Fractal Machinery

I just wanted to say thank you to all the studio tourists who took their precious weekend time to drive out my way and visit my studio.  It was a pleasure to meet you or see you again, and I had fun giving brief explanations of fractals and their significance when you showed an interest.  If you want to see some more of them in person, right now there are four on display at the restaurant Sixthirtynine in Woodstock, ON.  A very fine restaurant suitable for a special dinner date!

On the tour weekend I presented a few new fractals.  This is one of them (watermarked):

Pretty Cogs in the Big Machine. Fractal Digital Art printed on metal, single edition. 24x24". $425.00 Lianne Todd

Pretty Cogs in the Big Machine.
Fractal Digital Art printed on metal, single edition. 24×24″.
$450.00 © Lianne Todd

This one doesn’t really reflect the natural world so much as it reflects our complicated man-made world.  It’s not likely that most cogs in our machines are this pretty, but there is definitely a complexity in our modern technology that has beauty.  Some of that complexity, for instance, is contained in the very machine you are viewing this on.  Maybe there are no cogs, but the minutiae of its workings have to rival the intricacy they feature.  The background of this piece could also be compared to the circuitry involved in some of our other more powerful pieces of technology.  For instance, if you have a smart phone, the antenna that makes it all work had to be a fractal, or we simply wouldn’t have smart phones.

For a while I was referring to this image to myself as the steampunk fractal, as I have recently become enamored with all things steampunk.  However, giving it such a title didn’t seem to really fit.  These are far from steampunk-type gears, they aren’t real, and the machinery is not reminiscent of anything very old-fashioned.  This is just a nod to the genre!

 

 

3 thoughts on “Fractal Machinery

  1. Wow. I love this image. The contrast of the background with the “cogs” is compelling. This image reflects the natural world more that you realize. The patterns that you call “cogs” actually look surprisingly like viruses:

    http://www.virology.wisc.edu/virusworld/ictv8gallery.php

    Viruses are fractals of course. I know because I wrote a program that is capable of generating these kinds of fractals and that can be 3D printed. Last year I made a bead using this algorithm which I gave to my daughter Dayna for her Pandora bracelet. It was printed in raw silver and was stunning.

    Like

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