On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Selma Singer wrote:
[...]
>>
>> Perhaps you would say that, since the machine is being manipulated by a
>> human, the product is really being produced by a human?
>>
>> What comes to my mind is fractals which could not be produced by a
>human.
>
>I would not be so sure about this. I am not sure what
>are the limits of Benoit Mandelbrot's imagination. I would
>not be surprised if he can imagine what fractals look like
>without "crunching the numbers".
>
>Another thing about pictures of fractals. It is my
>impression -- perhaps false -- that the pretty picvtures of
>fractals we see are "false color" images. By this I mean
>that the person programming the image says that values
>of the formula generating the image between x1 and x2 should be
>colored green, between x2 and x3 blue, etc. So the
>colors are not exactly part of the fractal itself. This
>is not necessarily bad, but it does indicate that there
>is a lot of human judgment -- be it esthetically or
>pragmatically motivated or whatever -- in these computer-generated
>images.
Quite so. I wrote my first fractal generating program (along with
probably five thousand other people) shortly after reading the
article in Scientific American in 1986 (back when the magazine
had sufficient respect for the intellect of its readership to
actually print the equations for algorithms in its pages, and
discuss things like "recreational computing" and "recreational
mathematics" at a level beyond that of supermarket checkout
tabloid readers). I played with such programs for each machine
I had, until it came to PC's with 1024x768 displays, when the
only way to access the graphic capability of the machine was
to fork over the money for a Visual Basic or more arcane programming
language. But at that time, the work done by the "Stone Soup Group"
on compuserve first became available (always freeware), and
far exceded my excursions. I have used their "Fractint" programs
for about a decade to create some fabulous fractal images, and
the key to generating a beautiful fractal is in choosing the
right colours. Anyone can pick an interesting location and
run the program, but most colour palettes yield really awful
images, often just painful to look at. For some of my best
pictures, I took not hours or days, or even weeks, but _months_
to get a colour scheme which would bring out the detail of the
shape in a harmonious and pleasant way.
I'm still waiting for printing technology to get to the point
where I can cheaply generate posters 3x4ft with resolution so
fine that the fractal detail is finer than the eye can perceive
even close up, as this is the best way to get the full impact
of the images.
[...]
>
>> Selma
>>
>> I've been moved to tears by some fractals I've seen.
>
>I wonder what ones. I generally find some sort
>of "pattern" in the fractal images I've seen,
>which makes the infinity of details kind of boring.
It is with posters as I've described above, using colour schemes
carefully chosen as I've described, that the infinite nature
of the pattern, disappearing into the page in from of you,
becomes overwhelming.
-Pete Vincent
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