Regularity
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[Suggest making a possible “Doppelganger” section of the chapter and include the Truchet variation here] | [Suggest making a possible “Doppelganger” section of the chapter and include the Truchet variation here] | ||
| − | While the 10 PRINT program came out of the computer culture and not the art world, it has an uncanny visual resemblance to prior works of twentieth century art. The earliest related work we've tracked down is by Paul Klee, a Bauhaus professor and highly influential artist of his time (1879–1940). In his concise Pedagogical Sketchbook, Klee discusses… In ?? he implemented these ideas in Variations (Progressive Motif), painted in 1927. He divided the 40cm square canvas into a grid of 9 units. Each unit contains pattern of parallel lines, with some exceptions, that run vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The painting has a very hand-drawn quality with wavy lines and the density of each pattern of lines is irregular. Despite it's intended imperfections, ??? | + | While the 10 PRINT program came out of the computer culture and not the art world, it has an uncanny visual resemblance to prior works of twentieth century art. The earliest related work we've tracked down is by Paul Klee, a Bauhaus professor and highly influential artist of his time (1879–1940). In his concise Pedagogical Sketchbook, published in 1925, Klee presents his thoughts on quantitative structure, rhythm, repetition, and variation. His Variations (Progressive Motif), painted in 1927, demonstrated his theories as a visual composition. He divided the 40cm square canvas into a grid of 9 units, where each unit contains pattern of parallel lines, with some exceptions, that run vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. More insight into this painting is found in his notebooks, as published in The Thinking Eye in 1964. Klee discusses the difference between natural and artificial measurement as the difference between idiosyncratic and rational order. More importantly, he discusses tension and dynamic density through the linear and progressive spacing of parallel lines. Through these visual contrasts in Variations, Klee explores the same aesthetics questions posed by 10 PRINT. He first created an artificial grid to work within, then populated each square with ordered, but variable patterns. Klee didn't have the advantage of motion afforded to 10 PRINT, but he simulated it through the expansion and contraction of parallel lines within his grid. |
In France, a group of likeminded artists within and around GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel) were exploring variations within grids. Francois Molnar and Vera Molnar worked on a series of images in 1959 which presented a visual system strikingly similar to 10 PRINT. In Francois' essay “Toward Science in Art”, published in the anthology DATA: Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics in 1968, he published the images Simulation d'une série de divisions de Mondrian a partir de trois au hasard and Quatre éléments au hasard [Figure ??]. Both are 24 x 24 unit grids with one of a few possible forms painted into each grid unit with black gouache. As the titles suggest, the elements in each square were defined by a random process. Their Composition Stochastique of the same year systematizes the random component entirely and by producing a modular set of two elements, a left and right diagonal that are placed within a 10 x 10 unit grid. In the illustrations for the essay, they feature a 1%, 5%, 30%, and 50% ratio of left to right diagonal lines to show the result of chaos intruding upon order. Because it's a 100 unit grid, these percentages correspond to precisely 1, 5, 30, and 50 units in each figure. In the 50% figure, the only substantive different with our 10 PRINT program is the variation on the core elements (Figure ??). Because a team of artists working in Paris in 1959 produced the fundamental algorithm for 10 PRINT twenty-three years prior to the printing of the Commodore 64 User Guide, does that enhance or diminish the stature of our one-liner? When she wrote about this work in a 1990 essay titled Inconceivable Images, Vera Molnar wrote that she was thinking about this painting as a computer program, because she had access to a machine: | In France, a group of likeminded artists within and around GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel) were exploring variations within grids. Francois Molnar and Vera Molnar worked on a series of images in 1959 which presented a visual system strikingly similar to 10 PRINT. In Francois' essay “Toward Science in Art”, published in the anthology DATA: Directions in Art, Theory and Aesthetics in 1968, he published the images Simulation d'une série de divisions de Mondrian a partir de trois au hasard and Quatre éléments au hasard [Figure ??]. Both are 24 x 24 unit grids with one of a few possible forms painted into each grid unit with black gouache. As the titles suggest, the elements in each square were defined by a random process. Their Composition Stochastique of the same year systematizes the random component entirely and by producing a modular set of two elements, a left and right diagonal that are placed within a 10 x 10 unit grid. In the illustrations for the essay, they feature a 1%, 5%, 30%, and 50% ratio of left to right diagonal lines to show the result of chaos intruding upon order. Because it's a 100 unit grid, these percentages correspond to precisely 1, 5, 30, and 50 units in each figure. In the 50% figure, the only substantive different with our 10 PRINT program is the variation on the core elements (Figure ??). Because a team of artists working in Paris in 1959 produced the fundamental algorithm for 10 PRINT twenty-three years prior to the printing of the Commodore 64 User Guide, does that enhance or diminish the stature of our one-liner? When she wrote about this work in a 1990 essay titled Inconceivable Images, Vera Molnar wrote that she was thinking about this painting as a computer program, because she had access to a machine: | ||
