Simplicity: Chocolate & Sky

To generate a fractal image is to put a face on complexity. Those richly-detailed pictures of swirling spirals or intricate patterns that go ad infinitum –the themes dominating most fractal renderings– always thrill both creators and onlookers.

Whether they think of themselves as artists or not, fractal drafts(wo)men –almost– always go for the thrill and the complex. Simplicity is most likely discarded because its statement is usually not so pompous or eerie, but calm and serene, sometimes even emptying. Plus it’s hard to figure a fractal when you only get to see a simple shape that hardly reveals its most extensive identity. For some, it may be kind of boring, I suppose, or unchallenging. Yet simplicity also speaks of beauty and infinity in its particular way, even of mystery and unknownness.

Simplicity also transmits a message. It could be more direct since it doesn’t need to travel the intricacies of complex structures, but it may equally trap the interpreter, who gets lost in its seductive contours.