I believe the art is just a graphical representation of this particular variety of mathematical formula. It is basically a complex repeating pattern. You can carve it up as finely as you want, or expand it outwards as far as you want, but the particular pattern will always be present.
You can change the pattern by changing certain variables in the equation, one such variation being the mandlebrot set.
The only other thing I know about it is that fractal images and equations are a favorite in chaos theory. Among other things, it expresses nicely the idea that there is determinism without predictability. In other words, we cannot predict future events in complex systems, but that doesn't mean the system is random. We can always look back and identify the cause-effect relations among events in a post hoc fashion.
I'M A GEEK.