a small-yield thermo-nookyooler missile was launched, impacting at the NBC studios in downtown Manhattan in the mega-urboplex of New York City. Much to the chagrin of the City Fathers, who were quite very cranked off by this turn of events to say the least and, it is presumed, also the cleanup crew who had to possibly sop up a very large amount of pekoe tea in the streets or, alternatively, the City Mothers who didn't want their children, nor the city fathers, to witness what the Eskimos may have been doing in full view on the corner of Broadway and 5th Ave.



Twentysome-odd (there's that odd oddness, again...) miles away across a large river, the DNA sample from Ms Nickle-Smut's infant daughter was being systematically compared to that of each and every male currently residing in the "US" socio-political geographical construct. The samples were in protected storage excepting Mr. Fracspix's sample which, as Freülein Lück would have it, was being scanned at that precise moment and was consequently slightly mutated by the flood of gamma and beta rays spreading out from the bomb's impact locus. This caused the technicians to register a positive match of the sample on file for poor - or subsequently "not-so-poor" - Mr. Fx. to the DNA sample from the child. And the rest is, as they say, "history".


Lyapunov IX (again...)

Uuuhhhmmmm....right, then.... so.... the place seems to have grown up just a wee bit since it was listed in the Thumber's Guide with some appealingly buccolic and rustic pictures....Ah well, progress marches ever orthogonally and temporally in the suh-weeeeeetest galaxy this side of Andromeda, don'tcha know! This has created a particularly sullen and ill-mannered form of quasi-insurgency on the part of lesser mammon-blessed citizens who spent their nest-eggs and braved the vagaries of low-budget hypermandel slipgate travel and actually arrived intact - and in their life-times. In place of calming solitude, the slow cavorting of floopily contented mattresses and sleek porphins gliding majestically amid the flarpy-work, they are met with THIS madness and have, typically, exhausted their funds - not to mention a goodly portion of their lives - navigating the galaxy's maddeningly fractally positioned hypermandel connector nexii with the Ultrafractal 4.4208 Hyperspace Flight-path Generator - the "Huff-Gee". Fortunately, their ire is typically manifested by relatively harmless sabotage such as loosening the lids of salt shakers and placing "Willy-Washer" signs over the bidets in the first-class suites.



In addition to more than its share of five-star Cosmo-tels, condominia and go-go clubs, Lyapunov IX sports the galaxy's one and only intra-orbital roller-coaster ride, the crowning engineering accomplishment of Prof. Cuziac Mihai, for those adventurous souls who'd rather not wait for the merriment to begin and wish to arrive suitably chuffed and enervated rather than taking some sedate shuttle hop down from the hypermandel nexus. Since the design of the coaster was also plotted fractally with an early beta version of F. Slijkerman VIII's Huff-Gee, some small number of guests may never arrive planet-side due to their orbits occasionally being trapped within infinitely recursive improbability branches of whirly-brew algorithms but hey, what is life without just a LITTLE bit of mystery and adventure, eh? That's the spirit! Be off with you now - and enjoy your stay!



------------------------------------------------------------



I've always liked to make fractal art - or maybe "art with fractals"? - that "tells a story" and so thought I'd inflict upon you all the story that these two pix told me......If you actually got to the end of this blurb without clicking off in disgust, I commend your fortitude but lament your "warped mind" may resemble mine. lol j/k



Got caught up in trying some "creative writing" and sought to emulate the style of Douglas Adams' "Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books ... and interleave a bit of political and current events satire. Please - It's just play, don't shoot the liberal... :-)



Rick

Vader on Vacation

Vader on Vacation (2007)

This year Tonya will party down
at Helm's Deep. After car rentals, tummy
tucks at the Salem Witch Museum,
she plans for a better security

video. Carrying all that bionic gear
makes the whole Lord Vader thing look
silly. Our travel agent left bad maps
to the Death Star Bed and Breakfast

and all white plastic employees swap masks
for bermuda shorts and sandals. So I
showed my wife an ugly prequel. She left
me for a whiny emo kid with a raspy voice.

