13FEB: Niccolo Casas - 3D printing fractal generated objects

Summary of the lecture by Niccolo Casas

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Niccolo started the lecture with what he understands was perceived as beauty in the 90s: symmetrical faces of conventionally beautiful models like Claudia Shiffer and young Naomi Campbell. Then he went on the 00s with a commercial showing conventionally imperfect models with crooked teeth etc. 'Now' for Niccolo is represented by Georgia Jagger's portrait who does not seem to care what the photographer or us or anyone for that matter thinks.
He used this intro to lead us into his own observation that we are now in the state of decay and decadence.
Niccolo went on showing quotes about or by people affiliated with decadence to support his argument. He observed that state of decadence seems to be historically reoccurring after a significant change in the means of communication. So far the lecture was bias to his own point, yet very interesting.
Followed a lengthy display of his photographs of details of somewhat decaying flowers with an explanation that 'that is what I did, because I could not use Maya'. I am sure that this transition could be justified or reflected on better and much more concisely. Followed a similarly lengthy show of filters applied to blown up photographs, 3D scans, filters applied to those and 3D printing of the objects or modified objects.
At this point Niccolo discovered fractals and explains a little bit about those. Not quite enough for a first timer to understand. The lecture was getting exciting until he switched to: 'and then I got invited to the 3D print festival and without knowing what I was doing, I designed in the "style" of fractals: 3D printed jewelry'. Having 'googled' Niccolo before, as far as I was aware and as the time indicated this was a grand finale that was slightly non grand considering the potential.
And only then, the very last animation showed a new piece of jewelry generated by a simple algorithm with the fractal number, that he explained before - we are programmed to like, a state of slight decay. The discussion that followed made us all understand the metaphysical context Niccolo just started uncovering, the never-ending slightly crooked cycles in nature that result in peaceful harmonies of iterations of species, their parts, patterns, and on the other end of the spectrum: the cummulations of species, materials all the way to the cosmic scale. We touched on the ever present and repeating desire of designers to come closer to understanding and replicating the magic of fractals in the baroque, rococo, and Niccolo - without mentioning it verbally - touched on to the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic mixed with abstract native tattoo techniques in his attempted first fractal accessories line. These references spanning millennia all managed to hang off off a comment about repetitive and speeding nature of the changing -isms in the society. This added a dimension of fractal number to time, on top of the space and left my brain running for the rest of the day in amazement.
Iam not sure this all has anything to do with decay, perhaps rather with the imperfection.
Niccolo did not do himself, fractals, or the whole Mother Nature justice, not intentionally, not yet, but what a lecture.