Generative Images / Snots

Generative images are what I call digital works based on the Computer program “lochbl” developed by the computer scientist Peter Serocka in 1996. It allows the optical conditions of the “Pinhole Structures” from 1967 to not only be digitally simulated, but also further developed. Accordingly, similar earlier motives and new generative works can be created. The work returns to the constructive beginning to determine the structure. The precision achieved digitally is much better than that which is available through optical means.

New program development appeared as a result of a publication by Koji Miyazaki und Manabu Shiozaki: “Projection of Four-Dimensoinal Regular Space Filling” in the Japanese magazine: “Research of Patterns,” Tokyo 1994 (ed. R. Tabaki). They laid out the University of Bielefeld’s Visualization Laboratory (VisLab), which I found out about through the mathematics professor Andreas Dress. The “Projections” appeared remarkably similar and appeared nearly congruent to my early pinhole structures from 1967 and conveyed something quite photographic: gradients of gray tones, blur, etc. A fruitful production began with this series of publications by Miyazaki in the magazine “Hyperspace,” belonging to the Japanese Society for Hyperspace Science of the Kyoto University. 

Camera obscura versus Camera electronica

The long-term project “Generative Images” formed the synthesis of two different generative systems. The system of multiple geometric optics of the “Camera obscura” met through a dialogue with the digital algorithms of “Camera electronica.” Camera obscura produces results by analyzing light, optics, and light-sensitive material. The camera electronica uses arithmetic operations in order to digitally construct new images. Interactions are formed based on empirical experiences dealing with the natural sources (light, vision) and calculated interaction dealing with the virtual and non-visible (number, program).  

Among other things, the process shows the immense technical informational distance and difference between the two systems, a developmental period spanning over 30 years. Today is the interactive access of the earlier static image available: All design parameters used in each of the pinhole structures can now applied and observed directly through digital potentiometers, without delay.  The artistic problem of deciding the selection and setting the image still exists, despite the elegance of this access. 

The first promising attempts with the “lochbl” program began at the University of Bielefeld’s Visualization Laboratory in 1996, printed without a title in DIN A4 format. A second, smaller series of works with printing up to 130 x 130 cm was produced by the firm Fineprint in Bielefeld in 2000. It arose in connection with the preparation of the solo exhibition “Generative Images” in the Lutz Teutloff Gallery, Bielefeld and consisted of a row of large-scale, blurred points: purely digital, photo-based images.  However, the original light and photo sources of computer-generated images should not be forgotten. Typical photo colors from the spectrum of colors such as blue, green, red (additive) and yellow, magenta, cyan (subtractive) were applied. The photo titles “Punktum” and “Infinitum” refer to the theoretical and historical photo correlations, the term “Sfumato” consciously refers to scenic intentions.

Punktum

Snots