Regularity
From Maze
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10 PRINT, encountered by a new-born programmer reading the C64 manual, presents a first drawing program. Here is an opportunity to paint on the screen, not with pixels, but with the custom PETSCII character set described in chapter [C64]. In light of contemporary painting programs or even rudimentary tools such as early KoalaPainter, a popular C64 painting program, one might expect such an early glimpse into the artistic potential of the medium to follow the tradition of the fine arts or the expressive arts, enabling the user to use color and line to depict, giving them a sense of the power of this medium as an artistic tool, like an electronic brush on a digital canvas, again, that visual metaphor that has become so commonplace. Yet this first example of artistic creation does not involve the free arrangement of pixels, but mechanical repetition, not free choice but random selection, not personal expression but submission to a seemingly endless process of drawing across a screen or, more properly, a grid. | 10 PRINT, encountered by a new-born programmer reading the C64 manual, presents a first drawing program. Here is an opportunity to paint on the screen, not with pixels, but with the custom PETSCII character set described in chapter [C64]. In light of contemporary painting programs or even rudimentary tools such as early KoalaPainter, a popular C64 painting program, one might expect such an early glimpse into the artistic potential of the medium to follow the tradition of the fine arts or the expressive arts, enabling the user to use color and line to depict, giving them a sense of the power of this medium as an artistic tool, like an electronic brush on a digital canvas, again, that visual metaphor that has become so commonplace. Yet this first example of artistic creation does not involve the free arrangement of pixels, but mechanical repetition, not free choice but random selection, not personal expression but submission to a seemingly endless process of drawing across a screen or, more properly, a grid. | ||
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In his classic yet provocative text, E.H. Gombrich wrestles with the tensions between repetition and redundancy that can lead to either stimulation or boredom. As he reflects on pavement designs he notes the pleasure in the encountering the pavement whose pattern one cannot fully grasp. Gombrich explains this desire for new information through information theory emerging at the time, where information increases in tandem with unpredictability (9). He goes on to speculate that the viewer examines patterns by trying to anticipate what comes next. “Delight,” he writes, “lies somewhere between boredom and confusion” (9). 10 PRINT no doubt offers similar delights, resulting from its creation of a complex pattern from a simple random alternation. As Gombrich later argues, the greatest novelty computers bring to visual design and variation is not only its ability “to follow any complex rule of organization but also to introduce an exactly calculated dose of randomness” (94). Computers then become entrancing pattern weavers. | In his classic yet provocative text, E.H. Gombrich wrestles with the tensions between repetition and redundancy that can lead to either stimulation or boredom. As he reflects on pavement designs he notes the pleasure in the encountering the pavement whose pattern one cannot fully grasp. Gombrich explains this desire for new information through information theory emerging at the time, where information increases in tandem with unpredictability (9). He goes on to speculate that the viewer examines patterns by trying to anticipate what comes next. “Delight,” he writes, “lies somewhere between boredom and confusion” (9). 10 PRINT no doubt offers similar delights, resulting from its creation of a complex pattern from a simple random alternation. As Gombrich later argues, the greatest novelty computers bring to visual design and variation is not only its ability “to follow any complex rule of organization but also to introduce an exactly calculated dose of randomness” (94). Computers then become entrancing pattern weavers. | ||
| − | Patterns are deeply tied to a process of repetition. This notion is most clearly demonstrated in Gombrich’s commentary on “the hierarchical principle” by which units are “grouped to form larger units, which in turn can easily fit together into larger wholes” (8), or a Gestalt. The sum of the pattern then is the result of a process. This relationship between pattern, perceived whole, and process becomes clear in is discussion of paving, and various methods for selecting stones. By extension, visual design involves the process of repeating patterns across space, even if these patterns are not drawn as individual units. | + | Patterns are deeply tied to a process of repetition. This notion is most clearly demonstrated in Gombrich’s commentary on “the hierarchical principle” by which units are “grouped to form larger units, which in turn can easily fit together into larger wholes” (8), or a Gestalt. The sum of the pattern then is the result of a process. This relationship between pattern, perceived whole, and process becomes clear in is discussion of paving, and various methods for selecting stones. By extension, visual design involves the process of repeating patterns across space, even if these patterns are not drawn as individual units. |
=The Grid: a spatial plane of regularity= | =The Grid: a spatial plane of regularity= | ||
