> The reason they look so 'fractal-like' (e.g. trippy!) is because they actually are fractals!
While I agree with your idea about fractals (though you're a bit vague on the math details to know for sure), I also believe that a large reason the images look so "trippy" is because there is some local contrasting effect at work, generating high-saturation rainbow fringes at the edges of details and features. You get loads of that on psychedelics as well.
I bet there's a pretty straightforward reason to explain these rainbow fringes, if one were to dig into it, though.
Another (unrelated) observation I had was the feeling that the neural net seemed to be reproducing JPEG-artifact type fringes in the images? Though it could be that I was just looking at scaled versions of already JPEG-compressed output images, the article doesn't provide details (if only they had been PNGs ...).
While I agree with your idea about fractals (though you're a bit vague on the math details to know for sure), I also believe that a large reason the images look so "trippy" is because there is some local contrasting effect at work, generating high-saturation rainbow fringes at the edges of details and features. You get loads of that on psychedelics as well.
I bet there's a pretty straightforward reason to explain these rainbow fringes, if one were to dig into it, though.
Another (unrelated) observation I had was the feeling that the neural net seemed to be reproducing JPEG-artifact type fringes in the images? Though it could be that I was just looking at scaled versions of already JPEG-compressed output images, the article doesn't provide details (if only they had been PNGs ...).