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Hi everyone... Just want to air my feelings on the way all this fractal stuff is being promoted... I know many of you will not like what I have to say but then again some of you will agree with me.
First of all I congratulate Light on tackling a job far better than anyone else has ever done before. There are no doubts there at all.
Secondly I thanks ALL the other contributors to the "Fractal Movement", which is just what it is becoming... However what about trying to enlighten the rest of the world to the beauty of fractals? Has anyone got any ideas as to how we can go about doing that?
We need exposure outside of dA, we need contacts who will buy our images. We also need public exhibitions where what we do can be seen on actual walls. (I don't mean Facebook)
We can educate and overeducate till we are fractally blue in the fractal faces, but really what we want is recognition, we need to make our fractals fashionable. The extent of how we do what we do is entirely up to each individual, otherwise we just become clones of each other. Sharing parameters, spot files etc...
What about our actual skills as artists, our creativity, our love of beautiful imagery? Must that now dwell in the depths of actually being educated to skills that are just not the way some individuals really want to do things.
I see a great deal of technical skill creeping in to the fractals that many of you are making and for me it seems to totally overpower the beauty I used to see. Lovely swirling colours that hypnotised all of us into wanting to create something that was specifically ours, our own designs, our own choice of colours and something that has come from our hearts and joy of the programs we are using.
I had a friend staying here last week, he is a professor at the university here in my town. It was he who over 20 years ago first introduced me to fractals. They were all Mandlebrots and full of colour. He sent them with a mutual friend, in postcard form to a new age shop I had at the time. I had no idea he had done them as I had no knowledge of him being in the art world at all. He told me last week that he used to create them on a massive plotter and each one would take all night. Sadly I don't have any of these images any longer as I would dearly love to have shared them with you all.
Looking at many of the fractals I see now, I really have to say I don't like them ... No colour, shapeless and utterly boring to look at. They must only be beautiful in the eyes of the skilled creators. Sorry I feel like this... But all I see is so many of you following like sheep and making drab boring images. I can't really see members of the public wanting them on their walls in their homes or offices...
Anyway I am very sorry if I have upset people... But it has been festering in me for a long time and had to come out.
I expect any responses to be pretty severe and will hope that some of you actually share my views and feel as I do.
Thanks for reading this.
Here are a couple of scrapbook images that show a very old fractal of mine on a wall in 2 different rooms.
Roz XX
I show my art in some very odd places, but in the end it's all good for exposure not just for my own work but for fractals overall. I submit to group shows across the country, as long as there's no rule that digital art isn't eligible. Do I get rejected? All the time. But when my art is accepted, it generally gets a positive reception and I spend weeks fielding that question we all both love and dread, "How did you do that?"
I make a point of putting my art into the competition at the county fair. I'm scheduled to do a day-long fractal demo at the fair this year, by request of the fair organizers because they think it's a great way to get younger people interested and make older people realize that digital art is a valid form of creation.
Roz x
I had two exhibitions this year, on the first one I took my laptop to show some fractal films I had made, but people did not stay to watch them...but what they did like was when I sat down behind my computer and started creating, not even very good stuff, very simple and zooming in and out the mandelbrot ...then at the next exhibition I decided to do some more official demonstration, I did a talk about fractals, showed some pics of nature fractals and fractals made on the computer and then I started showing the mandelbrot set and zoomed in and made some work...that went very well, I did it all on a big screen and with a beamer.
One man came back a few weeks later and told me he had bought Ultra fractal and was now trying it for himself. Anyway I would also like fractal art to become better known and that was my way of doing it and I am sure I will find more ways in the future...
I woul also like to hear how others do it.. selling is something different from making fractal art more well known , no I did not sell much, lots of cards though, that always works very well...at one 6 day exhibition I sold about 400 cards...
I also found that people that know nothing about it often go for what we may consider very simple fractals, nice spirals, things like that and not for the advanced stuff..
Thanks for bringing up this subject, I hope to hear more from other people too..
Thea
I ran art shops and galleries and public exhibition here in the UK years ago. Then the bit about my friends very original fractals and how quickly they sold. I think we have to wake up the world and show them what we have. Here we are all just showing each other. New program's appear as challenges that are just something new to break up the monotony of boredom. However they are not at all eye candy or even art to me, just technical jargon, we are experimenting with.
Anyway I shall keep looking for the niche we deserve and maybe one day someone will pay what our art is worth... Certainly not on this site though if you read my latest journal...
Roz x
When you say that your friend told you to get your work into a regular exhibition what kind of exhibition did he mean? Cause I had two this summer as I said and I sold no prints. It is a bad time for selling art anyway with people ( me too) keeping their hands on their purse cause everything is getting so expensive and we dont know what this eurocrises will lead to.
I find that people often like the stuff that I may see as simple and that would hardly get noticed on DA and that they dont see that something is technically advanced. What is imported is the feel, the expression...one of the cards that sell best in my collection is a black and white curl, very simple that I made when I just had my fractal program and had no idea how to handle it yet. That is also why I never saved the ufr cause I did not even know what that was at the time..
Anyway, we do need some exposure that is for sure...but how....
Thea
As for using tutorials and sharing params, if not for people posting those things here I probably would have thrown in the towel with making fractal art all together. Everyone has different ways of learning. I can read about something until I'm blue in the face but let me get hands on training and I pick up pretty quickly. Or show me examples along the way. I suppose it's up to each individual's preference.
As for getting the word about fractals out there and not just floating around here where most are already familiar with it, I agree. If not for stumbling onto fractals here at dA I doubt I ever would have known about them at all. I do not consider my work as art yet. I basically signed up here to get feedback and to be able to let those who've inspired me know how much it has meant to me. But if there is anything I do to help promote others I'd be happy to do what I can.
I'm glad you got this off your chest. Better out than in, I always say, lol.
Tara
I think my love of colourful fractals goes back to seeing those first ever fractals my friend produced. I dress in black a great deal as I am overweight and it hides all the extra bits that I can't shift now due to my age and years of steroids however my home is full of colour and art. Some is my own most is gifts from friends. None of it is garish. It is good and cheery to be with and lifts my spirits. I live alone apart from my cat who is sat here waiting for me to give her something...
Thanks for your input.
Roz X
I totally understand what you mean. With so many possibilities, fractals should be unique and original, and express some of the essence of the fractal artist. I haven't been doing any in a long while, due to very little time lately, but I would like to pick it up again soon and hopefully create my own fractals without having to copy anyone. Probably most of them are based on the same parameters because many people are new to this, so they make use of what there is out there already... Maybe the true artists are those who have managed to master the art of creating them themselves, using all the tricks they learned in completely new ways and combinations...
Thank you for pointing this out, people need to be creative, especially when they can do so much with what the fractal world offers.
About fractal galleries and such, that would be a wonderful thing! I think if this were something more frequent, people would try harder to be original. Thanks for bringing this up as well.
I am not a skilled fractal artist, maybe not even an artist at all, since I feel like I am still at a beginner's level, but I've seen works that truly deserve more appreciation than some faves on dA. For those people, the mere fact that their work is seen by more than just a few people on dA might mean a lot. If I were one of them, I would not necessarily want them to know my name or anything, I would just want people to enjoy a beautiful image.
All in all, I share your view and I hope I can learn from all fractal artists without copying any of them.
I have however noticed that rather a lot of what I thought were decent fractal artists are not to be seen any longer... Make one think really...