"DIGITALE KUNST" - A VISIT AT AN EXHIBITION by Stefan Colombier
I was very surprised to see that there was an exhibition on
"digtal art" here in Bonn. 'Though I had an invitation to the
opening evening, I could not go there (I had to go to a concert,
SPK if somebody cares), so I'm afraid I missed all those clever
words on art and computers from whomever.
The exhibition was subtitled "The development of computer
graphics", so my expectations were high. The first thing I
noticed when entering were two PCs with color-monitor, each
showing endless demos, the second thing was more annoying: the
music. There was this so called "New Age"-music playing, this
sort of soft electronic music were you listen to the whole
record, always waiting for something to happen. So I closed my
ears as well as possible and turned my attention to the walls.
There were some 20 pictures.
The oldest of them were from the mid-60s, black & white, so
called "plottergrafics" and "printergrafics" (I bet that's a bad
translation, but that's what comes closest). As an example, there
was one picture by someone called Nees from 1965, a sort of
mutation of a simple neat row of squares to a chaos made of
squares. Another picture (1971) by Schott called "Binärbaum"
shows something you all know, a fractal tree. There were more
wellknown friends, a bundle of Mandlebrot sets, in real huge
formats and excellent quality, some even from Mandelbrot himself.
Examples of modern graphic for advertisments (as known from TV)
and printouts from CAD programms - like the other pictures mostly
made on VAX-computers, so at least ST quality - rounded up the
exhibition. I think it was a good exhibition for someone who has
never had to do with computer-grafics, but a bit boring for an
old computer-addict like me. But - it had something good, I had a
(I think) great idea. Please read about it in the article
"Manifesto" somewhere else in this ST NEWS.
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