Fractal Art and Postmodern Society. 2012

215
JVAP 10 (3) pp. 215229 Intellect Limited 2011

Journal of Visual Art Practice
Volume 10 Number 3
2011 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jvap.10.3.215_1
Keywords
fractal art
postmodern society
computer art
mathematic art
chaos theory
fractality
Mehrdad Garousi
Freelance Fractal Artist
Masoud Kowsari
University of Tehran
Fractal art and postmodern
society
abstract
Among the different kinds of new computer arts, fractal art is one with a strong
mathematical background. As an interdisciplinary genre, fractal art has been attract-
ing the attention of artists, mathematicians and computer programmers in order to
promote this newly generated algorithmic art. Fractal art on account of its young age,
parallel to rewarding new creative works of art, is also experiencing steps of promo-
tion itself gradually. While it is easy to study other phenomena by rattling off their
described properties, here the study of fractal art requires a closer look at todays idea
of art and its relation to society. In other words, the philosophy of fractal art has not
yet frozen due to its still-continuing progression and thus might need further sociolog-
ical investigations. This article discusses the aesthetic and artistic aspects of this kind
of art. In this order, having described the mathematical background of fractals and
given a short exposition of todays postmodernism, this paper will focus on the role of
fractal art and its innovations in contemporary arts inspiration process.
introduction
Work of the eyes is done, now go and do heart-work on all the images
imprisoned within you; for you overpowered them: but even now you
dont know them.
(Robins 1996)
JVAP_10.3_Garousi&Kowsari_215-229.indd 215 5/14/12 10:33:37 AM
Mehrdad Garousi | Masoud Kowsari
216
As a philosophical theory about knowledge and truth, pragmatism evolved
in the late nineteenth century in response to western metaphysics, attacking
modern philosophy for its faith in absolutes and developing a pluralist, falli-
bilistic and empiricist view of knowledge in its stead. Postmodernism, on the
other hand, is a cultural formation of the late twentieth century; the term has
come to designate specific cultural practices as well as a large array of oppo-
sitional critiques aimed at undermining the central assumptions of modernity
and its discursive regimes (Amian 2008: 1, 2).
Today, postmodernist art as the presiding art form is approaching a
completely new path with utterly new definitions and concepts. Postmodern
art, in redefining all previous strict concepts of art, has started to experience
and spread some new ones arising from new complicated and mixed medi-
ums and media. Previously strict bonds are breaking and new interactions and
relations between art, artist, artwork, science and aesthetics are surfacing.
The creative process is a highly integrated activity reflecting history,
aesthetic theory and often the technological breakthroughs of the day. This
was certainly the case during the Renaissance, when artists, engineers, scien-
tists and thinkers all came together to create truly remarkable works of art and
engineering. Over the last few decades, we have been experiencing our own
Renaissance with the proliferation of digital technology (Greenberg 2007: 1).
In fact, the presence of New Wave of art intertwined with science, new
technology and postmodernist expression has made the area of judgement
and comparison out of clarity and certainty, because the linear traditional
process of art creation and analysis has given its place to far more complex
and multi-aspect mediums and interpretations. Today, one cannot provide
a precise and strict meaning and definition of aesthetics or artistic work.
The roles and identities of art, artist and work of art and their capabilities
have changed against their linear existence in past centuries. During
recent decades, art has been grasping previously unimaginable sources of
inspiration. Non-computerized art forms like Found Art, Environmental Art
and Conceptual Art were some initial examples of disappearance of formerly
Figure 1: Mehrdad Garousi, Sharpener, 2007, digital fractal art.
Fractal art and postmodern society
217
stark ideals and identifications in a novel type of artistic expression in which
everything could have any meaning.
The consequences of all these deviations bloomed as a good foundation
for what emerged as computer art in the beginning of the second half of the
twentieth century, a new kind of art that, due to its intertwining with math-
ematics, geometry, new computer technology and, on the whole, science,
became the most complex medium, a new art form that, due to its progressive
nature, is not so easy to define.
Different kinds of computer and digital art, as significant forms of artistic
statement, try to give shape to the seemingly impossible dreams and thoughts
of creative artists.
