The Vault has opened and from within comes the Seed of Potential. It lives within us all and can be accessed, if only we can figure out how to open our own personal vaults.

My own Seed of Potential is represented here as the Mandelbulb, the first 3-dimensional fractal first constructed by Daniel White and Paul Nylander using spherical coordinates in 2009. 2D fractals had fascinated me from a young age, and when I discovered that 3D fractals existed, I suddenly knew that I had finally found the means to express my inner world. 

I wanted to capture the feeling of wonder and also the awkward exploration I did as a young fractalnaut, by keeping the Mandelbulb as is, without manipulating it with other formulae, and by moving the camera around to follow the sphere in jerky, amateur movements.

What form did/will your own Seed take?

The Seed of Potential #2/36

Covid-19 has changed our world forever, impacting billions of lives all over the planet, mostly negatively. But how might it drive innovation in the perhaps not-so-distant future?

Bio-engineering is a buzzword that inspires awe and fear, and it should. If a programmable virus were to be created and were to fall into dangerous hands, we might all end up looking back at the Covid-19 years with warm nostalgia. But more optimistic possibilities exist too... A programmable virus might mean..: fast, safe vaccines for any possible new viral diseases? .. a cure for Age-related Macular Degeneration? .. specialised oncolytic viruses for killing different kinds of cancer cells? .. Or perhaps the perfect gene therapy, involving the perfect virus injected at birth that augments our immune system and optimizes our whole system so that we never fall ill and, in fact, have perfect vision/hearing etc for all our lives?

A human can dream, can't they?

Nanovirus

The Seed of Potential #14/36

In 2011, I did not think of myself as an artist. I had only just discovered that 3-dimensional fractals had been invented/discovered two years before, and they fascinated me. I loved combining different formulae to see what would happen. Flying through fractal mathscapes and finding unique, interesting-looking shapes and scenes was, and still is, a thrilling experience. But I was just playing around...    - // -   And then one day, I made this. I recognised it immediately as something special. I took longer than usual with it, playing around with parameters and colours, and eventually, rather proudly, saved the final image as a PNG.  - // -   I would only give it its title months later, when I looked back and remembered what I was going through at the time. I was in Brazil, gradually being abandoned after almost two years, and more alone than I'd ever felt. And there had been fury... Fury at her, at life, at myself, for letting myself follow my heart into such despair.

Fury

<h3>invisible, yet</h3><h3>invaluable, relevant</h3><h3>in nature and tech</h3><p>~~~~~~~~~</p><p>INFRARED is 1 of 9 pieces in the "NOTHING IS SACRED: Golden Ratio" collection:</p><p>1.6180339 8874989 4848204 5868343 6563811 7720309</p><p>From Pythagoras and his brotherhood to the modern day father of the new new-age "philosophy" of Sacred Geometry, Drunvalo Melchizedek, many minds have been captivated by this ratio. And certainly, it is fascinating how the golden ratio and many other fractal patterns occur so abundantly in nature, from Nautilus shells to entire galaxies. We humans and our pattern-seeking brains can't get enough of that kind of thing...</p><p>But it is one thing to appreciate the beauty of the patterns in nature that are describable mathematically, and something very different to start ascribing vague notions of sanctity to them. I see this as embarrassing, superfluous embellishment to something that is already beautiful in and of itself.</p>

INFRARED

Yavanna is the Lady of the Earth and Giver of Fruits. Her music dealt with the theme of all living things, from the greatest of beasts and tallest of trees, to the tiniest insects and lowliest of mosses. The Ents were created upon her request, and it was she who created the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin.

The Song of Yavanna

Ball-E has found itself marooned on a planet discovered recently by The First, an alien species of which it is, or was, a part of (one of their Archiver units). 

Having gotten stuck in a crevice, the Collective left without it, leaving it alone on the planet with only its own, new independent mind for company.

While struggling with its existential angst, it made the decision to tour and catalogue the planet, as was its original purpose, but this time for its own sake.

