'Prometheus' Meets 'Dune' in a Series of Stunning Fractals

In a new series of striking and strange fractal visuals artist Patrice Olivier ACARDY journeys through the textures and surfaces of an imagined alien world.

by Kevin Holmes

May 10, 2017, 6:40pm

Surreal, fleshy, porous, alien; these are the textures explored in the latest 3D fractal images of Reunion Island-based artist Patrice Olivier ACARDY. The theme behind the visuals is a journey into a fictional "mineral organism planet with porous surfaces like bone."

In this bizarre yet stunning world, ACARDY notes that the wing of a raven is "hydrocarbon-colored" with a texture of "feather, volcanic rock and wood." Looking at the visuals, you could be inside an organism traveling through its biological systems or looking at the architecture of far flung civilization, just as much as you could the surface of an alien planet, where the scientific laws of our world hold no sway.

These fractal fancies were created using Mandelbulb 3D, where ACARDY used the software's bank of fractal forms to create new hybrid versions for his exotic macrocosm.

"The combinations are endless," ACARDY tells Creators. "On my hard drive I have huge collections of textures like tree/wood, water, shell, plastic, metal, everything. Every time I see a texture in nature I take a picture with my smartphone then I study it by observation to understand."

ACARDY likens the ability to be able to create a 3D fractal universe and glide through it in Mandelbulb 3D to the sensation of building the cosmos. "Ridley Scott's Prometheus movie talks a little about this," notes the artist. "And maybe that one day, in the future, with the evolution of technology, the human being will be easily able to really create new universes and new life forms by fractal combinations. Who knows?"

ACARDY also cites films like Voyage of Time: Life's Journey by Terrence Malick, the novel Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick, works "Rubber Johnny" and "jaqapparatus 1" by Chris Cunningham, HR Giger paintings, street artist Lokiss' paintings, and Dune by David Lynch, as inspirations.

"From an aesthetic point of view, I was looking for something quite xenomorphic (Ridley Scott's Alien)," explains ACARDY. "I mean that I was looking for things whose final appearance would feel both organic and mineral at the same time or else whose final appearance would be like something 'unlisted' or 'uncategorized' but currently in existence somewhere. I try most of the time throughout the process of creating fractals to mix things that are not necessarily done to go together, sometimes it works and when it does not work I'm looking for how these things can better blend."

Check out some images below: