The very short desctiption :

inspiration from an example of homogeneous coordinates in my linear algebra book and lectures about lineartransforms.

There is a jar, with sourcecode, if you want to se it “live” or twiddle with it.

tegneri

I made have generated quite some random attractors.

Now I need to find the most beautiful ones, and I need your help!

I have created a voting system, where 3 attractors line up and you select the best one. The votes are then accumulated and and overall top 10 is generated.

Strange Attractor wars

It is heavily inspired by kittenwars.com.

I have been hacking away on this far to long. But expect an article with more details on Strange attractors and probably more features in the “war” application. (like top 100, biggest looser, most victorious etc).

Now just go and make some votes

I’ve setup a gallery

There are some HDRs and panoramas, ive used Hugin and Qtpfsgui.

Depending on where you start the iteration you get a a different root, and requiring a different amount of iterations. That’s self-evident. The “funny” part is that when searching for complex roots there are areas in the complex plane, where a very small difference in starting point gives different roots, and with remarkable difference in the number of iterations.

This is a plot where each root in the polynomial x^4+2 have been assigned a different color. And each point is colored according to which root a iteration starting here finds.

Now thats the mathematical part of it. Now to the beautiful part or at least more fascinating part. The pattern reapeats it self, as a fractal, when you zoom in.

So i modified my code to zoom in, and i used a diffenrent coloring scheme where i only colored according to the number of iterations taken. This made it possible to generate a video zooming in og showing the rapeating patterns in “nice” colors.

Here a some videos :

4 roots (14.6 mb)
7 roots (50 mb)

Yes I know that its very large files, and maybe i will upload them to google video at a later time for easy viewing and less quality.

The stuff they make are relevant, questioning and thoughtprovoking. As with other concept art – it not the installation at the exhibit thats the most intriguing – but the questions it raises. At their website there are description of some of there works – enjoy www.critical-art.net

Besides Seeing the exhibition of “marching plague” I had the luck to hear Steven Kurtz speak, about Critcal Art Ensembles art and the current case. Because at the moment Steve Kurtz from the Critical Art Ensemble are facing criminal charges, they story is hard to believe – I mean that that this could happen, being charged for for making art. Heres the short introduction from The Critical Art Ensemble Defense fund.

What happened to Steve Kurtz?

On May 11, 2004, Steve Kurtz’s wife of 20 years, Hope, died of heart failure in their home in Buffalo. Kurtz called 911. Buffalo Police who responded along with emergency workers, apparently sensitized to ‘War on Terror’ rhetoric, became alarmed by the presence of art materials in their home which had been displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America. Convinced that these materials – which consisted of several petri dishes containing harmless forms of bacteria, and scientific equipment for testing genetically altered food – were the work of a terrorist, the police called the FBI.

The next day, as Kurtz was on his way to the funeral home, he was illegally detained by agents from the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, who informed him he was being investigated for “bioterrorism.” At no point during the 22 hours Kurtz was held and questioned did the agents Mirandize him or inform him he could leave. Meanwhile, agents from numerous federal law enforcement agencies – including five regional branches of the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Buffalo Police, Fire Department, and state Marshall’s office – descended on Kurtz’s home in Hazmat suits. Cordoning off half a block around his home, they seized his cat, car, computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife’s body from the county coroner for further analysis. The Erie County Health Department condemned his house as a possible “health risk.”

A week later, only after the Commissioner of Public Health for New York State had tested samples from the home and announced there was no public safety threat, was Kurtz allowed to return to his home and to recover his wife’s body.

When the police realized that it wasn’t biowarfare but art he were producing, one might be quick to draw the logical conclusion : sorry for the misunderstanding, case closed. But no, it keeps rolling and Steve Kurtz is actually in danger af getting convicted and imprisoned for up to TWENTY YEARS! Its so insane, I’m lost for words.

Please consider supporting the defense fund.

• The Critical Art Ensemble Defense fund
• www.critical-art.net