Randomness
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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 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. Manfred Mohr started as a jazz musician and later studied art in Paris; he began writing software to create drawings in 1969, at the Meteorological Institute of Paris, during the night after researchers had 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. 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. | 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 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. Manfred Mohr started as a jazz musician and later studied art in Paris; he began writing software to create drawings in 1969, at the Meteorological Institute of Paris, during the night after researchers had 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. 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. | ||
| − | 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 are used extensively in the creation of the work. 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 comprises 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 soldiers of one army are drawn in red, of the other in black; the name and status of each soldier appears at the top of the drawing. In general terms, Csuri's work comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both its form and content; more specifically, with his reliance on random number generation, Csuri gestures toward the days of computers and random numbers, and their inextricable link to the Cold War. | + | 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 are used extensively in the creation of the work. 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 comprises 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 randomly given a status: dead, wounded, or missing. The soldiers of one army are drawn in red, of the other in black; the name and status of each soldier appears at the top of the drawing. In general terms, Csuri's work comments on the often arbitrary nature of war through both its form and content; more specifically, with his reliance on random number generation, Csuri gestures toward the days of computers and random numbers, and their inextricable link to the Cold War. |
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 exhibit waned. Later in the decade, computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films. The 1982 film ''Tron'' is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed graphics to a new aesthetic level and therefore revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, ''Tron'''s images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the graphics in ''Tron,'' was frustrated with the clean look. Later, in 1983, he developed a technique called Perlin Noise to generate organic textures that have a random appearance but are fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it is 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. | 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 exhibit waned. Later in the decade, computer graphics started to make their way into advertising and films. The 1982 film ''Tron'' is a landmark in the history of computation and aesthetics. This film pushed graphics to a new aesthetic level and therefore revealed the limitations of computer imagery at that time. Specifically, ''Tron'''s images are purely geometric and cold; they lack the organic qualities of our natural world. Ken Perlin, one of the programmers for the graphics in ''Tron,'' was frustrated with the clean look. Later, in 1983, he developed a technique called Perlin Noise to generate organic textures that have a random appearance but are fully controllable to allow for careful design. Perlin Noise allows computer graphics models to have the subtle irregularities of real objects; it is 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. | ||
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Today, within the traditional visual arts, the most widely known artists to use random values still do so without computers. For example, 2002 Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson has designed sculptures entirely through rolling dice. One reason for this reluctance to use computers, certainly, is the stigma surrounding their use in art. Manfred Mohr, the pioneer of computer-generated art discussed earlier, 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!" (35). While Mohr was referring to the 1970s, the aversion to computers remains strong today within contemporary art. | Today, within the traditional visual arts, the most widely known artists to use random values still do so without computers. For example, 2002 Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson has designed sculptures entirely through rolling dice. One reason for this reluctance to use computers, certainly, is the stigma surrounding their use in art. Manfred Mohr, the pioneer of computer-generated art discussed earlier, 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!" (35). While Mohr was referring to the 1970s, the aversion to computers remains strong today within contemporary art. | ||
| − | Within the last decade, however, as a new generation of visual artists have started to program their work, computed random numbers are playing an increased role in the visual landscape. The most prominent programming languages visual artists are using have functions for generating random numbers and noise values, as well as setting the random seed value to repeat a sequence. With the perspective of time, it seems that aesthetic computational work and random values are intertwined. Writing in 1970, Noll highlights randomness as an essential feature of the computer in relation to the arts: "The computer is a unique device for the arts since it can function solely as an obedient tool with vast capabilities for controlling complicated and involved processes, but then again, full exploitation of its unique talents for controlled randomness and detailed algorithms could result in an entirely new medium – a creative artistic medium." | + | Within the last decade, however, as a new generation of visual artists have started to program their work, computed random numbers are playing an increased role in the visual landscape. The most prominent programming languages visual artists are using have functions for generating random numbers and noise values, as well as setting the random seed value to repeat a sequence. With the perspective of time, it seems that aesthetic computational work and random values are intertwined. Writing in 1970, Noll highlights randomness as an essential feature of the computer in relation to the arts: "The computer is a unique device for the arts since it can function solely as an obedient tool with vast capabilities for controlling complicated and involved processes, but then again, full exploitation of its unique talents for controlled randomness and detailed algorithms could result in an entirely new medium –- a creative artistic medium" (10). |
== Randomness in Contemporary Computing (Sidebar) == | == Randomness in Contemporary Computing (Sidebar) == | ||
