Hi there fellow members of the Nexus! I'm Persistent Aura, let me tell you a little something about myself

I've actually been a member of this forum since 2007. I've allways found this the most responsible and helpfull psychedelic community on the net and thank all of you for the great work you have done. I've been lurking here for quite some time and I've enjoyed every second of it.
I've never been very active on boards until very recently I posted something in the enigmaticus artwork thread and got a lot of reactions.
I'd like to start over with a new username and account because the other one is quite old and not very secure. I'm planning to start a psychedelic artwork thread to discuss the use of fractals and other digital means to create artistic representations of the psychedelic experience. Corridors of my cells (who also has a fractal artwork thread here) has invited me to work together with him.
I've been interested in the psychedelic experience since I was just a teenager and it will allways be a very important part of my life although I rarely use them anymore. (3 times a year at max, for the moment it's been about 14 months)

I'm also a life long sufferer of persistent migraine aura (hence my username) with 24/7 visual distortions. This looks like some kind of psychedelic colourfull tv-snow (with eyes open and closed) which look allmost exctly the same as low dose triptamine hallucinogen visuals. I've allways felt there must be some kind of connection between these two experiences (maybe neurochemical). Also persistent migraine aura and hppd have symptoms which are allmost exactly the same (visual snow, depersonalisation/derealisation and many others) so this also suggest a link between them.

I wonder if there's any other persistent aura, visual snow or hppd sufferers on this forum. Feel free to contact me because I'm quite interested in your experiences.

I'm also keeping and breeding praying mantises. I just love these creatures and enjoy them very much. All of these are captive bred as I'm strongly against keeping wild caught animals. Some of my favourite species are gonylus gonylodes, idolomantis diabolica, pnigomantis medioconstricta, shizocephala bicornis, toxodera sp. (not in culture) and many more

Also people who are into fractal art and goatrance (particulary oldschool goa,nitzhogoa and nitzhonot, not darkpsy or fullon psytrance I'm not a very big fan of those) as I am a fractal artist and goatrance/nitzhogoa producer.

Many many Greets,
Persistent Aura

well then welcome Persistent Aura , I too love me some Goa trance , im not hardcore, but do love to work, paint and just space out to trance as well as some world music.

also, Praying Mantis are my favorite insect , Im not much for keeping animals anymore except my dogs, but I once was into reptiles and enjoyed raising exotic breeds like chameleons and Solomon skink, I really cant imagine what its like keeping mantis, it seems quite cool

I've always loved trance music (started listening to it when I was 8 years old) although I'm also into world music (especially reggae and dub), ambient and lot's of eastern music. I mostly like neopolitan and arabic scales

Most mantises aren't very hard to keep (especially compared to some reptiles) although there is a few more tricky species out there. I'll give an example.
- My Gongylus gonylodes (original habitat: hot, dry regions in south india) are kept at a temp between 30-40°C. Have a humdity around 40% and are fed only flying food like flies and moths. Never any crickets or insects high in protein.
- A Hierodula membranacea on the other hand will do fine at room temp. Needs to be sprayed around once every two days (humidity 50-70%) and will eat about anything.
Some are harder to breed because the males of some species develop much faster than the females so you'd need te keep your males cooler so they develop slower etc.
But generally they are quite easy to keep.

Here's a picture of one of my male subadult Gongylus gongylodes nymphs. He's doing a pretty threat pose

Here's a few examples of my psychedelic fractal art!

Welcome fellow space traveler!

Cool art

Love the Mantis pic dude, he is a ferocious looking fellow! Ive been reading a bit more about them since your posting, and I think perhaps next spring Ill buy a bunch of eggs and let them go in my garden , we have alot of Tics and now stink bugs in our area, and Im hoping the mantis will help control their over population , and then maybe I can collect some eggs next fall and raise them every year.
thanks for the info, it seems quite fascinating to me , and like I said, Ive always been drawn to the mantis, certainly they are special creatures.

oh , I wanted to say, you mentioned in the artwork posting that you do use some entheogens as inspiration sometimes, and I can mentioned how they influenced my art as well. .... but the spice is not like the others my friend, Ive tried them all, and NOTHING comes close to the spice.

Salvia, mushrooms and lsd being wonderful and having their own benefits , but the spice is beyond all of them , light years beyond.

Im certainly not pushing, because when your ready, it will come to you, no need to rush. I just wanted to say that I believe it will even help you take your artistic ability to the next level (as well as other aspects of your life). In my own experience , it was necessary for me to try to accomplish on canvas what I thought was beyond my abilities , in a feeble attempt to share some of the glorious beauty I had witnessed and the messages contained within each journey.

Your digital artwork is already so impressive , I shutter to think what would happen if you Spiced it up a bit

all the best to you ~ shaman

i like your artwork! what program are you using?

Thanks for the interesting replies Shaman. The mantis is indeed a very special creature. And all those different looking species. I just love them
I'm wondering what would happen if I spiced up my artwork as well It'll come when the time is right. I'm defenitely not in a hurry.

@eyorca: I mostly work with apophyis, mandelbulb3d and ultra fractal. The first two are free.

These pics are really sick. I feel really inspired to make some like that. Since i pretty good around i computer seems like a cool hobby

Well etybdrawkcab I you feel like making this yourself I urge you to do so It's very fun and rewarding
And if you now anything about computers, math, coding be sure to check out fractalforums you'll be able to learn a lot over there.

On this page at the fractal forums website you can download the mandelbulb3d software for free. It's the progrom I use to make those 3D fractals. It's not that hard to work with as well.
http://www.fractalforums.com/in...ownloads;sa=view;down=18

here's some more renders I made in the last few days.




And here you can download the apophysis software (which is open source) which is also a very nice fractal program.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/apophysis7x/

I made a short animation in mandelbulb3D!

Very nice video Persistent Aura... Do you happen to know how difficult it is to create animations of this sort in full HD, with little compression? I'd be interested to know how this stuff would project on a large screen.

Bravo, again!

JBArk

Thank you jbark.
shouldn't be difficult at all. You can control the quality freely in the program. Resolution, antialiasing, precescion of fractal calculation and so on. It renders frame by frame so compression can be done however one wants to.
I don't know to much about this stuff to be honest, the vids are compressed quite hard for fast and easy uploading (original was more then 4Gb, this one is 35Mb)
HD rendering will take ages though. That's why I haven't tried that before. On fractalforums.com you will find some people who have done this and have much more knowledge about this.

I just downloaded Mandelbulb 3d. What a cool program! Thanks for the pictures and the link.