DIGITAL VISIONS; COMPUTERS AND ART
By Cynthia Goodman. Harry N. Abrams; September, 1987
Paper, 192 pp, $19.95

REVIEW BY KARL YOUNG

The partnership between computers and the visual arts is now at a 
singular point in its development, emerging from a state of infancy 
into a first level of maturity. Many artists have used the new 
technology to enhance or facilitate work on lines established by 
other media, primarily paint and photographic film. Many are working 
away from these preexisting genres into modes that could only be 
created with computers. Though it's always fun to speculate, it's 
impossible to say with even a slight bit of certainty what this new 
alliance between art and technics may bring. We may see massive 
changes in all the arts, perhaps coming on us so rapidly that we 
won't know what hit us. Perhaps the alliance will result primarily 
in techniques that will allow artists to do what they'd be doing 
anyway, but with greater ease and speed. We may see bio chips and 
neural interfaces allowing us to experience all art simultaneously 
and internally, and take it from there to wherever our own personal 
capabilities allow. Or maybe we'll just see a few good pieces and 
some snappier special effects in the movies. Whatever the case, 
a lot is going on right now, and it would be a shame to miss out on 
the marvelous advent of computer art -- this coming of age will not 
happen again.

Cynthia Goodman's _DIGITAL VISIONS_ is an excellent survey of the 
state of the art at the time of publication. Despite the rapid 
changes in computer technology, this book will probably be the best 
survey available for several years and remain a landmark after it 
has been superseded. The book includes about 150 samples of computer 
related art, reproduced as well as images often meant to be seen on a 
different scale or in a different context or illuminated from behind 
can be printed in an affordable edition. Goodman's commentary is just 
what a survey should be: descriptive, impersonal, nonjudgemental and 
pluralistic. Her documentation is sufficiently detailed in her 
listing of hardware and software used in samples to satisfy those 
who are knowledgeable, but her commentaries are free from the 
technical argot that would make it difficult reading for those 
unfamiliar with computers. 

One of the fascinating phenomena of the present state of the alliance 
is the way that computers can be used to make standard functions 
easier and quicker. Using a keyboard or any one of a number of input 
devices, including light pens that can be used directly on a computer 
terminal, an artist can create a basic design, save the original on a 
magnetic disk, and then rework it, changing existing forms, adding new 
ones, deleting others, and shifting color around. If one color doesn't 
work, it can be dropped and substituted by another by pressing a few 
keys. At the present state of the art, this need not produce the 
clunky images and lifeless colors often associated with computers -- 
resolutions so fine that disjunctions are imperceptible to the human 
eye allow a delicacy of shading fully comparable with anything a 
brush can achieve; and with a palette of some sixteen million colors 
(about all a human eye can discern) available on some of the most 
powerful units, it could be argued that computers offer more color 
options than any other medium. At present, some artists use this sort 
of technique as a means of making sketches for work to be completed 
in other media. Others print out their work directly from the images 
composed on their computer monitors.     

In many cases the results are so much like easel paintings or 
photographs that the use of the computer seems comic, a great hooplah 
made over nothing. Used in this mimetic way, the value of computers 
can only be assessed by the artists using them. With the advent of 
inexpensive micro-computers we can assume that more artists will try 
these convenience functions and accept or reject them. If this usage 
becomes common practice, it probably won't make much difference to 
viewers -- it will simply become part of the professional bag of 
tricks. The majority of the works in Goodman's book use techniques of 
this sort. Whether the works are interesting or not, the many 
elaborate techniques are fascinating and, again, now is the time to 
be enthralled by them -- the magic won't last.

Emerging from these convenience functions are some interesting shifts 
that move away from computer assistance to possibilities unattainable 
with traditional techniques. Perhaps the most promising is a shift 
from printing out the final work to creating art meant to be seen on 
computer terminals or other illuminated devices. These works, seen by 
radiant rather than reflected light may be the stained glass windows 
of a future age.      

Among the artists who've gone beyond the level of simple convenience, 
I'd like to bring special attention to two who represent computer 
art's first level of maturity. Their work goes in different 
directions, suggesting the versatility of computer usage. In both we 
see a strong basis in techniques and aesthetics that have nothing to 
do with computers, and at the same time move the state of computer 
art beyond simple housekeeping.

