I've been having a bit of trouble with a fractal I posted in my last entry. The fractal had the title 'Can-o-Worms',and seemed to me an example of fine synchronicity. My novel, The Sex Life of Worms, has been very much inspired by fractals. In fact, I don't know if it's a cheesy thing to say in cyber-space, but I'm helplessly fascinated by fractals. And since the one I posted in my last entry, at least when viewed with my browser, appears to be on the blink, I thought I'd use it as an excuse to post loads of fractals with this entry.
I was reading an article in Strange Attractor, and the author mentioned fractals in connection with H. P. Lovecraft. I have long thought fractals to be somehow Lovecraftian, and was pleased that someone else thought so, too. But there is another writer/artist with whom I am coming to associate fractals, and who has also been an influence on, yes, my novel, The Sex Life of Worms. That artist is Masamune Shirow. Since I've been a little peripatetic in recent years my hobby of collecting comics got put on hold until lately when I started buying the Ghost in the Shell 2 series, by Shirow. Some of the artwork, I found in my comic-fetishist way, to be quite exquisite and even breath-taking. 
I noticed a preponderance of fractals and fractal-like designs, particularly in the climax to the series, which had a real Space Odyssey, science meets religion sort of feel to it. I'm not going to expound here on the significance of fractals. I think the context in which I am placing them is enough.
I'd like to talk a little, instead, about Shirow's work. First of all, although I read all eleven issues in the series quite keenly, I'm not sure I understood a word of it. The characters are given to spouting lines like, "I need time on the Decatoncale to take on some e-thugs…And I can't afford any competition for CPU cycles, so can we cut a deal?", to take some dialogue at random. This is a fairly light example. That's not the only thing that makes the story hard to follow. I was pleased to learn by reading the letters page that I was not the only fan who could not make head nor tail of the story. (Maybe it didn't help that I didn't read the issues in order). However, there is something intriguing about this. It creates an anxiety-ridden texture of futurity which threatens the reader with his or her own obsolescence. It also has the artistic properties mentioned by Momus in that interview, of delay and ostranenie. This kind of alien texture was something I was already working on in parallel with Worms. Another aspect that is parallel is the future fragmentation of identity into a network without a centre. In other words, in Shirow's work, some of the characters have a computer-like identity, which is piece-meal, subject to additions of software, links to other identities, and so on. This is an idea I am using in a biological – not technological – sense in Worms. This, in both Shirow's work and in Worms, leads to a diffusion of sex into obscure areas of the network, so that the sex act is no longer such a focus for sex. Well, I think this particular idea is much more explicit in Worms than in Ghost in the Shell, and perhaps partly my own interpretation in the latter case. But I do think – and I am fascinated by the fact that – Shirow seems to treat his main female character as a piece of fetishised hardware, like a motorcycle or a computer.
I am always fascinated when I find my own emerging ideas in another person's work. Maybe this is an example of convergent, or diffusing, identities. Maybe a fractal is a visual representation of synchronicity.
Anonymous writes:When I have Acid trips I experience fractals in my peripherals almost all the time, and they are vivid and colourful when I close my eyes, maybe the fractal is part of the way that we and our souls react with nature, or maybe not, who knows…
I tend to get something a bit like this:http://www.flickr.com/photos/11599963@N06/2039871282Huxley talks about visions – if I remember correctly – of geometrical jewel patterns, which are often represented in religious art as ‘inner treasure’ or some such thing.
Anonymous writes:Our minds are dynamical and therefore operate in a chaotic way in a sense. Fractals can be a natural progression of thought. Thats one of the reasons fractals are observed while on acid. Where thought is being segmented into a different idea. Observing one own thoughts. without the natural buffer which turns the idea into a natural way of thinking. I think I’m going in circles (or fractals ; 0 ).
I’ll have to ponder this.
Anonymous writes:i truly believe that we are fractals…the way our “inner treasure” as stated before, connect…this is seen further in Buddhism…Indra’s Net…which claims that there is an infinite net in which we all sleep, (in which we ARE each jewel)therefore, these jewels reflect off of each other, infinitely thus creating that fractal effect: ad infinitum.
this is seen further in Buddhism…Indra’s Net…which claims that there is an infinite net in which we all sleep.I’ve encountered this before. Someone I knew dreamt of a jewelled spider’s web, and at the same time I came across something that had the concept you’re talking about in it.
Anonymous writes:yes…. its the transcendence of thought continuously looping upon itself… waste of time to keep staring at it though. 🙂
Well, I suppose there are worse ways to waste time.
Anonymous writes:we will never know the true meaning of fractal images.
I wonder if we’ll ever know the true meaning of anything. I suppose this is a platitude, but it’s probably good that we can go on looking for meanings. If we finally found them, what then?
marcie writes:its not a waste of time the mathmatics that it goes hand in hand with is unreal. imagine what these pictures can unlock unlock the universe of our own minds
Anonymous writes:hey whoever wrote that about acid trips. I experience the same thing on acid thats how i ended up searching for fractals.
Aldous Huxley, I think.
Anonymouswolf writes:fractals are a visual representation of the scale(s)of creation.any one thing is in everything,and everything is in any one thing,in a spectrum of infinity;Each a fraction of ALL.