With the appearance of modern fractal mathematics, in some contexts
in contrast to traditional Euclidean geometry previously the basis of many
mathematical, scientific and computerized activities a newer and deeper
vision of nature and its behaviors has arisen, to the extent that fractals, as the
mathematical consequences of philosophies and concepts such as complexity
and chaos, are considered to contain some new insights relevant to todays
society. On the other hand, this complicated mathematical and enlighteningly
philosophical concept has been revealed in computer art as a new art form:
fractal art. This new form of algorithmic art has attracted a large number of
mathematicians and artists (Garousi 2012).
Having pointed out some examples of the relations between art and math-
ematics and mentioned the birth of fractals, we will discuss their social and
philosophical aspects. Also, as a result, we will have discussions sheding light
on the aesthetics are provided by fractal art and image making.
Art And mAthemAtics
Art and aesthetics have been considered as ambiguous phenomena without
comprehensive and exclusive definitions, and thus no scientific set of rules
can be defined to recognize the aesthetic creative factors in artistic works.
Figure 2: The Unknown Honey World, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
JVAP_10.3_Garousi&Kowsari_215-229.indd 217 5/14/12 4:21:54 PM
218
Vibeke Sorensen (1987) describes artists as follows:
Artists are [] people who create something completely original and
new, something beyond the known boundaries of the information base.
By using or inventing new tools, they show new uses and applications
that synergize and synthesize fields. Artists push the limits of technol-
ogies, bringing them to previously unattained goals. Artists as well as
scientists work with abstract symbols, representations for various realities
and working tools. Even the language used by the two groups is similar.
Scientists working with mathematics frequently describe a particularly
good explanation or solution as elegant []. The intellectual bridge of
abstraction and aesthetic consideration is fundamental to both groups.
(Wilson 2003: 19)
Mathematics has also emerged from nature. Yet due to enjoying a logical and
recurring essence, mathematics is completely different from art. Based on this
interaction, art and mathematics throughout history complement each other
in various areas such as music, architecture and painting. On the other hand,
exploiting art has helped to represent natural phenomena related to a mathe-
matical formulation (Garousi and Mansoor 2009: 121). Throughout the history
of art, many masterpieces have been created using combinations of art and
mathematics.
Mathematics and art both try to express fundamental truths about the
nature of reality, seeking structure and symmetry within the complex universe
in which we find ourselves. As Einstein once said, Common to both is the
devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary
(Wilson 2003: 333).
Figure 3: Colorful Taste, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
219
Although one of the traditionally most direct usages of mathematics in art
goes back to openly emerging of geometric patterns and ratios in architecture,
the very straight appearance of mathematics in modern art has intertwined
with development of digital technology and invention of first computers. Due
to the presence of computers, artists and scientists found themselves in front
of a gate through which everything could be created by means of mathemati-
cal algorithms. In this new medium, the mother language of every presen-
tation was inevitably mathematics. The sudden evolution of computers and
related mathematical algorithms in image-making led to several fundamental
queries regarding the aesthetics of this new form of art. Aesthetics, having
been perceived earlier as an immediate bridge between nature, artist and
spectator, was challenged in postmodernism due to the significant role of new
technology in the different creation processes of artworks. In this manner, the
Figure 4: Laser Shooter, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
220
leading mathematicians directly behind the technology were responsible for
a part or most of the creation process, and therefore the distinctions between
artist, computer and art piece declined, and in many cases were completely
dissolved. The computer, as the updated representation of science based on
mathematical rules, was occasionally introduced as the main creator of the
artwork. Even though it seemed as if the decrease of sensational relevance of
artist and nature would cause distance between art and nature, the essential
coincidence of art and nature was increased because of the strength of the
new connections between art and mathematics.
Fractals
In the past, mathematics has been concerned largely with sets and functions
to which the methods of classical calculus can be applied. Sets or functions
that are not sufficiently smooth or regular have tended to be ignored as path-
ological and not worthy of study. Certainly, they were regarded as individual
curiosities and only rarely were thought of as a class to which a general theory
might be applicable.
In recent years this attitude has changed. It has been realized that a great
deal can be said, and is worth saying, about the mathematics of non-smooth
objects. Moreover, irregular sets provide a much better representation of
many natural phenomena than do the figures of classical geometry. Fractal
geometry provides a general framework for the study of such irregular sets
(Falconer 2003: xvii).
Fractals resolved a bizarre problem of modern mathematics predating
about one century before its discovery, a problem that mathematicians of
classic mathematics did not have an answer to. Due to the odd and unex-
pected images and arguments that were derived from it, the ambiguousness
Figure 5: Islands and Tornadoes, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
221
of the subject continued until Benoit Mandelbrot, by means of new computer
technology, attempted to draw their accurate features. After the emergence
of several never-before-seen images of these new mathematical phenom-
ena and their comparison, Mandelbrot was able to elaborate the findings.
In fact, without the aid of this new technology, it was impossible to attain
such images with the highest accuracy and make conclusions according to the
results derived from changes in their different parameters.
A glance at the recent physics literature shows the variety of natural
objects that are described as fractals, such as cloud boundaries, topographical
surfaces, coastlines and turbulence in fluids (Falconer 2003: xxvi).
It is very interesting that the discovery of such a mathematical phenom-
enon resolved many underlying problems in other fields. It seems that the
discovery of this mathematics undermined previous dominant ideas about
the world and nature. It pulled away another veil from nature and its behav-
iour. It showed the simultaneous existence of order and disorder and provided
precise definitions for chaosity, as Newton, Galileo and Einstein had discov-
ered earlier. Fractals showed that even the most chaotic behaviours of nature
might be regular and perform according to some very complex mathematical
formulations. Fractals described a new dimension with fractional properties
and introduced scientists to the important property of most natural activities,
self-similarity.
The world must now be seen as largely fractal. It is hard to impress
the importance of this insight, but in the last decade, fractal geometry
has found its way into many sciences and arts. Everything from Stephen
Hawkings theories of the universe to George Lucas Star Wars movies
and popular novels such as Michael Crichtons Jurassic Park seem to be
influenced by fractals, while statements about its importance to science
and modern society abound. John A. Wheeler says that No one is consid-
ered scientifically literate today who does not know what a Gaussian
distribution is, or the meaning and scope of the concept of entropy. It is
impossible to believe that no one will be considered scientifically liter-
ate tomorrow who is not equally familiar with fractals. Hugh Kenner
describes the field as being [] as big a picture as this century has seen
(Batty and Longley 1994: v).
The initial presentations of this field were the features of fractals printed
via plotters by Mandelbrot. These images were so odd and beautiful that from
the first moments he perceived them as aesthetical. As Mandelbrot in his
book the Fractal Geometry of Nature, in a short section entitled Mathematics,
nature, esthetics, says, fractal geometry reveals that some of the most
austerely formal chapters of mathematics had a hidden face: a world of pure
plastic beauty unsuspected till now (1982: 4). Some writers, for example
Vilenkin (1965), call this collection of new figures a Mathematical Art Museum,
without suspecting how accurate those words were to be proven by the
present work (Mandelbrot 1982: 9).
Although some of these images, due to their properties like self-similarity,
started to be used in different fields of creating photorealistic and near to
nature scenes as visual effects, artists who knew programming were exploit-
ing the pure beauty of them as basic and only elements of their art creation.
By writing parameters exposing fractal features, they tried to attain odder and
more unexpected spectacles. Such efforts were very soon expanded and the
number of artists from other fields who were absorbed into the field of fractals
increased, and naturally a new sort of art emanated from fractal art.
222
aesthetics oF Fractals and socioloGy oF Fractal art
The word postmodernism generally refers to a form of contemporary culture,
whereas the term postmodernity alludes to a specific historical period.
Postmodernity is a style of thought that is suspicious of classical notions of
truth, reason, identity and objectivity, of the idea of universal progress or
emancipation, of single frameworks, grand narratives or ultimate grounds
of explanation. Against these Enlightenment norms, it sees the world as
contingent, ungrounded, diverse, unstable, indeterminate, a set of disunified
cultures or interpretations that breed a degree of scepticism about the objec-
tivity of truth, history and norms, the givenness of natures and the coherence
of identities. Postmodernism is a style of culture that reflects something of
this epochal change, in a depthless, non-centred, ungrounded, self-reflexive,
playful, derivative, eclectic, pluralistic art that blurs the boundaries between
high and popular culture, as well as between art and everyday experience
(Eagleton 1996).