Manfred Mohr has for some fifteen years been exploring the 
possibilities of restructuring the twelve sides of the most basic of 
forms, the cube, in two dimensional, black and white images. Mohr 
begins by designing a non-visual program based on algorithms 
(calculations with cyclic regularities) which are transformed into 
signs by the computer. Mohr then reworks the signs to his 
satisfaction and has a plotter (a computer driven drawing device) 
produce the final image on canvas or paper. The result is a large 
opus of dynamic images and sequences that can be read as narrative 
or analyzed by semiotic method. Both the program and the plotter put 
some distance between Mohr and the finished work, allowing geometry, 
mathematics, and chance to play an independent role in the work, 
and minimizing personal or idiosyncratic elements. Mohr's art seems 
to have raised Constructivism to a level unattainable by his 
predecessors, Malevich and Mondrian.           

Harold Cohen has designed an artificial intelligence program called 
AARON and he has been able to teach this program to draw clearly 
legible human figures, plant forms, and other objects, as well as 
clearly conceived abstractions. AARON produces lively, fluid, 
energetic drawings with much of the expressiveness you would expect 
from an artist coming out of a tradition that emphasizes human 
individualism and prizes natural mysticism. The program has a 
capacity to learn, it is not simply repeating preexisting drawings 
but making drawings that could not have been anticipated by Cohen 
when he wrote or refined the program. Cohen's interactions with AARON 
occur on several levels: he refines his program as he goes along, 
taking cues and challenges from what the program has accomplished. 
AARON is limited to monochrome productions and Cohen often radically 
alters the program's drawings by adding color. The artificial 
intelligence of this program is a far cry from the advanced sort of 
A.I. that technocrats and sci fi buffs forecast, but here we have the 
first real example of man and computer communicating and interacting 
constructively, producing art that goes beyond simple mechanical 
gimicry.

Conventional wisdom has it that computers are inherently dehumanizing 
devices, the product of mad scientists working in isolation, unaware 
that their machines are foisting their alienation and solipsism on 
everyone else. That's more a product of the movies than of computers. 
Though a new generation of artists turned hackers and scientists 
turned artist is now emerging, most computer artists have had to form 
alliances with the scientists who are often perceived as their polar 
opposites in temperament and personality -- and often enough both have 
had to use equipment owned by great corporate beasts like IBM, 
Phillips and the pentagon. This collaboration sometimes functions on 
an intimate level: many computer art producers are married couples or 
lovers working in tandem, as often as not initially brought together 
by their need to share skills. (Maybe we could think of this as a form 
of computer dating that actually works!) Among producers, the computer 
has encouraged community rather than alienation, perhaps beginning to 
exorcise the "two cultures" boogie man still seen by many as part of 
our collective schizophrenia. 

Perhaps participatory works will also bring viewers together and 
encourage community. In popular culture, their cognates are already 
doing so -- how many kids have met each other for the first time in 
video arcades since you started reading this article? On the level of 
self conscious art, computers tend to encourage participatory work, 
and it's my hunch that computer art will most distinguish itself in 
this area. A few of the many examples in Goodman's book illustrate 
directions in which this trend is going. 

Wen-Ying Tsai's compositions of moving fiberglass rods illuminated 
by strobes are simple and elegant examples. Audio feedback devices 
speed up or slow down the movement of the strobes in response to 
sounds made by people around them, moving slowly when the environment 
is quiet, frantically when it is noisy. People around these pieces 
can control the apparent movement of the rods by making noises 
ranging from whispers to speech to laughter to clapping, or the units 
may simply reflect the sounds of people who are not trying to interact 
with the sculptures.

In the collaborations between Otto Piene and Paul Earls, the 
frequencies of Earls's electronic music guide the images of Piene's 
computer drawing program. The images are created by a laser which can 
project them in all sorts of environments, including projections into 
the sky, where their three dimensional quality takes on the character 
of constantly changing monumental sculpture. In work like this, what 
you see could only be created by computer and laser. The maximum so 
far attained in collaboration between media and artists is in dance 
performances such as _PHOSPHONES_, which use the CORTLI system 
designed by computer sculptor James Seawright, electronic music 
composer Emmanuel Ghent, programer William Hemsath, and choreographer 
Mimi Garrard. This system presents complex interactions between music 
and lighting, which in turn interact with the movements of the dancers 
in Ms. Garrard's company. This is just a few steps away from a total 
art form in which everyone dances and the audience and the work are 
reintegrated. And it's not far from massive works in which thousands 
of people participate, and a final "product" is never achieved or 
desired.

The basis of the partnership between computers and the arts is a human 
partnership. How much it can grow through its interaction with the 
nonhuman may be a partial test of its value. But ultimately this new 
technology will be a test of our cooperative and conceptual capacities 
and of our imagination and courage.

______________________________________________________________________

First published in _AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW_, Vol.11, # 3, July-Aug. 1989.
              

     

                           

                           


