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Synthetics: a History of the Electronically Generated Image In Leonardo_36-3_175-254 5/9/03 9:45 AM Page 187 G C HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE L R O O B S A S L I Synthetics: A History of the N G Electronically Generated Image S in Australia ABSTRACT This paper takes a brief look at the early years of computer- graphic and video- synthesizer–driven image Stephen Jones production in Australia. It begins with the first (known) Australian data visualization, in 1957, and proceeds through the composit- ing of computer graphics and video effects in the music videos of the late 1980s. The his article surveys the development of com- netic Serendipity exhibition at the author surveys the types of T work produced by workers on puter art and video synthesis in Australia from its earliest man- Institute of Contemporary Art in ifestation through to the late 1980s. I focus on the artists and London [6]. He returned to Aus- the computer graphics and video synthesis systems of the the technologies they used, with pointers to cultural/aesthetic tralia with a collection of CG slides early period and draws out issues. The technologies derive from computing—both ana- from artists and programmers and some indications of the influ- log, which evolved into audio and video synthesizers, and dig- began to proselytize computer art ences and interactions among ital, which was domesticated over this period. to students and computing profes- artists and engineers and the technical systems they had sionals there [7]. Artists and com- available, which guided the puters did not mix in those days. evolution of the field for artistic DATA VISUALIZATION The process of writing and running production. Techniques for the production of images from electronically a program was difficult, and the re- encoded data first developed with the use of the cathode ray sults often arrived a day later. The tube (CRT) for electronic waveform display, radar and televi- freedom to modify and develop ideas on the fly was simply not sion. In the 1950s and 1960s in the U.S.A. and Europe scien- available. Bennett prompted Richardson to try to align the tific data visualization, computer-aided design (CAD) and computer with the artistic process. Richardson built a system mathematical explorations drove early computer-graphic (CG) of software and hardware for the PDP-8 that would allow artists developments [1]. In Australia the first computer-calculated to draw on the display screen with a light pen and manipulate CRT-displayed image appeared in Dick Jenssen’s thesis of 1959 the image in real time under manual or audio-synthesizer con- [2]. That image, of a weather map showing atmospheric pres- trol by patching potentiometers and inputs to control values sure regions over Australia, was generated on a CRT display- in the software [8]. Richardson called his system the Visual ing memory in Australia’s first computer, CSIRAC [3], at Piano and used it to produce elegant mathematical patterns Melbourne University in 1957. The 16 ϫ 20-dot image (Fig. of spiraling vectors (Fig. 3). He ran a course for artists to learn 1) was photographed and an outline map of Australia was then to use the system. The results were mixed, but some people drawn over it. took to it well. These included Frank Eidlitz and the Bush Data visualization continued over the next decade as Aus- Video group. tralia’s base of machines widened, especially within academic institutions. In 1968, the Aeronautical Engineering Depart- Fig. 1. Weather map as a 16 ϫ 20 bit-map produced on the memory ment of Sydney University was investigating the impact of very- monitoring CRT on CSIRAC by Dick Jenssen, 1957. (© M.J. Ditmar low-density gases on aerofoils for the U.S. Air Force. The usual Jenssen) The original calculations were done on the UTECOM at methods—smoke streams in a wind tunnel—do not work under the then University of Technology New South Wales (now UNSW) very low atmospheric pressure, so the gases’ behavior had to and the punched tape output was then converted to an image on the CSIRAC at the University of Melbourne as part of Jenssen’s masters be simulated on the Computer Science Department’s IBM 7040 thesis in 1957. [4]. The results were then rendered as a visualization on the department’s recently acquired Digital Equipment Corpora- tion PDP-8 and its 338-vector display, using software written by Doug Richardson. The visualization was recorded to film frame by frame, with the color produced by switching color filters in front of the lens, all controlled by the PDP-8 [5] (Fig. 2). COMPUTER ART The head of Computer Science at Sydney University, John Ben- nett, had been in the U.K. in 1968 and had seen the Cyber- Stephen Jones (artist, electronic engineer), 387 Riley Street, Surry Hills, NSW, 2010, Australia. E-mail: <[email protected]>. © 2003 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 187–195, 2003 187 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409403321921389 by guest on 28 September 2021 Leonardo_36-3_175-254 5/9/03 9:45 AM Page 188 G C L R O O showing its output generates streams of B S echoes trailing from any images mixed A S L I in with the camera output, producing N G images ranging from the exquisitely flo- S ral to the wildly chaotic. Bush Video dissolved in late 1975. In 1976 Ariel bought an IMSAI S-100 buss computer kit and subsequently went on to develop his own CG system. His system used a Z-80 CPU [10], 32 kilobytes of RAM under the CP/M operating system and a bit-mapped graphics display, which generated a video raster with 256 pixels by 256 lines at three bits/pixel [11]. Bit- mapped displays could not render im- ages in real time at this stage, and the vector-display system that Richardson had developed was no longer available, having broken down. However, what was Fig. 2. Visualization of the behavior of gas molecules in a very low-density atmosphere (at lost in response time was more than the edge of space) against an aerofoil, produced by Doug Richardson on a PDP-8, 1969. made up for in the capacity to draw com- (© Doug Richardson) The original simulations for the Aeronautical Engineering Department of the University of Sydney were made on an IBM 7040 and the results networked to the plex imagery made up of lines and sur- PDP-8 for display and animation. faces. Three-dimensional images could now potentially be much more interest- ing despite the rendering time they re- Frank Eidlitz was a commercial artist synthesized waveforms. Bush Video ex- quired. Ariel tried to reproduce what who had studied with Gyorgy Kepes at plored many kinds of video performance Richardson had been doing with the Vi- the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- and synthesis processes using a small sual Piano, and much of his work during ogy in 1966 and became familiar with video mixer, a colorizer that was occa- this period involved developing a wire- computers there. Working with Richard- sionally available and video feedback, in frame 3D graphics system that could son in the early 1970s, he built up images which pointing a camera at a monitor push the images around the screen. To from a few geometrically placed lines that were then moved about the screen to Fig. 3. Spiraling vectors image produced by Doug Richardson on his Visual Piano real-time produce essentially wire-frame shapes display system implemented on the PDP-8 at the Basser Department of Computer Science, (Fig. 4). These were photographed to University of Sydney, 1971–1972. (© Doug Richardson) large-format transparencies and trans- ferred onto colored papers as collages to make up the final colored image. Eidlitz and Richardson had several exhibitions of their joint work [9]. Bush Video was a collective of archi- tects, filmmakers, techno-hippies and community activists established by Mick Glasheen. Glasheen had produced the first experimental video art in Australia, his 1970 production Teleological Telecast from Spaceship Earth: On Board with Buck- minster Fuller, and discovered Richard- son’s system during an Open Day at the university. He asked Richardson to help him draw and animate the flight of a boomerang for a film he was working on. Ariel, another member of Bush Video, also used the Visual Piano to draw and animate mandala shapes based on the Hindu tantra (Fig. 5). These were used in multitudinous ways in many of the video mixes produced in the Bush Video studio. Ariel was also interested in the electronic generation of video images, building various audio oscillators and modifying a monochrome monitor by re- placing the deflection signals with am- plified audio to cause the video image to twist and curl in response to music and 188 Jones, Synthetics Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409403321921389 by guest on 28 September 2021 Leonardo_36-3_175-254 5/9/03 9:45 AM Page 189 G C L R color TV, which he modified to take red, O O green and blue (RGB) inputs, a mono- B S A S chrome camera, a video mixer and a L I N video recorder and assembled hybrid G analog/digital shape generators, audio S oscillators and 8 TV Ping-Pong circuits. Control, object and pattern selection was done with plug-boards, and by sending different signals to the RGB channels Hansen could colorize the results, which were also encoded to composite video for recording. “Resultant imagery reflected the viscousness of live analogue com- bined with the railroad track predictive- ness of digitally generated objects” [13].
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