Thank you. That’s a nice summary. There is, I believe, an old cosmic law that says, “As above, so below.”
helioth.deviantart.com writes:alchemical laws- ‘as above so below, as within so without’, and so on, check out the kybalion by three initiates on projectgutenberg . org, if you like the sound of that.
Okay. Thank you.
Anonymous writes: I know how to think, try me, my spirits will visiting you
Anonymous writes:?
Anonymous writes:I love this page. I did a fractal search to show my son and was explaining about how things such as cellular growth of creation is done by multiplying exact copies of itself over and over. Enjoyed and agreed with the yours and Anonymous’ comments. Love the Artwork that was presented here. Glad I found this.
Jay writes:I love this page. I did a fractal search to show my son and was explaining about how things such as cellular growth of creation is done by multiplying exact copies of itself over and over. Enjoyed and agreed with the yours and Anonymous’ comments. Love the Artwork that was presented here. Glad I found this.
Hello Anon.Thanks for dropping by. Always happy to receive intelligent comments.
Anonymous writes:Regarding the commentors who see fractals while on acid; I have also seen fractals while tripping, although I was on mushrooms. I was staring at the clouds and their edges became fractal-like, very beautiful, very mesmerizing!
Anonymous writes:Benoit Mandelbrot is the reason you have fractals, not hippie acid trips. Although that might make them more fun to look at! He created the “M set” when CPU projection first came out. You are actually looking at the newest branch of Mathematics in relation to the other branches. I have heard no one here mention that! This is used in Nassim Haramein’s Unified Field Theory or “theory of everything”
Thank you to the last two commenters.Sorry I don’t have much to say at the moment.You are actually looking at the newest branch of Mathematics in relation to the other branches.Do you mean to say that fractals have not existed until recently? If the definition is a pattern that contains smaller versions of itself, or reiterates itself on a larger and larger scale indefinitely, then surely they already existed. It sounds a bit like saying someone invented triangles.
Benoit Mandelbrot is the reason you have fractals, not hippie acid trips.If it comes to that, the reason we have acid trips is not because of ‘hippies’, but because it was synthesised by Albert Hoffman in the 30s. It already existed in raw form, of course, as ergot. And even without acid there were ‘trips’, produced by other substances, that were not invented by hippies or anyone. (Who invented mushrooms?) Did Mandelbrot invent fractals, or did he perform a function analogous to that of Hoffman? I know nothing about fractals, but it doesn’t take me long to discover this kind of thing:Roots of mathematically rigorous treatment of fractals can be traced back to functions studied by Karl Weierstrass, Georg Cantor and Felix Hausdorff in studying functions that were analytic but not differentiable; however, the term fractal was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning “broken” or “fractured.”
Let us hope that progress is possible. I suppose we must assume so, or give up.
Anonymous writes:Perhaps fractals are just another stage in our development as a race? Just another perspective.
susanpohthompson writes:when i read what anon wants to share with us, i cannot believe he cannot tell us everything already!if an everyday person knows almost everything, then anon is a god of the everyday!i think the reason anon doesn’t feel sure he has the answers already is because the fractal is but one ‘unit’ of a self similar fractal.it’s is the opposite of intra-dimensional… it is a single point that isomorphically charts a map of lines between what it is and itself.it looks like the fractal is a whole picture but it is a event/thing that is a self-similar unit of another form of fractal proliferation… this new fractal proliferation may be said to exist in a different dimension (although it doesn’t – as nothing is beyond this single dimension we exist in).it’s a hard thing to accept i know, but, hey, so is the non-symmetrical nature of symmetry so what do we expect!peace guys! keep up the taptaptap! yours, susan!
daphne writes:I used to love to go down to the math lab when I was in college and look at fractals after dosing with a few friends. This may explain why it’s twenty years later and I’m back in college. I had no chance of graduating with that lab taunting me.
I’m behind in keeping up with this thread. Please amuse yourselves till I catch up.
Thumpony writes:Where does Jesus fit into this? Lord of all. My study is past the God-gene/dark-matter realm. Are fractals created? Take a trip and never leave the farm. Gotta love the internet. lol. Combining neurophysics and astrophysics, deeper and higher, to cure physical paralysis.
speedy writes:Anyone try to graph z^6 + c = z I invented the PAS which is 6, 8, 10 etc It is an array of sets if you call it the pas you can make even variable code Jordon Paul Peterson jpp PAS — Mane;brot Julia PAS I have graphed up to 38…
Anonymous writes:Looks as if it could be THE singularity. If you were walking the path of any one line on a fractal you would essentially end up in the same place even if on a different portion of the fractal. It’s theorized that all the matter that gets sucked down into a black hole exits into a white hole creating a new(and perhaps scaled down)universe. If that were to be true, then the entire multiverse we speak of in the Unified Field Theory is a fractal. Perhaps every universe in the multiverse is just a portion of a fractal. Thats not to say that there isn’t different fractals/multiverses in which events occur differently. Perhaps there are Multiple Multiverses each containing its own fractal possibilities. Just a thought.-Al Wheeler
Thanks Al. You’ve made my day a little brighter.