Fractal art, as one of the latest fruits of this type of complex cultural-artistic
movement, has many of these properties. Just like postmodernism, fractal
art has grown on the basis of dubiety about the previous dominant linear
perspective of nature in science, the arts and human thought. Breaking the
historical castle of Euclidean thought, it structured the new decentred notion
which does not have the strict limitations of the past. Fractal theory spreads
Figure 6: Pantheism, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
223
the diversity and somehow instability of natural phenomena. It shows how
small changes in some apparently unimportant elements can cause enor-
mous and unbelievable results. Fractality also reveals bodies of interpretation
presenting chaosity. However, in different levels and degrees, it presents pure
order and regularity. In fact, fractality for the first time showed that order and
disorder or chaos and regularity can exist simultaneously as a unit. Therefore,
the prevalent perception of the power of symmetry in art creation throughout
the history collapsed and substituted with a complex chaosity which did not
base on elements to be defined simply. Here, instead of symmetry, some kind
of moderation exists. Moderation emerges upon the interactions between the
powers of chaosity and order governing the work of art.
In addition, different works with diverse degrees of these properties can
have different fractal dimensions that show the degree of fraction or fractality
of the pieces, just like the different degrees of fractal dimension that can be
found in some of the paintings of Jackson Pollock (Taylor 2006).
The single-point perspective in Renaissance paintings gives the illusion of
a three-dimensional space receding into the picture. Modernism overthrew the
single-point perspective of the Renaissance renewal of Hellenism in favour of
seeing from multiple perspectives. Postmodernism expanded the multi-perspective
experience by coupling the viewpoint of the outsider with the viewpoint of the
insider looking both inward and outward. The passive observation of the outsider
is extended to the active participation of the insider in postmodern art. In both
natural and social sciences, it is being recognized that the observer can change
what is being studied by the very act of observation (Alexenberg 2006: 18).
On the other hand, fractal geometry, after experiencing different types of
dimensions such as Euclidean and Topologic, presented its alternate point of
Figure 7: Galaxy of Crosses, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
224
view through a fractional dimensionality, creating a new area in which many
previous concepts such as perspective and parallelism are altered. Fractal pieces
depict a restricted area of a fractal with a degree of magnification the amount
of which would not be clear to the observer. The spectator cannot understand
where he or she is with regard to what he or she sees. Fractal pieces usually
consist of interwoven forms that continue towards the infinity inside the
image. In fact, in a fractal work, we face tunnels towards infinity, but we do not
know at which point between the infinities of the two sides of the tunnels we
have been placed. It can give the observer the feeling of both being inside and
outside the image. This is the uncertainty faced by observers of fractal images.
The impact of technology on contemporary life and culture is a vital issue
in our age. Critical theory and cultural studies attempt to link the arts, litera-
ture, media studies, politics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and tech-
nology in an interdisciplinary search for relevant concepts and frameworks
with which to understand the current world (Wilson 2003: 20, 21).
From two points of view, fractality coincides with these aspects of the
postmodern era: first, existential exclusivity, and second the inner proper-
ties of fractals. Fractal art has risen on a wider theory of fractality that has
launched a new notional and practical ideology that interprets the world
another way in different degrees and fields. Therefore, the new ideology
equally affects scientific, cultural and artistic concepts. When fractals were
Figure 8: The Carpet, 2007, Mehrdad Garousi, digital fractal art.
225
discovered in mathematics, they promptly expanded the new way of watching
and expounding the world and the philosophy of fraction. Simultaneously,
new ideas started to be used in different branches of economics, architecture,
biology, agrology, geology and sociology. Fractal art emerges as the visual
presence of philosophical, scientific or digital studies following in such fields.
This parallelism provides a great opportunity. New findings in one branch
of study can lead to simultaneous expansions in other branches. Now we
come to the second part of the argument involving inner properties of frac-
tals. Fractals have properties such as the simultaneous existence of chaos and
regularity, the fractal dimension and infinity, which tie them to human beings
in todays world. From a philosophical and sociological point of view, we are
living in a world with such properties. We are really living in a world with
fractal dimensions, and what we see in fractal images are some pure represen-
tations of them using mathematical language. Digital technology is exploited
to depict mathematical understandings of todays world. Just like the appear-
ance of different architecture or clothing in paintings from different eras, the
essence of todays life is being reflected as fractals.
Cities yield some of the best examples of fractals. Our current view about
the shape and form of cities is that their irregularity and messiness is simply a
superficial manifestation of a deeper order. And fractal geometry has much to
say about this. Cities are really fractal in form, and much of our pre-existing
urban theory is a theory of fractal city. It is clear that physical form of cities do
determine the quality of life in them just like that it has been always agreed
that the physical form of cities was the ultimate determinant of their social
and economic functioning and their quality of life therein (Batty and Longley
1994: 1, preface).
