Jeffrey Ventrella is an artist working across algorithmic art, artificial life and fractal geometry.Ventrella holds a BFA in Art Education and Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University (1984), an MFA in Computer Graphics and Video from Syracuse University (1987), and an MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab (1994).
Ventrella co-founded the virtual world There.com and developed interactive technology used in Second Life. Ventrella's work spans academia and the technology industry alongside ongoing independent research, and has been published across art, science and evolutionary computation venues.
Among Ventrella's fractal works is Bunny Tree, a curve of fractal dimension 1.8927 created in 2010 in honor of the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.Ventrella also created Clusters, an asymmetrical particle system in which particles are divided into groups with randomized attraction and repulsion rules toward one another, producing emergent organic patterns.,Clusters went on to inspire Tom Mohr's Particle Life and ciphrd's Atomic Clusters.In 2022, the painter Tauba Auerbach referenced Ventrella directly in the title of a painting, Grain-Standing Mandelbrot Quartet (Ventrella Variation).
