THE AESTHETICS AND FRACTAL DIMENSION OF ELECTRIC SHEEP

Abstract

Physicist Clint Sprott demonstrated a relationship between aesthetic judgments of fractal images and their fractal dimensions [1993]. Scott Draves, aka Spot, a computer scientist and artist, has created a space of images called fractal flames, based on attractors of two-dimensional iterated function systems. A large community of users run software that automatically downloads animated fractal flames, known as "sheep", and displays them as their screen-saver. The users may vote electronically for the sheep they like while the screen-saver is running. In this report we proceed from Sprott to Spot. The data show an inverted U-shaped curve in the relationship between aesthetic judgments of flames and their fractal dimension, confirming and clarifying earlier reports.