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Architecture and Organic Matter Fuse in a Fractal Short Film

Video artist Julius Horsthuis returns with a new method for creating fractal video art.
Images courtesy the artist

Visual effects and video artist Julius Horsthuis could be to fractals what James Cameron is to 3D filmmaking. He sees fractals everywhere, using them as pieces in much larger puzzles that feature monumental scales and vibrant colors. These are videos that seem to channel alien worlds, but that are actually inspired by the selfsame patterns of our own planet.

In his latest, Emergence, Horsthuis creates a series of organic fractal landscapes with geometric structures. “Between the organic and the geometric, interesting things happen,” Horthius says. Interesting is an understatement here; what Horsthuis achieves is breathtaking. Pyramids, impossibly textured landscapes, and other surfaces and objects showcase the fusion of architecture and earthen textures. In other words, buildings often look like matter, and matter often looks like buildings.

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“I knew that it existed before, but had never really tried to make anything with the method,” Horsthuis explains on his website. “I'm talking about DE combinate, a method in Mandelbulb3D that lets you combine fractals in another way. You can actually have two completely different fractals in one scene. One has to be a simple one that consists as only one formula, and the other can be a regular one that is more complex.”

Horsthuis explains that he tried to make the geometric structures that exist in a natural scene, like a jungle. When the two different fractals intersect, he says they created objects like the ornamental structures in the “Garden Temple” scene—”half ‘Amazing Box’ (the temple) and half the mix of formulas that created the plants and flowers.”

“When I made this in 2016, I had just returned from a short but very inspiring journey to Chiang Mai, Thailand,” Horsthuis adds. “I was invited there by visionary artist Android Jones to talk about working together on his fulldome project Samskara. It was a truly amazing trip and I imagine that the lush temples I saw there must have somehow inspired this piece as well. This is also true about the music I used for this piece. I had never heard of David Tipper, but Andrew (Android) introduced me to his music. This particular piece, ‘The Bedraggling,' went very well with the eerie and weird landscapes.”

Emergence from Julius Horsthuis on Vimeo.

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Click here to see more of Julius Horsthuis’ work.

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