Does anyone know how to create algorithmic/fractal art in Motion?

Question

I reciently found out about the Electric Sheep screensaver (example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVD67pMdv9k) and it has inspired me to try to create similar imagry from scratch in Motion. The problem is, I havent used motion in a few years and even when I was using it, I was not very creative with it (mostly text and lower thirds).
As you can see from the video, it is very interesting background stuff which seem to be somehow generated from algoritms. I would like to do something similar but slow it way down and let things slowly organicaly morph. I would like the end product to be very high quality (i am seriously thinking 4k) so it can be projected on a large scale.
So my questions, does anyone know where I should begin to research to create something like this? Is motion an acceptable program for this type of work? Also, if I experiment within a small project size in motion (like 720p), can the same project be upscaled and re-rendered later at 4k resolution?
Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks all!
(I am not affiliated at all with Electric Sheep, just a fan of abstract computer imagery)

Answer 1

Up front I would say the short answer is "no"... but the long answer is "sort of".
Replicators are part of the Fractal "arsenal" and Motion definitely has those, but I think you would be very hard pressed to come anywhere near the type of fractal imaging as in the Electric Sheep example.
I was able to squeeze the following out of Motion (the base element is a simple square), but by the time it got this far, Motion wouldn't play faster than about 1 frame every 5 or so seconds. At a certain point, you end up having to render movie files in order to see it in action (and that took Motion about 8 minutes for a 12 second project [09 iMac i7].) [If you're interested, I posted a short video of these here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Fe_ydfAss. The segments are longer than 12 seconds each because these are designed to loop @12 seconds and each one was looped more than once.]
[You asked the question on the 4th - I "finished" this on the 7th... (I admit to several "false starts")]
If you have a faster mac than mine, you might be able to do more than this... and you really don't have access to the Maths that fractal apps have, so depending on your creativity for devising the "root" motif element you may (or may not) be disappointed in what Motion has to offer (it *will* try your patience!) If you would like to experiment anyway, I will explain some of the techniques I used for the above (which are, at best, rudimentary!) Once you get the basics down, you should be able to take off in your own directions.
HTH