I’ve released an app based on my earlier experiments with kaleidoscope video feedback. I’m rather proud, an early user review heralds it as “Best eye candy on the ipad! Addictive, hypnotic and fun. Highly recommended“. I have a simple site set up at fractaleid.com, in future I hope to have more dynamic user generated content there and perhaps an HTML5 version.

This is certainly the most polished piece of work I have produced to date; it is nice to feel I have something truly suitable for public consumption. Simple manipulation via standard multitouch gestures provides a tangible and immediate sense of agency to the user, but also crucially leads to a deepening intuition of the rich and diverse possibilities embedded within as they explore more. I am thoroughly addicted to this thing!

Since stills don’t really do it justice, I should show some video. This is not a very polished presentation, but it should give a glimpse at the style of interaction and graphics:

There are still various things that I want to add, as well as making it available on more platforms. There are lots of things I could do that would have interesting results. However, I am trying to take a measured approach to the addition of features, as much of the real strength and integrity of the work at this point is it’s singularly simple conceptual basis and implementation, eschewing gratuitous ornamentation. Hopefully that coherence will not be lost as the work grows.

I have plenty of new ideas (some closely related to this, others less so) that I’m keen to build in the near future, but also a lot of old sketches and prototypes kicking about, many of which have little or no documentation associated with them, and most – at the time of writing – are not represented on this website even where images, sound or video do exist. The satisfaction of finally completing a piece of work that I feel proud of is also a reminder and motivation for me to revisit some of this ‘old’ work in order to finally polish it to the level I feel it deserves and make it presentable to the public. So if you’ve read this far, thank you very much, I’d also like to thank my father, etc etc…