How to make fractals without a computer

Video feedback is a well-known phenomenon. If you hook a camera up to a TV and then point it at the TV, you get an infinite regression of images. However, you can use the same feedback phenomenon with multiple displays to make fractals. By displaying multiple smaller copies of what the camera sees, photographing that cluster of copies, and then repeating the process, you essentially create the self-similar structure seen in fractals. By moving and rotating the camera and projectors, you can create a very wide variety of fractal images.

The images seen in this video are not software-processed in any way. The camera is plugged in directly to the projectors. The pulsing and color shifting comes from the white balance andgain control of the camera.

In this setup, we're "computing" the fractal by using light on a wall as memory and the physical geometry of the path taken by the light into the camera and out from the projector as the processor to calculate the appropriate affine transformations. Given that both TV cameras and video projectors were around back in the late 1940s, it's possible that someone could have done this sort of setup at the dawn of the computer age.

See more of my creative projects at http://mattishere.wordpress.com/creative-projects/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• fractals
• feedback
• projector
• trippy
• graphics
• analog
• computer
• experimental
• abstract
• math
• mathematics
• optics

[ObscuraLabs]

So I tried to recreate this effect using Processing. I hooked up my camera and wrote a short program that would output the live video feed into 3 different boxes. The problem I keep running into is that while some interesting recursive stuff happens in the beginning, the feedback eventually results in the image blowing out to white (or blue). Have you run into this issue. If so how did you get around it?

[yummyfuture]

@ObscuraLabs If your camera has automatic gain/brightness control, turn it on. That will prevent the image from getting too bright or too dark.

[NusicProductions]

Toward the end where you start getting the 3d effect, how are you moving 2 projections in perfect opposite symmetry? Or am I seeing it wrong?

[yummyfuture]

@NusicProductions What 3d effect? Can you tell me the exact time (minutes:seconds) when you see it?

[tovadaq]

@yummyfuture I see something 3D around 9:10

[yummyfuture]

@tovadaq Around 9:10 I'm just moving one of the four projectors around -- I think the camera was completely still during this time. It looks kind of 3d, but it's really the same flat imagery you see throughout the video.

[RedSuit1]

Suddenly, the universe begins to lag....

[MathematicsOverCocoa]

Incredible! the reason this feels almost spiritual shows that math is the logic behind reason..

[andsalomoni]

This is what David Bowman really saw...

[TheSoupyOne]

This makes me wonder about golden ratio and if it equates to a mathematical expression of fractality.....

[MsZoey77]

Woooooww. It's funny how he did it within seconds, what would normally take someone else a LOT longer haha.

Amazing video man!

[1Moregano1]

Fantastic! This is exactly what I was looking for! Do you have any ideas as to alternate ways I might do this with only one screen? I wish I had four projectors to do it with, but alas! no. haha.

[alexandergosselin]

Awesome!

[DjVenko]

Could you please upload the track list?