This animation represents a labor of love and of enduring patience which pushed my two computers to the limits of their computational abilities for six months (they haven’t forgiven me quite yet). We were going to sell it on Native State Digital as a music video and in a fit of altruistic goodness usually reserved for folks on NPR we decided to give it away as a gift and ask for donations. So if this video touches something in you, if you think the effort is a step in the right direction away from the standard “pay to play” model consider making a donation of any amount. - Video & downloads below as well as some information on how the video came to be.

Download Compressed MP4

(353×240, 48 mb, zipped)

download full resolution

(280mb, .mov, 600×400, zipped)

Some words about the creation of this

I believe this to be the first of its kind (animated 3d IFS fractal) as the animation functionality was a feature request of mine made to Garth Thornton of Xenodream who was so kind as to implement it and make some incredible improvements upon the idea.

Through the course of the video you will see a wide variety of intentionally organic shapes which I wanted to set it to appropriate music. Rena Jones’ album Driftwood is a collection of sonic snapshots into the energy cycle of a tree from seed to driftwood washing up on a beach and everything in between, before and after. I took the concept a step further at the end and integrated my best attempt at minerals which is plant food! below are some raw uncolored stills before I colored and added them to the video.

The wide variety of organic forms resulting from relatively simple configuration of iterative functions illustrates the concept that complex results can arise from simple conditions. It is my belief that nature expresses itself on every level through fractals, limits, feedback loops, and iterative functions.

Video Stats:

Each frame took on average 15 minutes to render. The total frame count is over 15,000 (this includes sequences that were scrapped) It is estimated this animation took 2,750 hours of render time (114 days). Thank god I have several computers. However the overall scope of the project took over 6 months to complete.

From Rena Jones regarding her album:

“Driftwood is an album designed to tell the story of a tree’s life cycle. Each movement or song represents a stage in a tree’s life cycle.
I wanted the listener to be able to be taken into that world and be able to feel moments of life budding and growing and dieing and traveling across the sea only to be washed up and spring forth new life.”

Learn more about…

phidelity - the creator of this video

Rena Jones - the musician featured in this video

Garth Thornton - the creator of xenodream

Phidelity is the moniker of Kris Northern who peers deep into iterative structures, feedback loops and recursive structures to find new elements to add to his tool box for creating art and music that ex. There is plenty more on www.phidelity.com

Xenodream is a PC based 3d fractal object exploration software package. This animation represents the very groundfloor of what the software is capable of. It is simply put one object moving around two IFS (Iterative Function Set) vortices. Everything that happens in the video is still just that one object. Just think copies of copies.

They have just released version 2 of the software and I recommend checking out the website
http://xenodream.com/

This article was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 in the category: Artwork, Design & Typography, Fractal.
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