Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
drawing, a series of points are marked. The curves may, perhaps, have been extracted
from a photograph. The points become the fixed points of interpolations by sums of
sine
functions. This calculation, purely mathematical as it is, and without any intu-
itive additions triggered by the immediate impression of a seemingly half-finished
drawing, is an exceptional case of the new element in digital art.
This element is the dialectics of aesthetics and algorithmics.
Sine Curve Man
may cause in an observer the impression that something technical is going on. But
this is probably not the most important aspect. More interesting is the visual (i.e.
aesthetic) sensation. The distortions this man has suffered are what attracts us. We
are almost forced to explore this face, perhaps because we want to read the curves
as such. But they do not allow us to do this. Therefore, our attention cannot rest with
the mathematics. Dialectics happens, as well as semioses (sign processes): jumping
back and forth between semantics and syntactics.
3.3.3 Manfred Mohr
Manfred Mohr is a decade younger than the first two artists. They belong to the first
who were accepted by the world of art despite their use of computers. Do they owe
anything to computers? Hard to say. An art historian or critic will certainly react
differently if he doesn't see an easel in the artist's studio, but a computer instead.
The artist doesn't owe much to a computer. He has decided to use it, whatever
the reason may have been. If to anything, he owes to the programs he is using or
has written himself. With those programs, he calls upon work formerly spent that he
now is about to set in action again. The program appears as canned labour ready to
be resuscitated.
The relation between artist and computer is, at times, romanticised as if it were
similar to the close relation between the graphic artist and her printer (a human
being). The printer takes pride in getting the best quality out of the artist's design.
The printing job takes on artistic quality itself. The computer, to the contrary, is
only executing a computable function. It should be clear, that the two cases are as
different as they could ever be.
If we characterise Vera Molnar, in one word, as the grand old lady of algorithmic
art, and Charles Csuri as the great entrepreneur and mover, Manfred Mohr would
appear as the strictest and strongest creator of a style in algorithmic art. The story
says that his young and exciting years of searching for his place in art history were
filled with jamming the saxophone, hanging out in Spain and France, and with hard
edge constructivist paintings. Precision and rationality became and remained his
values. They find a correspondence and a balancing force in the absolute individual
freedom of jazz. Like many of the avant-garde artists in continental Europe during
the 1960s, he was influenced by Max Bense's theory and writing on aesthetics, and
when he read in a German news magazine (Anon
1965
) that computers had appeared
in fine art, he knew where he had to turn to.
K.R.H. Sonderborg and the art of
Informel
, Pierre Barbaud and electronic music,
Max Bense and his theory of the aesthetic object constitute a triad of influences from