In this viseau, we see Ball-E taking in this beautiful scene of a snowy forest, after having travelled far north into the icy latitudes close to the planet's north pole. It is unsure what to make of the strange stirrings within its consciousness that the aesthetic of the scene is evoking, and has no conception of the ancient human festival of Christmas. 

But it does take several moments to archive all the incoming data in great detail, recognising the uniqueness of what it has found...

Ball-E's Winter Wonderland

The Seed of Potential #13/36

MYCELIUM

Foundation

While creating this, the thing that kept on coming to my mind was lapis lazuli, gold and the Egyptians. Egyptian mythology was something I loved as a teenager... And the vibrant blues and golds got me really excited. That was all, though... I usually need more... "connection"... to a piece for me to publish it...; some deeper significance coming from somewhere where it already existed within me. But I couldn't see it. I completed it anyway, and began trying to find a suitable name, looking into the etymology of key words, as usual. In this case, the first thing I looked for was 'lapis lazuli'. 'Lapis' simply means 'stone' in latin, and 'lazuli' comes from medieval latin 'lazulum' which is taken from the Arabic لازورد (lāzaward), itself from the Persian لاژورد (lāžavard), which is the name of the stone in Persian and also of a place where lapis lazuli was mined.  - // -  The thing is, all words for 'blue' in latin, I discovered, are rooted in this word, the name of a rock, the name of the place where it was mined: English, azure. French, azur. Italian, azzurro. Polish, lazur. Romanian, azur and azuriu. Portuguese and Spanish, azul, and Hungarian azúr.  - // -  That was it. I am fascinated with the origin of things. From words to customs to life and the universe itself. That's what this represents, and more. Turns out, the origin of the word 'origin' is from the latin 'oriri' which means "to rise". Thus I chose the plural imperative "orimini" to be part of the title. A subtle message to everyone: Wake up and rise! Realise your potential. Discover yourself and the universe around you. We and it are beautiful and only appreciable as thus by us. Stop wasting time. It's all you have.

Azourimini

Hic et Nunc

<h3>a simple pattern</h3><h3>beautiful and elegant</h3><h3>but nothing sacred</h3><p>~~~~~~~~~</p><p>PHI is 1 of 9 pieces in the "NOTHING IS SACRED: Golden Ratio" collection:</p><p>1.6180339 8874989 4848204 5868343 6563811 7720309</p><p>From Pythagoras and his brotherhood to the modern day father of the new new-age "philosophy" of Sacred Geometry, Drunvalo Melchizedek, many minds have been captivated by this ratio. And certainly, it is fascinating how the golden ratio and many other fractal patterns occur so abundantly in nature, from Nautilus shells to entire galaxies. We humans and our pattern-seeking brains can't get enough of that kind of thing...</p><p>But it is one thing to appreciate the beauty of the patterns in nature that are describable mathematically, and something very different to start ascribing vague notions of sanctity to them. I see this as embarrassing, superfluous embellishment to something that is already beautiful in and of itself.</p><p><br></p>

Kalamint

Ulmo is the Lord of Waters. His music dealt with the depths of the oceans and river currents. Most solitary of all the Ainur, Ulmo cared most deeply for Arda and the Children of Eru, and through the veins of the world he kept in touch with them and saw every grief and need, and became the closest to them of all the Valar.

The Song of Ulmo

In Tolkien's lore, angelic beings called the Ainur created Middle Earth through music. This is my humble attempt to visually render each of the songs of the 8 Aratar (the eight "Exalted Ones").

The Music of Middle Earth (Ainulindalë)

Ball-E has found itself marooned on a planet discovered recently by The First, an alien species of which it is, or was, a part of (one of their Archiver units). 

Having gotten stuck in a crevice, the Collective left without it, leaving it alone on the planet with only its own, new independent mind for company.

While struggling with its existential angst, it made the decision to tour and catalogue the planet, as was its original directive.

