siggraph@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov.arpa (Siggraph) (11/15/88)
Topic: "Fractals: Found Worlds" Date: November 21, 1988 (A Monday) Time: 8:00 pm Where: The Exploratorium's McBean Theatre, San Francisco, CA Ken Musgrave will present images and techniques of realistic image synthesis developed as a part of Benoit Mandelbrot's project at Yale University. Fractal Geometry is a powerful tool for the modeling of natural phenomena. With the power of this new mathematics and computer grphics, one can "play" God in a "found universe". The process of creation of these images involves both discovery and artifice, as stochastic processes and the imagination of the artist interplay to create new worlds_worlds which never existed, yet are palppably "real". In the creation of these images, many special techniques for image synthesis have been developed, the most interesting of these will be described. The rendering is done using parallel machines. His implementation of parallel ray tracing will be explained.