XenoDream Software company profile

CEO Garth Thornton graduated with honors in Physics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 1983. He worked on a variety of programming contracts, and for 12 years in computer and network support and management. His interests include psychology, metaphysics, music and art, especially surrealism, science fiction and fantasy illustration.

"Early computer generated scenery (Voss, Carpenter, Musgrave) and plants (Lindenmayer) made an impression on me, and I experimented with programming fractal landscape generators on an Amiga from 1986. Then in January 1988 Byte magazine had an article by Michael Barnsley about using IFS fractals for image compression. I thought, if you can compress any picture to relatively few numbers then you can create any picture from a few numbers. I had visions of fantastic scenes where the details weren't limited by the artist's imagination, skill or patience. So I experimented with different ways of manipulating them, including hierarchies where one level created a structure and another level painted shapes with fractal texture. It was some years before personal computers got fast enough to consider 3D and I started working on the ideas again, and left full time work in 1998 to begin the project."

President, Virginia Sterling McCabe, studied art for 10 years with an emphasis on watercolor, pen and ink. She was fascinated by planar geometry and the art of M.C. Escher, and the way that geometric structures could be not only inherent but essential and compelling. Fractal discoveries added to the appeal, with insights into the structure of natural objects such as plants and rocks, as well as providing a means to simulate them. She loves the idea and practice of interactively designing beautiful objects that may never have been seen before, and morphing them without knowing where it may lead.

"Working with Garth to use Iterated Function Systems for new ways of creating art has been fascinating and rewarding. My vision is to introduce traditional artists to the secret world of mathematical based art."