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In-Depth Information
Fig. 3.5
Charles Csuri.
Left
:
Sine Curve Man
, 1967.
Right
:
yuck 4x3
, 1991 (with permission of
the artist)
1966 by Frieder Nake, and then by Csuri, an educated artist for the first time. This
award, by the way, never gained high esteem. It took many more years, until 1987,
when the now extremely prestigious
Prix Ars Electronica
was awarded for the first
time.
For his first programming tasks, Csuri was assisted by programmer James Shaf-
fer. Similar to Vera Molnar, we see that the skill of programming may at the begin-
ning constitute a hurdle that is not trivial to master. If time plays a role, an artist
willing to use the computer, but still unable to do it all by himself, has almost no
choice but to rely on friendly cooperation. Such cooperation may create friction with
all its negative effects. As long as the technical task itself does
not
require cooper-
ation, it is better to acquire the new technical skill. After all, there is no art without
skillful work, and a steadily improved command of technical skills is a necessary
condition for the artist. Why should this be different when the skill is not the im-
mediate transformation of a corporeal material by hand, but instead the description
only of relations and conditions, of options and choices of signs?
Csuri's career went up steeply. Not only did he become the head of an academic
institute but even an entrepreneur. At the time of a first rush for large and lead-
ing places in computer animation, when this required supercomputers of the highest
technological class and huge amounts of money, he headed the commercial Cranston
Csuri Productions company as well as the academic Advanced Computing Center
for the Arts and Design, both at Columbus, Ohio. In the year 2006, Csuri was hon-
oured by a great retrospective show at the ACM SIGGRAPH yearly conference.
Sine Curve Man
is an innovation to computer art of the first years in two respects:
its subject matter is figurative, and it uses deterministic mathematical techniques
rather than probabilistic. There is a definite artistic touch to the visual appearance
of the graphic (Fig.
3.5
), quite different from the usual series of precise geometric
curves that many believe computer art is (or was) about.
The attraction of
Sine Curve Man
has roots in the graphic distortions of the (old?)
man's face. Standard mathematics can be used for the construction. A lay person
may, however, not be familiar with such methods. Along the curves of an original
