Fractal art

It's obvious how computer graphics has taken the most of fractals and vice versa. Fractals are now, in fact, a compulsory topic in a computer graphics subject, due to the huge number of their applications in modeling, basically.

The word "fractal" has two related meanings. In colloquial usage, it denotes a shape that is recursively constructed or self-similar, that is, a shape that appears similar at all scales of magnification and is therefore often referred to as "infinitely complex." In mathematics a fractal is a geometric object that satisfies a specific technical condition, namely having a Hausdorff dimension greater than its topological dimension. The term fractal was coined in 1975 by Benoît Mandelbrot, from the Latin fractus, meaning "broken" or "fractured."

Fractal at Wikipedia.

I have been working in 3D terrain visualization, and it is incredible the quantity and quality of fractal techniques in order to model natural elements, like terrain, plants and woods, clouds etc. Their use is almost the only way to provide realism in such environments. And this fact is logical, since the nature itself has a lot of fractal behaviour.

Just looking at the Internet I have found several good examples of fractals and art. See this example (a bit long but beautiful):

(if you have bandwidth problems, watch all the video until the end, and press 'play' again; normally the cache is going to help you the second time)



But if you want to enjoy high quality fractal art, see Jock Cooper's www.fractal-recursions.com website and enjoy his works. Fantastic. He has some animations using fractal music... just as an example: