CENTER SCREEN, INC . " OFFICE 18 VASSAR ST., 20B - 126, CAMBRIDGE, MA 02139 . 617-494-0201 . INFORMATION 49a-0200 Enclosed is a series poster which includes the program in which your film was presented . We are also enclosing copies of any press reviews/notices that may have been obtained for the program . If you need original copies, please let us know . Thank you . 494-0200 CENTER SCREEN . INC " OFFICE 18 VASSAR ST . 208 - 126, CAMBRIDGE . MA 02139 . 617-494-0201 " INFORMATION These clippings for ELECTRONIC ANIMATION are being sent out to you later than usual so that we could include a-recent June '82 article from the New Boston Review . Jane Garabedian June 1982 Boston Critic, Inc., IOB Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 WZBS'ON 11Wti3d $1 .00 *SSvw'NOlsoe Volume VII, No. 3 62105 albd 30V1SOd*s'n OW llIONdNON rr r"JrWAM r ~ J_rtJr/ err - / " ~ nil= M ILIWA r~~rri~~rr/ .M/0~ sMOAN MW an RA ~ 0 001"q " r rw/WWAM LVAMML~Mti ra~Artr MM uIL " Mr ELIRM~ r"/ ron a" ti /NEWA COMPUTERS in Art, Music, Education, Psychology, Philosophy This special issue was made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities and Public Policy. ComputerArt orArtifice? Maybe it is just the newness of the ing the horizontal position ofthe beam, computer that makes its use in art seem and Y, specifying its vertical position. David Rolloc v odd Or maybe there is a deeper reason Thus, any point of light on the screen for uneasiness . After all, computers can be described by values for X and Y unalterably scientific. Does and a complete picture can be de- building on seem so In an old industrial loft use of computers threaten scribed by a list of values for X and Y, waterfront, a the artistic Fort Point, on the Boston encroachment of science onto art's which, in effect, direct the electron gun finished an new company has recently ground? Or is it the nature of to paint a picture on the screen by system called privileged installing a computer computer itself that threatens? Al- moving from one point to another. The microcomputer. Not the Logo on an Apple computers may be tools, in computer can be used either to store some time at Logo though long ago, I spent no different than the painter's pictures in its memory as a set ofX and how to draw pictures principle Systems learning or the sculptor's chisel, they Y values, or to calculate a picture by display screen by typing brush on a video capable ofbecoming much more executing a program that generates X the computer. Logo seem instructions into tools. It should be reassuring that and Y values. Computer graphics lan- into the hands of the than on an Apple puts recent tour around the rarified student a computer in my guages like Logo relieve some of the average high school of Boston's computer artists, I possible to draw pic- world tedium of drawing pictures in terms of with which it is nothing that could be called art important, with this sys- saw Xand Y by allowing the user to build tures. More produced by an unaided computer. an to create programs powerful procedures for creating tem it is possible There is no computer art produced point images. The images are image piece by piece instead of that produce without the intervention ofhuman agen- is high resolution-the Apple's by point. Once such a procedure not ofvery and it would be a misconception to copied, and display has less detail than a cy, created it can be saved, video that anything ofthe sort exists. most screen-but Logo is very suppose modified at will. Some of the television Still, the specter ofcomputer-generated reap- . You can start doing interesting powerful effects are achievable by flexible art haunts the enterprise, as though the over with it in less than half an hour. plying simple procedures over and things use of computers in art somehow risks previously when I sat down, I went again to transform a picture A skeptic the ultimate usurpation, where the com- mem- impressed. All I had done was created and stored in computer home puter has replaced the artist it is sup- picture bright triangular spot at center ory, as, for example, when the make a posed to serve and art has lost its place applying a (known as a "-turtle") do cart- of an object is rotated by screen as a last refuge for the uniquely human. to move back and forth, and de- procedure for matrix multiplication wheels, It is impossible to know whether specifying a curves, trailing phosphorescent the stored X and Y values scribe these are just dreams without knowing systems of glory everywhere it went. picture. Although Logo-like clouds more about the computer and its ar- the one thing to be impressed by