Gnarly Videos

(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)

All on their own, ordinary processes can make incredibly convoluted shapes. Consider, for instance the field lines of some magnets moving around each other, as shown in this video by Daniel Piker, who has a great blog of computational gnarl called Space Symmetry Structure.

William Rood has created a somewhat inscrutable---but mind-boggling---gnarl investigating page, just click on the screen-captured image below. It's like flying an alien spaceship, with control buttons that you don't understand. No matter, keep on clicking and gaze your fill.

Owen Maresh, another young investigator, is posting some exceedingly gnarly videos on his YouTube site. Here's one that starts out calm---like an egg---but then goes ape via some folds through the subdimensions.

And finally, how about an explanation from the old Professor himself. Here's my dada video: "What is Gnarl?" (with a narration that's partly in imaginary Norwegian).

You just don't get this kind of information anywhere except on BoingBoing!

Rudy Rucker is a writer, a mathematician, and a computer scientist--with thirty-two published books. In the 1980s he received two Philip K. Dick awards, for his cyberpunk novels Software and Wetware, which are available as part of the Wares tetralogy. Rucker has a Ph.D. in mathematics, and he worked as a computer science professor at San Jose State in Silicon Valley for twenty years. He took up painting in 1999, and he's had three shows of his pop-surreal works in San Francisco. Rucker's latest publication is his autobiography, Nested Scrolls. Nested Scrolls received the Emperor Norton Award for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason."

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AlbertF

Was a cool video, gnarly indeed and only from boingboing. The images were amazing and the video was just awesome as well.

Albert
timquinn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzgRy9dvWn8
Anonymous

“I used to have gnarly mindstate when I was young just before I went to sleep. My mind was filled with overly gnarly unsettled and complicated imagery that was ever changing and unable to stop of pinpoint. Like a complex rubbish heap filling all minds eye.

Anyone else ever get this?”

I used to have these weird images (also right before falling asleep) of huge objects, with strange properties (like they felt like they had the wrong amount of mass, or too much mass, etc) – seems similar. I guess it’s just a part of your brain going to sleep while you are still somewhat awake…
Anonymous

I used to have gnarly mindstate when I was young just before I went to sleep. My mind was filled with overly gnarly unsettled and complicated imagery that was ever changing and unable to stop of pinpoint. Like a complex rubbish heap filling all minds eye.

Anyone else ever get this?
Cowicide

Hey makers, if you want to make some of the stuff you just saw in the videos you can use this free app for Mac (coming soon for Windows):

http://leofink.de/gaston/
For real-time 3D renderings of 4D quaternion Julia set fractals

I’ve enjoyed this app for years and you can jump right into it and start creating fantastic stuff even if you don’t know anything about the science behind it, graphics, etc. It’s really easy.

CowTip: If you don’t know what you are doing, just start moving the sliders around and you’ll see instant results. You can even put your mouse over it right away, click and hold and start rotating it around, etc. to check out your handiwork.

This will work with older computers as well in real-time.

Enjoy!
kaini

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUBzTbaBQA8
Cowicide

I forgot to also give a shout out to KPT Frax4D which I used to play with a lot back in the day which also allowed for real-time texture mapping, etc. on your gnarly 3D renderings of 4D mayhem.
Anonymous

gnarrrrrrl :D
I want some of whatever the narrator/cameraman is on
teufelsdroch

@20 anon:

As a kid I remember it seeming like the room was jumping back and forth between two angles.

And, I used to have this game–also right before I went to sleep–where I rubbed my eyes so that things got all grainy, with colored spots. One of the scariest things I can remember as a kid was that, after rubbing my eyes, all those grains coalesced into some kind of a (friendly) monster, which talked to me.

I’ve always supposed that both experiences have some kind of developmental physiology reason behind them. Any other BBers have similar experiences?

I think of that monster every time I see those feedback fractals, the way shapes come in and out of the static.
Anonymous

He found the monopoles! Dirac rejoice!
Takuan

“Although most maps show Lancre to measure roughly 40 miles by 10 miles in size, its true area remains unknown — partly because of its mountainous terrain and the fact that it borders on the Ramtops, but also due to the warping effect of high level of background magic. Owing to this background magic, geography in certain areas of Lancre can take on additional properties that exist either outside, or in addition to, the conventional geographic dimensions.

