Found a very cool tool today which allows you to produce self-referential images, like you know it from fractals. It’s called MathMap and can do tons of other things as well – it even gives you the ability to write new plugins in a simple way yourself. There’s a GIMP plugin and a standalone Mac OS X program of it. The filter that’s particularly interesting is called the “Droste effect”. Josh Sommers has a collection of images produced with it on flickr and a tutorial there as well.
Here are some of the pictures created with it:
I have now installed this plugin in my system, too, with the ebuild that I have put on Gentoo Bugs here: http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=151157
It works, but the code from the tutorial is outdated. The latest version of the code that I have come across is at version 10 and is compatible with MathMap 1.2.x, while the original code was for 1.1.x only. Here’s a link to the v10 code:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/escherdroste/discuss/72157601071820707/