I have just discovered an absolutely stunning website. It presents CGI pictures realized from fractales equations imagined by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot.
You can visit it with this link :
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/mandelbulb.htmlObjects in virtual 3D obtained by this way evoke completely the creations of the Ocean of Solaris. By seeing these images we really have the impression to contemplate things belonging to another world, with a complexity which exceeds the capacities of understanding of the human mind. Visually, their strangeness and their complexity have to envy nothing to the creations of the thinking Ocean, it corresponds even with Lem's descriptions of the solarian phenomenon (in particular symetriades) : arcs, vaults, columns, balconies with scalloped edges, domes, forms evoking at the same time the mineral and the vegetable...
Furthermore, the way they were created corresponds with the idea developed by Lem in its novel : objects which would be mathematical equations in three, or even four, dimensions (according to one of the theories of Solaristique to explain symetriades). I find it fascinating and I think that Lem would have liked this. There is not only pictures, we can also view videos. One shows the inside of one of these structures and gives impression to dive into a symetriade or another creation of the same type. It's great.
One of these amazing fractal pictures