~/~

Image light-sabered out of QuaSZ and mind-tricked to the max in Photoshop. Plus a found poem Yoda-levitated from Google phrase strings imperial-walked from pod races search strings of "vader on vacation."

Rooms with a View
Blog with a View

~/~

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, poetry, found poetry, darth vader

Obligations

This is not a fractal...



... and neither is this ...




* looks around to see if anyone has done any homages to Magritte lately ;-) *

Rene M. liked to toy with viewer expectations. Bug people, get under their skin.

"This is not a pipe..." ... He should have let the lie stand, not talked about perfidity of images. What an opportunity he missed. A pity, but then ... he was just trying to bug people. Except, it really wasn't a pipe, it was just a depiction. Like a locomotive coming out of a fireplace, heh heh heh. Do fractals have a voice? You hear what the artist is saying?

Philip's Home Page
Philip's Blog

Baba Yaga and the Sierpinski Roundabout

Some filters make mountains, and some filters make dust. More about Illyich the Toad's multicrystal.8bf.

I start with a fractal, and then smash it up. I smash some more. Not much fractal left now. If I smash further? Less fractal stuff right?

No. This is where the filter gets pretty weird. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... and fractal to fractal. Busted and fractal have the same Latin root. See the Sierpinski Triangles appearing?


Original Inkblot Kaos Image

I start with a fractal and by apparently destroying it (ie. filtering) and moving further away from something you would call fractal imagery, and closer towards something like just plain digital imagery, I instead end up with a fractal again.

Which brings me to Baba Yaga. She's one of those characters from folktales who's an evil, child-eating witch. Being a Russian folktale, it's a little different from the Western European or British kind. Actually, it's rather surreal.

Baba Yaga's house walks around on four (or two) big chicken legs. That alone is pretty scary, but of course Baba Yaga is in there too, which makes it doubly scary. So naturally, if you ever find yourself in her house, which seems to happen a lot to people in these folktales, you want to get out of there and just start running. This is where the silly folktale gets seriously terrifying.

Apparently Baba Yaga casts a spell on anyone who escapes that confuses them, and as they run away, no matter how hard they try, they always end up running right back to her house! You don't think that's scary?


 

Original Inkblot Kaos Image (.ink parameter files)

So you see, no matter how hard I try to distort the fractal with multicrystal (and choke the fractal life out of it), I always end up creating a thousand Sierpinski triangles. There's probably some Edgar Allan Poe story like this.

If I knew more about how these photoshop filters and other programming things worked, I'd say there's something deeply Sierpinski-ish in there, or the algorithm (programmer's magic spell) does something which creates the Serpienski triple recursive pattern.

Anyhow, if I ever see anything remotely like a chicken leg in there, I'm never going to go near that filter again.

Tim Hodkinson

Technorati Tags:
fractal art, sierpinski, multicrystal.8bf, inkblot kaos, 
 

Fire and Ice

First came fire ...



And then came ice.



They met, combined and produced a silky fabric.

Valentines Special

Seen as Valentines is coming, thought some heart fractals might be in order.

Hearts Afire



Smooth Loving



Cupid's Arrow



Heart Fire



and finally

Unchained Passion



Happy Valentines Everyone! I know that Valentines is a "made up" holiday but at least we get to show off heart shaped fractals. This year, Valentines has even been profitable for thanks to Shutterstock.

Oracle of Evil

Orwellian, 1984, Mouthpiece of Baal, Howling Telescreen. My latest fractal Rorshach test.

It looks a bit like an old "Victrola". They were one of the earliest record players, before electricity was widely available, and relied on a hand-cranked mechanism that turned the record after it was wound up. The sound was amplified mechanically (not electronic) by the large megaphone-like cone that was directly connected to the primitive, hollow needle.


Original Tierazon Image, Parameter file

RCA Victor made the Victrola and was also a recording company whose logo was a dog looking into the amplifying cone of a record player. So realistic were the RCA Victor recordings, according to the logo, that the dog was completely convinced that he was hearing "His Master's Voice", as the slogan stated.

His master's voice. The Snake.

Tim Hodkinson

Technorati Tags:
fractal art, digital art, 1984, telescreen, victrola

 

"O, be some other name!"