a protect the user from many of It is tistic capacity. Perhaps the easiest important to diverting afternoon's doodling with mathematical details, it is way to think of this capacity is as a that whatever computer art- Logo; it is quite another to accept the remember means for translating numbers into must have some way of idea that computer graphics systems ists do, they pictures. A computer graphics system the numbers that govern (Logo and its cousins) can become a specifying ordinarily consists of a computer images. Often, but not al- new medium of artistic expression . computer hooked up to some type of video dis- this will involve writing a com- But, accept itor not, the idea is uponus. ways, play tube. An image is created when program. There are now people who, call them- puter the phosphor-coated screen is disturbed kind of image the computer is selves computer artists and what they The by a beam of electrons fired at it from suited to producing, at present, is do is being calleo computer art. best an electron gun located at the back of . Programs that make use Computer art. The simple conjunc- very regular the tubejust as in a television set. The procedures repeatedly are tion ofthe two words makes me think of of the same orientation ofthe electron beam can be the computer is good at Lautreamont's famous definition ofsur- the norm: oontrolled bytwonumbers: X, specify- repetitive and hence realism-"the gratuitous encounter of tasks that are a sewing machine and a bicycle." While there is nothing gratuitous about most computer systems (at least on their own terms), the connection of "Computer art. The simple conjunction of the two words makes computers and art has something per- ofsurrealism-`the sistently surreal about it. But why? me think ofLautreamont'sfamous definition Artists have always rushed to exploit gratuitous encounter of a sewing machine and a bicycle' " technology. Why not the computer? "'When people talk about technology and art, they think ofthe latest, least familiar technology. But all art is based on tech- nology. A pencil is technology.' " tedious to execute. At Logo I asked a programmer friend of mine who draws sented by a film called Adam, by T. J. and his world is friction-free. The image, whether he thought ofusing a computer O'Donnell and Arthur Olson. It opens we are told, is an animation ofEdward to draw realistic pictures. "Probably with a circle within which a schematic Muybridge's sequential photographs not," he said. "It would be too cumber- figure is outlined, a sort ofmechanical- of a man walking, but much has been some. I don't see the point ofdoing it." drawing rendition of da Vinci's man- lost in the translation. Well, who am I (That should stand as a warning to any the-measure drawing. The two-dimen- to complain about the absence of any artists who are reading this piece: If sional figure steps out of the circle dynamism in the figure? The accom- you are looking for a computer pen or and becomes three-dimensional in a plishment is astonishing! That's just paintbrush, you may not like what you perspectively accurate three-dimen- the point: The"beauty" ofthis film, ifit find, at least not if you like to draw.) sional world, where it goes for a walk. is beautiful, is all technical . Broadly speakingthere are twokinds Limbs and body look like aircraft Another film impressive for its tech- of computer-produced image: static fuselages and flashlight batteries. The nical accomplishment on several levels and moving. What's intriguing is that figure walks in an oddly bodiless way, on close examination the distinction since no gravity resists his muscles, falls apart: The image on a graphics display screen must be "refreshed" betweenthirty and sixty times a second, to prevent flickering. So much work is involved in putting a static image on a display screen, it's tempting to say, that you might as well go ahead and make it move. To put the same thingin another light, the computer is so well adapted to doing things over and over that the tedious work of making mobile im- ages-animation-is significantly re- duced. Perhaps that is why much of what is currently available from the would-be computer artist consists of computer-animated films. A fair esti- mate ofthe state of the art in computer animation could be made from a Center Screen show that filled three recent evenings this spring at Harvard Uni- versity. Several of the films shown were of almost no aesthetic value- there was even a brief clip from a flight simulation showing a jumbo jet taxiing down a runway-but there were good reasons for looking at nearly all of +~}at~-}r+rf~+~+ii' them.