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cubes in six or eleven dimensions. He takes those mental creatures as the rational
starting points for his visual creation. The hypercube is only instrumental in Mohr's
creative work; it is not the subject matter.
The cube in four or more dimensions is a purely mental product. We can clearly
think the hypercube. But we cannot visualise it. We may take the hypercube as
the source of visual aesthetic events (and Mohr does it). But we cannot show it in
a literal sense of the word. Manfred Mohr's mental hikes in high dimensions are
his inspiration for algorithmic concrete images. For these creations, he needs the
computer. He needs it even more when he allows for animation.
Manfred Mohr's work stands out so dramatically because it cannot be done with-
out algorithms. It is the most radical realisation of Paul Klee's announcement: we
don't show the visible, we make visible. The image is a visible signal. What it shows
is itself. It has a source elsewhere. But the source is not shown. It is the only reason
for something visible.
Creativity? Yes, of course, piles of. Supported by computer? Yes, of course, in
the trivial sense that this medium is needed for the activity of realising something
the artist is thinking of. In Manfred Mohr's work (and that of a few others whose
number is increasing) generative art has actually arrived. The actuality of his work
is its virtuality.
3.4 The Third Narration: On Two Programs
Computer programs are, first of all, texts . The text describes a complex activity. The
activity is usually of human origin. It has before existed as an activity carried out
by humans in many different forms. When it becomes the source of an algorithmic
description, it may gradually disappear as a human activity, until in the end, the
computer's (or rather the program's) action appears as the first and more important
than the human activities that may still be needed to keep the computer running:
human-supported algorithmic work.
The activity described by a computer program as a text may be almost trivial, or
it may be extremely complex. It may be as trivial as an approximate calculation of
the sine function for a given argument. Or it may be as complex as calculating the
weather forecast for the area of France by taking into account all available atmo-
spheric measurements collected around the world.
The art of writing computer programs has become a skill of utmost creativity, in-
tuition, constructive precision, and secrets of the trade. Donald Knuth's marvellous
series of topics, The Art of Computer Programming , is the best proof of this (Knuth
1968 ). These topics are one of the greatest attempts to give an in-depth survey of
the entire field of computing. It is almost impossible to completely grasp this field
in totality, or even to finish writing the series of topics. Knuth is attempting to do
just this.
Computer programs have been characterised metaphorically as tools, as media,
or as automata. How can a program be an automaton if it is, as I have claimed,
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