Such areas include the Lancre Moors, where reality can become folded into deep troughs and ridges known as Gnarly ground. This can create the illusion that two points in space are adjacent, when in reality they are several miles apart, or vice versa. The effect, as mentioned in The Discworld Companion is that Lancre contains more landscape than a kingdom of its apparent size should be able to contain. (A similar magical effect occurs in the Unseen University Library, which has a diameter of 100 yards, but an infinite radius.)

“Gnarly Ground” can be detected by those with magical senses, or those with keen eyesight who observe how clouds and shadows appear to fracture as they pass across it. Flying over such areas is not for the faint-hearted and walking across it can be fraught with peril for the unwary.

Similarly, Lancre contains areas where the landscape echoes the state of mind of those who pass through it, leading confident travellers to find babbling brooks while, in the same place at the same time, disheartened travellers find deep valleys and raging mountain torrents.

Though it is not clear if the phenomenon is related to background magic, Lancre also serves as the physical location for (possibly two) independent gateways to a “parasite universe” inhabited by Elves.”
Anonymous

cheers rudy, you are the gnar- diggin your guestie!
mackenzi

Transhumanism? What are you, sir, trying to say about bags and ladies of the night?
jfrancis

Moebius Transformation is cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX3VmDgiFnY

Looks complicated until you see it from a new angle
mackenzi

dx = ?
Anonymous

cool
Anonymous

Rudy,
your influence is all over these vids…
http://alektraunic.blip.tv/

Seek ye the Gnarl!
sitar

From what I’ve been told, Dhumavati, The ancient Wisdom Goddess of the Tantras, is Gnarly. She is ferocious, elderly, and unattractive, creates confusion and strife, and ultimately represents the fear of old age and death that veils true immortality.

I’m not exactly sure what that has to do with tree branches or science, but I do know that if your girl ever asks you if you think she’s gnarly, its best to say no.
Anonymous

Awesome videos, especially the last one!
Richard Kirk

Gerard Manley Hopkins used the word ‘inscape’ for the patterns in nature when you looked at them closely – things like smoke and convections, the caustics you get when you close your eyes, and so forth. He also used ‘inscape’ as a verb – you would ‘inscape’ old wood, or running water. Our Gerard was a Jesuit priest, and a lecturer in Latin, and a bit of a gloom-bucket: not exactly the sort of guy you might meet at Big Sur and try a blast from his bong. But he was basically on the right track, and did write some good stuff.

I always thought ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins’ would be a good name for a pet rabbit. A big, floppy one…
Adam Backstrom

Gnarl (foreground) vs. The Terror (background): http://static.bwerp.net/~adam/2009/05/29/gnarly-terror.png
arkizzle

That’s clearly imaginary Swedish.. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu9A0LlLyvo
Bill Beaty

The E&M course at MIT has *lots* of hallucinatory TEAL mpeg animations of electromagnetic fields around coils, etc. I especially like the ones with the radio waves flowing out of dipole antennas. (They should post this great stuff on public sites, rather than burying it as mpegs!)

802TEAL3D/visualizations/faraday/index.htm

802TEAL3D/visualizations/light/index.htm

802TEAL3D/visualizations/magnetostatics/index.htm

Guided Tour of vector field animations
skramble

dude, that was sooo gnarly.

really!
teufelsdroch

I’ve always liked video feedback fractals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfrJXrzoCwU
(this is an ESPECIALLY good one)
noen

Is it significant that the third related video on YouTube for “quaternion julia set transformation” is of Sailor Moon?

Is Sailor Moon gnarly?
Chas44

Too many drugs. Some people are taking WAY too many drugs.
Anonymous

Thanks for this!
Some might call this gnarly as well: live footage of paint organizing in cellular flows, from painter perry hall. There are tons of still images of other natural geometric formations and flows, including sound waves moving through paint taken from his videos:

http://www.lovebrain.net/paintings/
Slizzered

Ah, that William Rood thingy is exquisitely weird. Got to go and spend some more time there.
kaini

i’ve long enjoyed making and enjoying gnarl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-gZMRjUWxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzqV7JipOys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMGjFi1TylQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwjHhmOUL1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1S7JnFPsJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NMMLAZBkRI