Fractal art is a natural joint answer from mathematics, technology and
visual arts to the drastic complexity, abstraction and diversity of postmod-
ernism, an interdisciplinary field that reflects the multi-origination of the
postmodern society. It is substantially a kind of computer-generated art
in which most of creation process is done in computer and artist acts as a
kind of player who chooses or prefers situations and properties through
comparisons.
In this kind of practice, artists learn as much as they can about working
with techno-scientific research so that they can function as knowledgeable
commentators. In one typical strategy, artists become technically proficient
enough to produce works that look legitimate while introducing discordant
elements that reflect upon that technology. Theory, writing and art produc-
tion become intertwined in intimate ways.
Artists can establish a practice in which they participate in research
activity rather than remain distant commentators, even while maintaining
reservations about the meaning and future of the scientific explosion. Some
analysts see scientific and technological research as the central creative core
of the present era. As Paul Brown (1992) suggests in his essay Reality versus
imagination, historians may ultimately see aspects of science as the main art
of our era:
I believe that the art historian of the future may look back at this period
and see that the major aesthetic inputs have come from science and not
from art []. Maybe science is evolving into a new science called art, a
polymath subject once again.
(Wilson 2003: 27, 28)
226
Fractal art is taking humankind closer to that ideal world of postmodernist
thought in which most of those processes of life of second degree of impor-
tance will be done by technology and human will be the main thoughtful
core of the society. Fractals are the most complex pieces of abstract works
of art that can be created. They are so complicated that they are capable of
stimulating the observer at first glance. However, throughout the observation,
their self-similarity embraces subconsciously the attitude and curiosity of the
observer, who according to his/her old natural habit is always trying to find
relation, symmetry or order among existing elements, to find out the regular-
ity governing the whole image. The interesting part of the aesthetics of frac-
tal art emerges with these paradoxical feelings. They remind us of the outer
world in which we live and feel chaotic and ordered in at once.
The relation between pluralism and individualism as micropolitics of
identities in the postmodern society is another example of this coincidence
(Giroux 1991: 21756). Fractal images comprise very small forms and patterns
that if seen individually present perfect and mature identities. A more precise
look clarifies that all these small similar components are connected to each
other throughout the image. The important property that often has a drastic
role in this regard is self-similarity, which causes the simultaneous existence
of individuality and unity. A fractal consists of geometric fragments of vary-
ing sizes and orientations but similar shapes. This property of self-similarity
or scale invariance means that if we take part of a fractal object and magnify
it by the same magnification factor in all directions, the magnified picture
is indistinguishable from the original (Rastogi 2008: 236). This property of
fractals is a parallel answer to the sociological activities and ideals of the
postmodern society, such as democratic equivalence or globalization, and
the importance of the existence of different identities under a larger over-
all unification. For Mouffe (1988: 3145), the task of radical democracy is
indeed to deepen the democratic revolution and to link together diverse
democratic struggles; a principle of democratic equivalence must be estab-
lished for the diverse struggles of workers, women, minorities and others
(Maltby 2007: 1551).
Our postmodern world seems very likely to become one of spiritual empti-
ness and cultural superficiality, in which social practices are endlessly repeated
and parodied, a fragmented world of alienated individuals with no sense of
self or history, tuned into a thousand different TV channels. This is certainly
the vision of both present and future offered to us by the postmodernist Jean
Baudrillard (Robinson 2000: 43). The endless repetition existing inside the
fragmented world of Baudrillard is the basic material of fractal space, a space
that is identified according to its fragmentation, which causes the fractional
dimension. On the other hand, in fractals none of the smallest beings has an
independent existence. Only due to our limitations of exploring at a certain
moment do they seem independent. Each small part itself comprises other
small identities, and this process continues endlessly.
A major Marxist commentator on postmodernism, Fredric Jameson,
sees Jon Portmans Westin Bonaventura Hotel in Los Angeles as entirely
symptomatic of this condition. Its extraordinarily complex entranceways,
its aspiration towards being a complete world, a kind of miniature city,
and its perpetually moving elevators make it a mutation into a post-
modernist hyperspace that transcends the capacities of the human body
to locate itself, to find its own position in a mappable world. This mill-
ing confusion, says Jameson, is a dilemma, a symbol and analogue of the
227
incapacity of our minds [] to map the great global multinational and
decentred communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as
individual subjects (Butler 2002: 3).
