anthony mattox new media art & design

Context Free Art

If you are interested in geometric fractals, Context Free Art is a very interesting program it play with. The interface consists of a code area on the right, and a rendering area on the left. The very simple script only contains a few commands, but through recursion can create fantastic fractals.

The script allows you to draw squares, triangles, and circles, and to transform them in a few different ways and color them. You can create custom rules which transform whichever rule they contain. By creating recursive functions like this just about any geometric fractal can be created. Although the program is very limited, I find it very interesting how much can be created only with transformations of three basic shapes. The program also has the ability to export both raster (pixel based) and vector images, which makes it a useful tool for creating shapes and textures, and renders the script live. If you would like to go further with fractal generation, I recommend Processing, but Context Free Art is so simple to learn it’s a fun tool to play around with.