last week, on october 14th, 2010, benoit madelbrot - the father of fractals - passed away. he’ll be missed by hardcore mathematicians and candy ravers alike - although the latter set probably do not even know his name. he coined the term ‘fractal’ in 1975 after discovering the self-similarity in the answer set of his equations. when graphed out, they make the beautiful images we’ve seen. of course self similarity and fractals abound in nature from clouds, to ferns, to coastlines, to space, to economics. they’re basically everywhere.

i started working with fractals in 1990 while running xelibrium. i’d render single images that i then would cross dissolve into one another at raves. back then, a single 640×480 image of a deep iteration would take 72 hour to render through the app fractint with the weak pc i used. today of course, whole complex animations can probably be rendered in week. here are a few that i found on youtube that i like. the comments from the math geeks are so cool.

not too deep but incredibly beautiful:

gorgeous very long render, with technical overlay:

beautiful long render with audio, lower rez: