Randomness

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The 1960s were a time for radical experimentation with randomness in the visual arts. Even though computers were an available tool to explore chance operations, they were used in a limited way because of problems of access to the machines and a general distrust of computer technology within the arts. The 10 PRINT program is remarkable because it was created at the time when these reasons for not using computers in the visual arts were disappearing; the C64 was relatively inexpensive and designed for home use. Also, the public image of the computer was changing from a machine that supported technocracies to a tool for self-empowerment and creativity.

−

Before personal computers, calculating machines could only be found in universities and research labs and because of the cost and perceived use. They were typically used exclusively for serious work, not for creating aesthetic images. When artists did gain access to these machines it was typically through artists-in-residence programs at companies such as Bell Labs and IBM, and through infrastructure such as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) based in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art and Technology initiative in Los Angeles. In fact, many of the first aesthetic computer graphics were made not by artists, but by mathematicians and engineers who were curious about the potential for other uses for the machines at their labs.

+

Before personal computers, calculating machines could only be found in universities and research labs and because of the cost and perceived use. They were typically used exclusively for serious work, not for creating aesthetic images. When artists did gain access to these machines it was typically through artists-in-residence programs at companies such as Bell Labs and IBM, and through infrastructure such as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) based in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art and Technology initiative in Los Angeles. In fact, many of the first aesthetic computer graphics were made not by artists, but by mathematicians and engineers who were curious about the potential for other uses for the machines at their labs.

−

+

Within the first years that computer images were made, random processes were explored thoroughly. The first two exhibitions of computer-generated graphics appeared in art galleries in 1965 and both shows included pieces that were created using random values. In New York, the works of A. Michael Noll and Bela Julesz, both researchers at Bell Labs, were exhibited at the Howard Wise gallery from 6-24 April under the title “Computer-Generated Pictures”. In Stuttgart, the works of Georg Nees and Frieder Nake were exhibited at the Wendelin Niedlich Gallery from 5 - 26 November under the title “Computer-Grafik Programme.”

−

In 1962, Noll published a technical memorandum at Bell Labs titled “Patterns by 7090”, the number 7090 refers to the IBM 7090 digital computer. He explained a series of mathematical and programming techniques that use random values to draw “haphazard patterns” to a Carlson 4020 Microfilm Printer. The eight patterns documented in the memo are the basis for his Guassian Quadratic image, which was exhibited in his 1965 exhibition. [MORE]

+

In 1962, Noll published a technical memorandum at Bell Labs titled “Patterns by 7090”, the number refers to the IBM 7090 digital computer. He explained a series of mathematical and programming techniques that use random values to draw “haphazard patterns” to a Carlson 4020 Microfilm Printer. The eight patterns documented in the memo are the basis for his Guassian Quadratic image, which was exhibited in the 1965 exhibition. Noll used existing subroutines of the printer to draw a sequence of lines to connect a series of x- and y-coordinates that he calculated and stored inside an array. The x-coordinates in the array were generated by a custom subroutine he wrote called WNG (White Noise Generator) which produced random values within the range of its parameters and the y-coordinates were set through a quadratic equation. Through this series of patterns, Noll explored aspects of the important aesthetic aspect of creating a tension between order and disorder, regularity and random values.

−

In 1965, Nake created his Fields of rectangular cross hatchings series. Nake explains the way random values are used in the images:

+

In 1965, Nake created his Fields of Rectangular Cross Hatchings series, which succeeds through pairing ordered patterns with random placement. Nake explained the way random values are used in the images:

−

Within a given (arbitrarily chosen) image size, a random number of hatchings were generated. Each one of them was determined by the following random variables: location (x, y), size (a, b), orientation of lines within rectangle (horizontal or vertical), number of lines, pen. So for each rectangle there were seven random numbers determining its details. [More on NAKE's random work]

−

[First artists on computer, using Random: Vera Molnar, Edward Zajec, Bangerts (See Artist and Computer)]

+

Within a given (arbitrarily chosen) image size, a random number of hatchings were generated. Each one of them was determined by the following random variables: location (x, y), size (a, b), orientation of lines within rectangle (horizontal or vertical), number of lines, pen. So for each rectangle there were seven random numbers determining its details.

−

Charles Csuri's Random War (1967) is another early notable work of computer art to use random values. This plotter drawing is comprised of outlined figures patterned off of the little green army men toys popular at the time. Each figure, named after a real person, is placed randomly on the page and given a random status: dead, wounded, or missing. The solders of one army are drawn in red and the other in black; the names and status of each soldier appear at the top of the drawing. The drawing comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both it's form and content.

+

[More on NAKE's random work]

−

While the first decade of computer-generated art was well documented in magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs, there are fewer source materials from the 1970s public interest veered and the energy needed to publish and exhibition waned. Later in the decade as computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films, the public record picks up. The 1982 film Tron is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed the aesthetics of computer graphics to a new level and it therefore also revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, the images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the Tron was frustrated with the clean look and he later developed a technique called Perlin Noise in 1983 to generate organic textures with a random appearance, but fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it's used to create hard surfaces such as rocks and mountains and softer systems like fire and clouds. By the 1990s, it was used in all of the big budget films and had been incorporated into most off-the-shelf modeling software.

+

After the first wave of visual images were created on plotters and microfilm at universities and research labs, a few professional artists independently started to gain access to computers and use them in their practice. The artists with the most success in integrating a computer into their work had previously created drawings with logical systems. These artists continue to use computers in their work to this day. Vera Molnar [??]. Manfred Mohr started as a jazz musician and later studied art in Paris; he started writing software to create drawings in 1969 at the Meteorological Institute of Paris during the night after the researchers left for the day. Edward Zajec studied painting in Slovenia and the United States; he starting working with computers while teaching at Carleton College in 1968. Charles Csuri... Other artists who worked seriously with computers in the late 1960s, either individually or with technical collaborators, include Lillian Schwartz, Colette Bangert, Stan Vanderbeek, and Harold Cohen. All of them employed random numbers in their early works created with software.

+

[MOLNAR]

+

In 1971, Mohr's work was featured in “Une Esthétique Programmée” at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This exhibition is distinguished as the first solo show of artworks created with a computer to be shown at a museum. Random values were used extensively in the creation of the work, much of it [MORE]

+

Charles Csuri's Random War (1967) is another early notable work of computer art to use random values. Like much of Csuri's early computer work and unique in relation to his contemporaries, the work is figurative rather than abstract. This plotter drawing is comprised of outlined military figures patterned off of the little green army men toys popular at the time. Each figure, named after a real person, is placed randomly on the page and given a random status: dead, wounded, or missing. The solders of one army are drawn in red and the other in black; the names and status of each soldier appear at the top of the drawing. The drawing comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both its form and content.

+

While the first decade of computer-generated art was well documented in magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs, there are fewer source materials from the 1970s as public interest veered and the energy needed to publish and exhibition waned. Later in the decade as computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films, the public record picks up. The 1982 film Tron is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed the aesthetics of computer graphics to a new level and it therefore also revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, the images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the Tron was frustrated with the clean look and he later developed a technique called Perlin Noise in 1983 to generate organic textures with a random appearance, but fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it's used to create hard surfaces such as rocks and mountains and softer systems like fire and clouds. By the 1990s, it was used extensively in Hollywood special-effects films and had been incorporated into most off-the-shelf modeling software.

Today, within the traditional visual arts, the most widely known artists that utilize random values still do so without computers. For example, 2002 Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson has designed sculptures entirely through rolling dice. Certainly, one reason for this reluctance to use computers is the stigma surrounding its use in art. Manfred Mohr, an pioneer of computer-generated art remarked in an interview, "I called my work generative art, or occasionally also algorithmic works. The problem was that no-one understood either of these terms, and I was forced -- so to speak -- to declare my drawings as art from the computer... people accused me of degrading art, because I was employing capitalistic instruments of war -- computer was a word non grata!".[ddaa p. 35] While Mohr was referring to the 1970s, the aversion to computers remains strong today within contemporary art.

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@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 The 1960s were a time for radical experimentation with randomness in the visual arts. Even though computers were an available tool to explore chance operations, they were used in a limited way because of problems of access to the machines and a general distrust of computer technology within the arts. The 10 PRINT program is remarkable because it was created at the time when these reasons for not using computers in the visual arts were disappearing; the C64 was relatively inexpensive and designed for home use. Also, the public image of the computer was changing from a machine that supported technocracies to a tool for self-empowerment and creativity.
 Before personal computers, calculating machines could only be found in universities and research labs and because of the cost and perceived use. They were typically used exclusively for serious work, not for creating aesthetic images. When artists did gain access to these machines it was typically through artists-in-residence programs at companies such as Bell Labs and IBM, and through infrastructure such as Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) based in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art and Technology initiative in Los Angeles. In fact, many of the first aesthetic computer graphics were made not by artists, but by mathematicians and engineers who were curious about the potential for other uses for the machines at their labs.
 Within the first years that computer images were made, random processes were explored thoroughly. The first two exhibitions of computer-generated graphics appeared in art galleries in 1965 and both shows included pieces that were created using random values. In New York, the works of A. Michael Noll and Bela Julesz, both researchers at Bell Labs, were exhibited at the Howard Wise gallery from 6-24 April under the title “Computer-Generated Pictures”. In Stuttgart, the works of Georg Nees and Frieder Nake were exhibited at the Wendelin Niedlich Gallery from 5 - 26 November under the title “Computer-Grafik Programme.”
-In 1962, Noll published a technical memorandum at Bell Labs titled “Patterns by 7090”, the number 7090 refers to the IBM 7090 digital computer. He explained a series of mathematical and programming techniques that use random values to draw “haphazard patterns” to a Carlson 4020 Microfilm Printer. The eight patterns documented in the memo are the basis for his Guassian Quadratic image, which was exhibited in his 1965 exhibition. [MORE]
+In 1962, Noll published a technical memorandum at Bell Labs titled “Patterns by 7090”, the number refers to the IBM 7090 digital computer. He explained a series of mathematical and programming techniques that use random values to draw “haphazard patterns” to a Carlson 4020 Microfilm Printer. The eight patterns documented in the memo are the basis for his Guassian Quadratic image, which was exhibited in the 1965 exhibition. Noll used existing subroutines of the printer to draw a sequence of lines to connect a series of x- and y-coordinates that he calculated and stored inside an array. The x-coordinates in the array were generated by a custom subroutine he wrote called WNG (White Noise Generator) which produced random values within the range of its parameters and the y-coordinates were set through a quadratic equation. Through this series of patterns, Noll explored aspects of the  important aesthetic aspect of creating a tension between order and disorder, regularity and random values.
-In 1965, Nake created his Fields of rectangular cross hatchings series. Nake explains the way random values are used in the images:
+In 1965, Nake created his Fields of Rectangular Cross Hatchings series, which succeeds through pairing ordered patterns with random placement. Nake explained the way random values are used in the images:
-Within a given (arbitrarily chosen) image size, a random number of hatchings were generated. Each one of them was determined by the following random variables: location (x, y), size (a, b), orientation of lines within rectangle (horizontal or vertical), number of lines, pen. So for each rectangle there were seven random numbers determining its details. [More on NAKE's random work]
-[First artists on computer, using Random: Vera Molnar, Edward Zajec, Bangerts (See Artist and Computer)]
+Within a given (arbitrarily chosen) image size, a random number of hatchings were generated. Each one of them was determined by the following random variables: location (x, y), size (a, b), orientation of lines within rectangle (horizontal or vertical), number of lines, pen. So for each rectangle there were seven random numbers determining its details.
-Charles Csuri's Random War (1967) is another early notable work of computer art to use random values. This plotter drawing is comprised of outlined figures patterned off of the little green army men toys popular at the time. Each figure, named after a real person, is placed randomly on the page and given a random status: dead, wounded, or missing. The solders of one army are drawn in red and the other in black; the names and status of each soldier appear at the top of the drawing. The drawing comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both it's form and content.
+[More on NAKE's random work]
-While the first decade of computer-generated art was well documented in magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs, there are fewer source materials from the 1970s public interest veered and the energy needed to publish and exhibition waned. Later in the decade as computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films, the public record picks up. The 1982 film Tron is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed the aesthetics of computer graphics to a new level and it therefore also revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, the images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the Tron was frustrated with the clean look and he later developed a technique called Perlin Noise in 1983 to generate organic textures with a random appearance, but fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it's used to create hard surfaces such as rocks and mountains and softer systems like fire and clouds. By the 1990s, it was used in all of the big budget films and had been incorporated into most off-the-shelf modeling software.
+After the first wave of visual images were created on plotters and microfilm at universities and research labs, a few professional artists independently started to gain access to computers and use them in their practice. The artists with the most success in integrating a computer into their work had previously created drawings with logical systems. These artists continue to use computers in their work to this day. Vera Molnar [??]. Manfred Mohr started as a jazz musician and later studied art in Paris; he started writing software to create drawings in 1969 at the Meteorological Institute of Paris during the night after the researchers left for the day. Edward Zajec studied painting in Slovenia and the United States; he starting working with computers while teaching at Carleton College in 1968. Charles Csuri... Other artists who worked seriously with computers in the late 1960s, either individually or with technical collaborators, include Lillian Schwartz, Colette Bangert, Stan Vanderbeek, and Harold Cohen. All of them employed random numbers in their early works created with software.
+[MOLNAR]
+In 1971, Mohr's work was featured in “Une Esthétique Programmée” at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. This exhibition is distinguished as the first solo show of artworks created with a computer to be shown at a museum. Random values were used extensively in the creation of the work, much of it [MORE]
+Charles Csuri's Random War (1967) is another early notable work of computer art to use random values. Like much of Csuri's early computer work and unique in relation to his contemporaries, the work is figurative rather than abstract. This plotter drawing is comprised of outlined military figures patterned off of the little green army men toys popular at the time. Each figure, named after a real person, is placed randomly on the page and given a random status: dead, wounded, or missing. The solders of one army are drawn in red and the other in black; the names and status of each soldier appear at the top of the drawing. The drawing comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both its form and content.
+While the first decade of computer-generated art was well documented in magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs, there are fewer source materials from the 1970s as public interest veered and the energy needed to publish and exhibition waned. Later in the decade as computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films, the public record picks up. The 1982 film Tron is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed the aesthetics of computer graphics to a new level and it therefore also revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, the images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the Tron was frustrated with the clean look and he later developed a technique called Perlin Noise in 1983 to generate organic textures with a random appearance, but fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it's used to create hard surfaces such as rocks and mountains and softer systems like fire and clouds. By the 1990s, it was used extensively in Hollywood special-effects films and had been incorporated into most off-the-shelf modeling software.
 Today, within the traditional visual arts, the most widely known artists that utilize random values still do so without computers. For example, 2002 Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson has designed sculptures entirely through rolling dice. Certainly, one reason for this reluctance to use computers is the stigma surrounding its use in art. Manfred Mohr, an pioneer of computer-generated art remarked in an interview, "I called my work generative art, or occasionally also algorithmic works. The problem was that no-one understood either of these terms, and I was forced -- so to speak -- to declare my drawings as art from the computer... people accused me of degrading art, because I was employing capitalistic instruments of war -- computer was a word non grata!".[ddaa p. 35] While Mohr was referring to the 1970s, the aversion to computers remains strong today within contemporary art.