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
--William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I do like naming images. While it's true that viewers will stubbornly resist an artist's prompt and make their own meanings from images, I still enjoy suggesting places to start. Since many fractals are highly abstract, names can sometimes provide viewers with a kind of nudge to the forehead. Hopefully, this process is less obnoxious than those Head On commercials.

Names don't have to be overly prescriptive. Viewers will still see whatever they prefer. Or, of course, they can categorically resist and deep six any title you've labored for hours to concoct.

But names can be like those mannequin torsos found in style shops. They at least provide a working semblance to hang up some preliminary but pricy rags of meanings that viewers might eventually buy.

Names also hint at an image's "personality" -- possibly providing a snapshot of its heuristic psyche.

And that's where crucial artistic decisions come into play. These critical first impression snapshots often set the ground rules for an image's tone and mood. Without such delicate pre-viewing preparation, a viewer's response to your labor of love could be nothing more than a mumbled Huh?

Let's carefully consider a couple of new images fresh off the pixel press via a brief multiple choice examination. One of the following titles is the actual name I gave the image. The others are title wannabes and currently undergoing a severe existential crisis. Ready?

As David Letterman says: Please. No wagering.

Who's my daddy?

What is the "correct" name for the image above? Is it:

(a) _____ Avoid the Fried Mushrooms
(b) _____ Ballooning
(c) _____ 1169995.8846 #7
(d) _____ Freak Out at Captain D's
(e) _____ NOTA (Your Snappier Title Here)

Makes a difference, huh? Yes, I suppose it depends on how much one wants to influence a viewer and what kind of feeling one hopes the image will project. The title candle sputters at both ends: sublime and ridiculous.

Since you're home on a Friday night instead of out carousing on a date, let's try another. You may open your test booklet now.

What's my purpose?

What is the "proper" name for the image above? Survey says:

(a) _____ A Poor Choice of Plastic Surgeons
(b) _____ Someone Left the Play Dough Out in Rain and I Don't Think That I Can Take It Cuz It Took So Long to Bake It and I'll Never Have That Recipe Again OOOH NOOOOO
(c) _____ Bishop with Bad Thoughts
(d) _____ Fried Trannie
(e) _____ NOTA (Your Sappier Title Here)

Makes you feel sorry for Adam having to name those animals -- and without even Eve being around yet to help. I'm sure all the great masters went through dark nights of the thesaurus wrestling with their inner designators as they suffered for (naming) their art.

Consider this classic case. What should this iconic painting really be called? Take a shot:

Are you ready for the country...?

(a) _____ The Nebraska Pitchfork Massacre
(b) _____ Proud Parents of an American Goth
(c) _____ Farmers Gone Wild!!!!!
(d) _____ Where's the Children of the Corn When You Need Them?
(e) _____ NOTA (Your Snarkier Title Here)

See? That just fine tunes the whole aesthetic ambiance. Seems to me that any old picture blah blah blahblahblah no matter how totally pedestrian and campy bloggity narf zort bloggity blogblogblog or how completely cartoonish yadda yoda yiddish yucky yaddayadda could be used to both illustrate if not elucidate blitherblither bluto biclighter blatherblatherblather my puzzling nomenclature crisis hypothesis zzzzzap zzzzzap zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

While. Foolish. Blogger. Rambles. On. Insipidly. Zoltar. Will. Just. Quickly. Borrow. This. Small. Item. From. Blogger's. Home.

...zzzzzzz zzzooorrrttt zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Go for it:

(a) _____ [Sung to the Quizno's Jingle] Ack Ack Ack Ack ... Good!
(b) _____ Still Life with Cranium
(c) _____ A Most Unexpected Aubade
(d) _____ Take Me to Your Viagra
(e) _____ NOTA (Your Zippier Title Here)

Well, that pretty much taps out my so-called thoughts and your endurance for one night. See you next time...unless...like... you know...you happen to actually... see my name under the post...before you start reading...or something...

[door slams]

[door opens]

Hi, Honey. I'm home. Man, what a tough night at the blog. I'm starv--

Uh, honey?

