(C) BoingBoing
This story was originally published by BoingBoing and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



This man makes fractals without a computer, using cameras pointed at 4K screens [1]

['Mark Frauenfelder']

Date: 2026-09-22  

In the late 1980s, Dave Blair was at UC Santa Cruz making fractal art with video cameras and monitors. Decades later, he's still at it, and his work is mind-bendingly cool. He says, "This time it's an order of magnitude improvement, I finally achieved 4K. This took some doing since I had to figure out how to get analog hue, saturation, brightness and contrast knobs like you'd find on old TV sets to control 4K screens."

Four years ago, in Make, Blair said 4K monitors with the knobs he needed weren't affordable yet. "Maybe in 2030 — but I'm hoping before then!" he wrote. He didn't have to wait that long.

In his new video, Blair shows how he did it with a Teensy microcontroller and a Raspberry Pi controlling a 4K switcher. He also explains why he set a tuba on fire and how he captured it in a feedback loop.

His favorite setting is what he calls Tangled Hierarchy Mode, named after a chapter in Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach. "I used to call this 'Insanity Mode,'" he says. "In this mode, the fractal on the right monitor structure is made of the fractal on the left monitor structure, while the fractal on the left monitor structure is made of the fractal on the right monitor structure — they are both 'making each other.'"

"Because everything that happens on one monitor affects all the others, things can get rapidly out of control," he says. "I liken it to reaching critical mass in a nuclear explosion. Things remain calm until you get to that point, and then all of a sudden, chaos. The trick is to ride the knobs so you remain right on the edge of critical mass, so interesting things happen, but chaos is kept in check."

Previously: Blair's first video feedback kinetic sculpture appeared here in 2020, and his website, theLightherder.com, has more videos and his build notes.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/09/22/dave-blair-4k-video-feedback-fractal.html

Published and (C) by BoingBoing
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/boingboing/