Bonsai aesthetic

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I am guessing you could find a program the would allow you to put a pic into it and let it generate a fractal image giving you a lot of different results perhaps? ;)

I have an app on the iPad called Treesketch. It simulates a trees growth and you can manipulate the process. I recommend it.
 

Poink88

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I have an app on the iPad called Treesketch. It simulates a trees growth and you can manipulate the process. I recommend it.

I played with that long way back and don't like it. Very unpredictable (unless it is my limited skill causing it). I would rather use pencil and paper than it for now.
 

Poink88

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Old people have a hard time with new technology *cough* :p

LOL I am still current technology wise so that is not the problem (I think). It is free so why not give it a try and tell us what you think? It is nice to play with the first 10 minutes or so...then it gets old super fast after (for me). The way I see it, it is just a novelty item.
 

GrimLore

Bonsai Nut alumnus... we miss you
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LOL I am still current technology wise so that is not the problem (I think). It is free so why not give it a try and tell us what you think? It is nice to play with the first 10 minutes or so...then it gets old super fast after (for me). The way I see it, it is just a novelty item.

I was just seeing if you fell asleep at the keyboard - I did try it awhile back and I agree with you :p I also have a sketch pad for basics and projects that "need to be engineered by the Wife" :p
 

Anthony

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Bonsai, being 3d, needs first to be treated as light sculpture and then one moves onto drawing.
Otherwise why would there be a back branch?
Good Afternoon.
Anthony
 

electronfusion

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This is such a fascinating question, I'm surprised there hasn't been any activity on this thread for so long. I think we all agree there are identifiable traits common to well designed trees. And plants clearly have a strong element of fractal geometry. There seems to be disagreement about whether such patterns are the causes or the effects of a strong design. I don't think we can answer that question until we know the patterns of a good design, and then try to apply those patterns. For patterns identified early on in the bonsai tradition, like thick, tapered trunks, we know that you can and should aim to create a thick tapered trunk in your tree design, and that once added, all other factors being equal, a certain amount of both aesthetic value and realism will necessarily result from having done so.

To accurately identify the patterns that correlate with strong bonsai design, we also need to reduce ambiguity by making very specific, rather than overgeneralized observations. A strong bonsai, most of us would agree, should be both attractive and somewhat realistic. So, for any pattern we identify that seems to correlate with well designed bonsai, we would need to identify whether or how much that pattern correlates to high aesthetic value or to high realism value. It also seems worth factoring in style. Since we know that certain traits are codependent, we should also distinguish between common patterns within different bonsai styles. Maybe Informal uprights need a higher degree of entropy in their primary and secondary branches in order to look good, where formal uprights need a higher degree of uniformity in their primary and secondary branches. If that were so, we could say that the ideal entropy to uniformity scale of the branches always depends to the style of the trunk, just with a different ideal ratio for different styles of trunk. But we'd need to identify those specifics before we could draw the broader conclusion.

I think an experiment could be devised that could yield some very useful information about our hobby. It would require:
-a large sample size (thousands, at least) of photos of trees of various perceived quality, from various sources
-an equally large sample of human observers, having varying familiarity with bonsai, willing to rate the images on several scales
-a set of separate aspects that we want the observers to quantify, including at least realism, beauty, entropy vs. uniformity, depth vs. flatness, angularity vs. curvature
-a format for randomizing the order in which both the images and the different rating scales are shown to the observers
-as a follow up experiment to refine the results, a large sampling of algorithm-generated images that could be shown to observers and rated on the same scale (this would identify where other factors, like photo quality, lighting, framing, or other factors influenced the results of the experiment with photos)

It occurs to me that a neural net algoryithm could also be used to find deeper patterns, and other visual aspects of bonsai worth considering in terms of design value. There's a lot of potential for in depth study here.
 

Vance Wood

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I think that sometimes it is not so much a good design as it is a compelling story and the presentation of a good story made believable without being ostentatious. They should be subtle and comforting.
 

sorce

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There's a lot of potential for in depth study here.

We already know the results though.

The trouble is a believer won't waste their time on it, and a denier will remain a denier, even though the spiral is there when they jam their own head in their ass!

I think some of these folks like arguing with Poink so much he turned them stupid. I mean, who denies what is so evident?

Sorce
 
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