Art essay

In the fourth module, we got the chance to follow a series of guest lectures. One of these guest lectures ended in an assignment for which we had to write about a digital art piece before 2000. The picture below is the one I wrote about. My essay about it is below the picture.

Colors and waves Color enriches our daily routines and brings the display of the world to life. Even in 1975, Joan Truckenbrod found a way to frame this through digital art. This piece of art from her collection of digital tapestries extends our vision into the invisible realm of experience. Giving shape to motion is what is seen here, while, by adding a bit of color, the piece comes to live. “ I was not interested in creating a direct simulation rather an interpretive or expressive programmatic image ” - Truckenbrod. This quote really captures what all of her work is about. Being a pioneer of the digital media, she created her first piece of art 1975 with FORTAN programming language, using ‘mathematical formulas from physics that describe natural phenomena such as wind patterns, and light patterns created by undulating reflective surfaces’ . These art pieces were 1 geometrical shapes in black and white. A few years later she created this piece with Textronix and Silicon Graphics computers, along with three other tapestries. In her exhibition, these (printed) pieces were hung in the middle of the gallery and this gave a spectacular effect, since the colors were transparent and the audience could thus see through the colored parts. What makes this artwork most interesting to me is the combination of shape and color. The shape reminds me of several things, but mostly of waves. That is also the reason why it caught my eye while doing research on digital media art. From the age of three up to the age of eighteen I’ve been in and out of the swimming pool several times a week. Swimming was my passion. Not only because the water makes you feel weightless, but also because I love the sun reflecting of and on the water surface. This sometimes made the water surface look like a mirror if you looked at it from above but also – and this was the best part for me – you saw the waves in several colors on the bottom of the pool. Besides the shape, also the color is nostalgic to me: these shades remind me of the old one-piece ski suits that some elderly people sometimes still wear . They may not be pretty, but they do remind me of the good times. Aside from nostalgia, I am amazed by the knowledge and skills the artists had that early and the computer age. Not only were they able to operate computers and do difficult computations with it, they were also able to make new and inspiring art with it. In this piece, these skills can be seen in all the shapes: not one of the shapes is exactly the same as the others, they are all unique. This digital tapestry was a pioneering piece of that time, but even today people would still appreciate this pieces of art. Maybe less so because it was digitally made, but it still beautifully demonstrates what the start of the digital media era looked like. Some people may also have personal reference to the piece like I do, but I think most will also be impressed if it was displayed in an exhibition like it was at one time, including the deep black background and the transparent colors. - Irma Harms, s1814141 15-6-2017