September

Celebrating the early autumn light following a smattering of golden days.

Hot off the press

Extra, extra, read all about it! Celebrating the release of Apophysis 2.09 as thousands of addicts the world over get their fix of the purest iterations. The title comes from the likeness to rolled and stacked newsprint, but also contains an element of self-referentiality in both the first use of the program and my use here and shock revelation of a certain undocumented feature :whisper: ;)

Tip: linked transforms #2 - introducing pre-transforms

Oh joy! I recall my delight on discovering the power of linked transforms as introduced in the 2.08 release. This was a feature that wasn't trumpeted, just quietly slipped in. Well, those sneaky developers have done it again, given us a little Easter Egg quite undocumented in the spartan changelog. 2.09 has much going for it:

• much more responsive


• unused variations greyed out


• only used variables shown


• transform weight permanently visible in Editor


• transform opacity

The thumbnails are a nice addition, but an option to default to names would be better. And that Easter Egg? Right-clicking in the Xaos tab now gives 2 linked transform options: before and after. The old linked transform is now 'after', but the 'before' option, always available via a little work but again completely missed by yours truly, opens up yet another vast landscape of possibilities. In conformity with my previous notation, I'll refer to these as 'pre-transforms': all of this linked transform's output is fed to the selected transform, and it receives its input from all except itself.

All square

Just very, very square. Basic splits tiling.

Scream and scream again

A fractal rendition of Munch's 'The scream' for this 'I Want To Feel Contest'. The feeling is meant to be complex: "I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature" was Munch's own testimony. But I also fancy here a little of Sartre's "nausée", of MacNiece's "drunkenness of things being various", and more than a hint of Borges' "With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance."

A simple person, of basic unquestioning faith or Newtonian mechanistic worldview, is vouchsafed an unwonted, and unwanted, vision of the transdimensional source of all there is; or experiences how it feels to be a stretch-cover on a sofa; or, on sipping their morning tea, feels the full weight of the hardship, suffering and death that ensured that dried leaves, calves' sustenance, piped water and electricity came together to bring them their knee-jerk pick-me-up. How would you feel?

Viral

From cells empurpled with disease to those already gangrenous and necrotic, the transtellar xenovirus launches its network of fibres that turn host into toast :O

The experience of drowning

Flailing ceases. The light recedes as depth increases. A peace descends. Is death, then, peace?

Ribbons

Totally tangled.

The offering

Something to propitiate those capricious deities.

Composure

Abstract.

Mistrust

It may not be very fractal, but it's 100% Apophysis, barring frame and signature, courtesy of the CircleRand plugin.

Seeing twice

Two views competing for attention.

Pendulum

Marking time, showing duration: a calibrated measuring stick of one-way passage through a particular dimension.

Gnebula

Gnarls go all astronomical with some serious stellar birth pangs!

Shardonnay

A shattered glass of the famous white, with its lambent green-gold hues…