THE AESTHETICS AND FRACTAL DIMENSION OF ELECTRIC SHEEP
SCOTT DRAVES
Spotworks, 2261 Market St #158,
San Francisco, CA 94114, USA
RALPH ABRAHAM
Mathematics Department,
University of
California,
Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
PABLO VIOTTI
Politics Department, University
of
California,
Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
FREDERICK DAVID ABRAHAM
Blueberry Brain Institute,
1396 Gregg Hill Road, Waterbury
Center,
VT 05677, USA
JULIEN CLINTON SPROTT
Physics Department, University
of
Wisconsin,
Madison, WI 53706-1390, USA
Received January 22, 2007; Revised May 31, 2007
ABSTRACT
Physicist Clint Sprott demonstrated a relationship between aesthetic
judgments of fractal images and their fractal dimensions [1993].
Scott
Draves, aka Spot, a computer scientist and artist, has created a
space
of images called fractal flames, based on attractors of
two-dimensional
iterated function systems. A large community of users run software
that
automatically downloads animated fractal flames, known as “sheep”,
and
displays them as their screen-saver. The users may vote
electronically
for the sheep they like while the screen-saver is running. In this
report we proceed from Sprott to Spot. The data show an inverted
U-shaped curve in the relationship between aesthetic judgments of
flames and their fractal dimension, confirming and clarifying
earlier
reports.
Keywords: Fractal dimensions; electric sheep.
Ref: S. Draves, R. Abraham, P. Viotti, F. D. Abraham, and J. C. Sprott,
International
Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 18, 1243-1248 (2008)
The complete paper is available in
PDF
format.
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