Sweetheart...?

~/~

Key: Image 1: b; Image 2: c; Image 3: e; Image 4: Oh Who Cares.

Image 1 was made with Vchira. Image 2 was made with QuaSZ. Both were post-processed in various graphics program.

Terry

Rooms with a View
Blog with a View

~/~

Technorati Tags: photoblog, fractal, fractal art, digital art, computer art, art, title

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

I was wondering, if they traded their horses for cars, what would they drive? Hybrid one seater bubble cars with good MPG? Those probably wouldn't strike much terror. Got it! Mustangs! Of course, Boss Mustangs! Vrooooom, clouds of pollution coming out the back.

At the grocery store getting fruit and veg, rejecting the ones looking about to spoil, when it occurred to me, that's why we have vision. To avoid eating bad food. Perceiving visual art, such as fractals, is just a bonus. But an enjoyable one. :-)

Philip's Home Page
Philip's Blog

Paying a debt

There is a very interesting point to be observed on meat´s consume - which is the dominance of the male over the female. From early ages of mankind to hunt was an activity for males. They join together in gangs looking the earth around for something to kill. Men invented weapons and traps while women stood in their huts and caves doing something much more important - domestication of animals and plants for human consumption.

I have read somewhere that the greatest human invention ever was the hay. Why that? Because hay made possible to feed animals during winter time. Without the necessity to go outside looking for something to hunt and eat, the tribe or clan could stay "at home" inside their cavern. Probably it made possible to them start singing their stoned-age songs and telling their tales. Free time was another invention of the women.

The provision of proteins played a vital key on the evolution of mankind. And I wonder if it wasn´t a 100% female invention. For me the invention of the hay celebrates life rather than celebrates death. Until today humanity never prized women as much as they deserve for that. Still it is an open debt men have to women :-)

To produce something is more sophisticated than to kill something. To produce something you have to be a creator. To create is an outstanding female character. All that contrary men always have imposed the dominance of the warrior and the previleges of the destructor. Until today - except for Mr. Chips - there isn´t statues for professors - creative personalities. But are lots for warriors and generals - destructive personalities.

The representation of men in art shows it very well. Men are always proud and brave; women are always shown like suplicant or tender. We, men, want to keep it like that forever. It belongs to the concept of the patriarchal family.

Another point on the consume of animals is that it inducts the notion of objectification. Men have objectified animals just to take what they want from them and leave the rest out - leaving their death out. Men love to kill animals and love to produce images of dominance. Such is the politics of meat. It is very clear to understand how the politics of meat is also applied against women: meat being a symbol of male dominance proclaims the disempowering of women! Such a condition continues until today: at offices of every company women are supposed to make coffee.

The graphic work was done after Sprite image importer and processed on UF.
The stamp shape gives another dimention to an image - since is understood that stamps are remaining in the usual belongings of our society. The current status of stamps (and money bills also) is suposing a non-critical attitude wich artists must criticize, subvert and make unnusual as well filled with new meanings.

Coaches and Artists

I dislike the "artist" label. Maybe it dislikes me, too.


Original from Tierazon 2.7

To me, the word, "artist" conjures up the image of someone who works hard and approaches their "work" with discipline and dedication. They are the subject of biographies and documentaries; art emanates from them. That doesn't describe me.

I'm more of a scavenger, a graphic entrepreneur, someone who finds, compiles, edits, and presents. Maybe a talent scout or agent or coach. I am the coach for a small team of digital machines.



I never touch the canvas, and I don't know where the paints are kept; ask one of the artists. I suppose I could try doing something myself, but I feel more comfortable taking the mis-directed talents of algorithms and pointing them in the right direction.



A coach works with other people's talent. You could call the coach a different kind of artist; coaching does require some artistic ability, of sorts. I don't know. I just prefer to call a coach, a coach.



An artist will often work for days on a single image, painstakingly working, and reworking, every detail. A coach unlocks the room and turns the lights on.


Original

Because art is produced, we call the person associated with it, an artist. But the title doesn't always fit. There are some who deserve that title. As for me, like any coach, I'm just excited whenever the team scores a goal. It's never my name that gets mentioned in the newspaper, but that's okay. They only put my name in the paper if I hit someone.