Art influenced by mathematics, science and technology more generally
confronts particular problems of audience literacy. Much of its audience will
be unfamiliar with the history, conceptual frameworks and discourse that
shape thought related to the technological and scientific issues that interest
the artist. It may also be unfamiliar with the artistic issues, and will be unpre-
pared to appreciate the cultural timeliness of artists esoteric explorations and
the power of the artistic resolution.
Literacy is a moving target. It is possible that art can help to increase
literacy piquing interest and providing engaging entries into complex ideas.
Some believe that at the beginning of the twentieth century, abstract art
helped make ideas of relativity and alternative geometries accessible. The
artist acts as a kind of pioneer or homesteader assimilating new concepts
and areas of enquiry and reflecting on them in his or her art.
Timing can be crucial to literacy. As scientific ideas and technologies
diffuse into a society, more of the population acquires the background to
interpret the art. Determining the potential spread of ideas is often difficult
when they are new. For example, developers of the first computers believed
that programming could be mastered only by advanced mathematicians, and
that the United States would only need 3070 programmers. Similarly, the
esoterica of topics such as image processing, 3-D modelling, fractal geometry,
Internet communications and encryption concerned only advanced academic
specialists a few decades ago. Now they are embedded in computer programs
that sell millions of copies and are the casual topics of preteen hobbyists
(Wilson 2003: 335).
conclusion
Fractal art based on a new mathematical conception of the world tries to
show things more abstractly. This abstraction does not mean in any way that
it does not have a definite relationship with the real world. Fractal art is a way
to show how chaos and order exist side by side. Therefore, as fractal math-
ematics is a way of criticizing the conception order in the Euclidean cosmos,
fractal art is a new way to express the coexistence of order and chaos in the
postmodern society. Fractal art provides a greater capacity for the fractal artist
to draw a world full of contradictions and disorders. Even in this chaotic
world the fractal artist tries to find a new order. This order is very different
from the suggested impeccable order of the Enlightenment. In everything you
can find a degree of fractality, a combination of chaos and order. Fractality
not only gives us a better explanation of the physical world around us, but
also a better interpretation of postmodern individualism and society. In a
sense, fractality is a critic of the centrality of order in the cosmos, society and
the individual. Fractal art is a proper way of describing such a simultaneous
chaotic-ordered world. In addition, fractal art helps our creative imagination
to flourish in such a diverse multi-sided world. Thus, fractal art seems to be
an effective expression of the inner/outer world from a postmodernist point
of view. Fractal art implies not only a new kind of visuality, but also a new
kind of mentality. Living in a postmodern society means living with a sense
of continuous connection between order and chaos, pattern and non-pattern,
sense and non-sense.
228
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SuggeSted citation
Garousi, M. and Kowsari, M. (2011), Fractal art and postmodern society, Journal
of Visual Art Practice 10: 3, pp. 215229, doi: 10.1386/jvap.10.3.215_1
contributor detailS
Mehrdad Garousi as a freelance artist and researcher has been involved with
painting, photography and graphics for several years. Having experimented
with different media he chose mathematical and generative arts including
fractal art and topological sculpting as one of the newest and most wonderful
common areas between mathematics and art.
In addition to participating continually in several art exhibitions of differ-
ent events like Bridges, Joint Mathematics Meetings, ISAMA, Computational
Aesthetics, Generative Art, he has also published some papers in this regard
in recent years.
E-mail: mehrdad_fractal@yahoo.com
Web address: http://mehrdadart.deviantart.com
Masoud Kowsari is an associate professor of media studies in University of
Tehran, Iran. He got his PhD from Tarbiat Modaress University (2002) in
Tehran, Iran. He has published several papers in Iranian scientific journals
on new media (particularly video games, the Internet and cell-phone culture)
and popular culture and art in Iran. He is working now on a project titled
Video game Rating in Iran. The basic aim of this project is to find a way to rate
the video games in the Muslim countries locally.
Contact: Jalal-Ale-Ahmad Ave, Nasr Bridge, Faculty of Social Sciences,
Department of Media Studies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
E-mail: mkousari@ut.ac.ir
Mehrdad Garousi and Masoud Kowsari have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of
this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
JVAP_10.3_Garousi&Kowsari_215-229.indd 229 5/22/12 8:39:11 PM
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