There is an app on Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.workSPACE.... which seems to generate fractals using something similar because the final effects looks lot like this video and it's not slow like computed fractals. I played with this app years ago and it feels very different.

Edit: Using some slow pinches you can put the image in a continously looping state like a time crystal.

Edit: someone made a shader that behaves exactly like Fraksl. https://www.shadertoy.com/view/43lfDn

I remember seeing a simple setup very similar to this, but the operator adjusted the camera (and a single screen was used for feedback) but the effect felt like a zoom-in / flyover of terrain. I can't find that video any more, could someone point me to it?

edit: here's something from, wow, 15 years ago. It was like this but more landscape-like in the flyover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD9rr0gTLSU

Here’s a question: Is the image of the photo trapped in the loop because the camera is seeing an after-image (that is, a moment where the image stays on the monitor briefly after its input has been changed) as I say in the video, or is it that the image of the photo is just in the wires at the time of the switching, so it’s displayed on the screen for just a moment before the new image from the camera comes through, or maybe a combination of both situations?

I posted this 5 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43522396

That's really neat. Cool how fractals just emerge from the feedback loops, and that really tickles something in my brain