Of course, none of the players on my team can write their name, so I put my own name on the artwork, as their coach. It's simpler that way, for legal reasons. I always give them credit when I can.


Tierazon parameter files

I told the team: "Tierazon gets the ball and passes it to Overlapper, who sends it to Inverse Intensity. After that it's Renaissance for that nice edge effect and off to First Stop Randomville or Holding a Cake to the Sun, depending on how things go, for the cool colors and grainy effect. If you find yourselves short, Color Cos or Emboss Coming Out All Over will get it to the net. Multicrystal's getting a little worn out and will be sitting out this game. Don't freak out if it doesn't work the first time. Tierazon's got a formula parser and can start a million plays if you need him to. You're all first-class players, but I should tell you that I've downloaded some new talent and I can't keep everybody. So now is not the time to start slacking-off."

They tell me I'm the best coach they ever had, but I'm not so sure that's what they say about me behind my back.

Tim Hodkinson
 

Churrasco

Not that I don´t like a good barbecue - called churrasco in Brasil. Yes, I´m any way a big fan of meat. To make a good churrasco you don´t need more than salt. You fix the whole pice of meat from side to side with a spade or roasting spit and drop salt all around. The good meat has to have some fat, wich gives the best taste. You roll the spade and keep the meat cooking close to the fire on every side. Whenever the meat is roasted, you just slice it a bit to the friends and take it back to the fire. The process means to cook while eating - and drinking, of course. So, where is the secret for a perfect churrasco? It is on the distance from the fire - usually done with coal. That´s all.

It´s a meal wich has its origns in the fazendas (farms) at the South of Brasil. From there it spread to the whole country. Today is the Sunday´s national dish. At Rio de Janeiro it is often done on the streets - a group of friends join in a corner and make their churrasco already there - usually close to a bar for obvious reasons: beer and WC :-)

But my image has another background, wich is the destruction of the rainforest. In Brasil, between 1980 and 2000 about 14% of the rainforest has been destroyed. On its place the area has been cleared to create pasture for grazing cattle. Rainforest land cleared for pasture or farming degrades quickly and is usually abandoned.

But this is not all about environmental consequences of intense cattle´s production. Here´s where the appetite for churrasco is going to play badly in the story:

1.. The destruction of the rainforest by cattle farmers is destroying the lungs of the planet & reducing the worlds capacity to replenish our oxygen supply.

2.. The 1,300,000,000 cattle in the world emit 60,000,000 tons of methane per year (methane is a greenhouse gas & leads to global warming).

3.. Burning of forests, grasslands & agricultural waste associated with animal farming releases 50-100,000,000 tons of methane per year.

4.. Combining these figures, 25% of methane emissions are due to animal farming (not including the billions of sheep, pigs & poultry so the real figure is much higher).

5.. Fertilizer used to grow crops to feed to animals releases nitrous oxide - thought to account for 6% of the greenhouse effect.

6.. Fertilizer, weedkiller & pesticides sprayed on crops enter the atmosphere creating a noxious carcinogenic cocktail .

7.. CFCs are released into the air from refrigeration units used to store decomposing flesh (meat), milk & butter - CFCs are destroy the ozone layer.

8.. Ammonia from animal urine also pollutes the atmosphere.

9.. CO2 is released by burning oil & petrol in lorries, ships, abattoirs, dairies, factories etc. associated with meat & dairy production.

10.. Emissions from large chemical plants which produce fertilizer, weedkiller & other agricultural chemicals are also poisoning our air.

* Dates from '1.. to 10..' are at 101 Reasons to go Vegetarian

Well, this is not a pamphlet against cows and farmers. And even less a speech against meat´s consumption. And for sure you´re not keeping it in mind next time you go to buy meat. You know why? Simple: we´re not vegetarians :-)

This is the first time I´m doing with esa.ucl - ESA Fractal Tree.

Cool. A sort of poetic tool indeed.

My ground is tma.ucl - Painter´s Traps

And the sun is anv.ufm "bills_w0nder"