In this viseau, we see Ball-E taking in this beautiful scene of a snowy forest, after having travelled far north into the icy latitudes close to the planet's north pole. It is unsure what to make of the strange stirrings within its consciousness that the aesthetic of the scene is evoking, and has no conception of the ancient human festival of Christmas. 

But it does take several moments to archive all the incoming data in great detail, recognising the uniqueness of what it has found...

Rarible

How do you see the world?
How do you know what you know?
How sure are you about your truths?

For millennia, we have struggled with these questions. Since before Socrates, we've beheld the world and asked ourselves - just how much can we really know about it and ourselves within it? Can we even trust our own senses and judgement?

In philosophy, there is a name for this: Epistemology. The theory of knowledge. The mind's relation to reality. 

"mindprints" is simply this artist's attempt at visually rendering the unique ways individual minds have of understanding reality.

Read more at mandelsage.com/mindprints

mindprints #32

mindprints #40

mindprints

Carl Sagan is one of my personal heroes. The legacy of his incredible book "Cosmos", and his documentary of the same name, was extended with the 2014 "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

This is the fourth of a 13-piece collection - one per episode of the series. It is my attempt to pay tribute to Sagan, and to spread his humbling influence farther in the world.

Episode 4 is entitled "A Sky Full of Ghosts". It's all about stars and the time it takes for their light to reach our eyes. Through a conversation between William Herschel and his son, it is explained that most of the stars we see at night are much older than they appear. The nearest, only 4 years older, but the very farthest in our galaxy are almost one hundred thousand years older. Thus, many of the oldest stars we see are possibly already dead and the farthest galaxies certainly are.

It also goes into the mystery of black holes, first predicted by the little-known genius John Michell, and how even light is affected by their immense gravity.  Further explained is how key scientists built our modern understanding of light and gravity: William Herschel's discovery of infrared radiation, combined with Michael Faraday's work on electromagnetism and James Clerk Maxwell's equations, revealed that light is just one part of a vast electromagnetic spectrum—both visible and invisible. These breakthroughs led to Einstein's revolutionary insights about the speed of light as a cosmic constant and gravity as the warping of space-time.

In "Of Time and Light" I wove together symbols of all these concepts and discoveries. The black hole and the star (being consumed by it) in the background form the shape of an hourglass - a literal and metaphorical representation of gravity distorting time. The central 'universe' has red- and blue-shifted copies of itself, finally turning monochromatic, meant to represent both the invisible part of the spectrum and also the 'ghosts' of immensely distant celestial bodies. The prismed light from the center top and bottom also form pendulums, another symbol of time.  
The smaller spheres (the pendulums’ weights) depict photons, atoms, stars, galaxies and alternate universes — all of existence at different scales — which put together make the shape of an eye: the observer; that which receives all the light and tries to make sense of it.

Of Time and Light

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Is mathematics a discovery or an invention?

This question was ever-present in my mind not only as I created Ars Fractalia but in fact, in all my work over the last 10 years. Long before I started coding creatively, I was making art using fractals - insanely beautiful patterns found everywhere in nature, that follow relatively simple mathematical rules.

But then, that question begs a further question: If the doubt about mathematics exists, then surely the same question can be asked of art created using mathematics..? Is it created, or discovered?

My personal conclusion is, it is both. We are Life - the universe itself having found a way to experience itself, and we are the discoverers/creators of all meaning.

When I began my artistic journey over 10 years ago, I saw the crazy, beautiful, psychedelic fractal patterns that others generated and questioned: "Are those really their own creations, though?" .. This always pushed me to use fractals in original ways. I didn't want to simply generate a pretty pattern, give it a title, and call it art. I wanted my mind to be the main "generator", and the patterns only a form of paint and brush.

Which is why I now feel such deep gratification with the creation of Ars Fractalia. I coded it myself: These Julia fractals are my Julia fractals - each given a unique personality with my own creative algorithm.

And now it is my great pleasure to present them to you.

mandelsage

mandelsage

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