Modern Chromatics: Students’ Text-Book of Color with Applications to Art and Industry by Ogden N. Rood (review)

82 Books range of materials for the purpose is very wide. To illustrate this point, she shows woven, knitted, plaited, knotted and crocheted examples. Objects of padded and relief type, executed in needlework, are also provided. The text is short and confined mainly to captions, but it does include brief instructions on basic textile techniques and needlework stitches. These are well illustrated by line drawings that are sufficientlyexplicit to enable an artist to explore their possibilities. Artist and Computer. Ruth Leavitt, ed. Harmony Books, New York, 1976. 120pp.. illus. Paper, $4.95. Reviewed by Robert E. Mwller’ Computer artists tend to use digital computers as though they were giant kaleidoscopes. A small effort may produce unexpectedresults that are beautiful. But it isnecessaryto realize that images produced by chance with a complex machine are no more works of art than those one seesby rotating a kaleidoscope. I do not mean to suggestthat it is not possible to make artworks by means of a computer, but just that to expressdeeplyfelt,novel human insights in visual form an artist must transcend the properties of a chosen medium. I find that most computer art so far produced might be called mathematical doodling. It is surprising that somany have had accessto large-scalecomputers for trying to make artistic outputs. Since we are on the verge of mass producing micro-processors, like pocket calculators, using chip elements and with color-television outputs, one can expect an avalanche of computer ‘art’ in the near future. It is well to understand, therefore, the special qualities that distinguish art from mathematico-electronic necessity. This book indicates that artists are as interested in computer graphics as scientists and engineers. Leavitt, who made the selections, is a Hans Hoffman-trained abstract expressionist turned computer artist herself. The non-artists represented are usually researchers whose in-the-line-of-duty computer visualizations seem to them to have artistic values. Although music generated by computers and produced by electronic synthesizers frequently appear in both Pop and contemporary music, computer-generated art is seldom taken seriously by the art world. But since everything from the comic-book enlargements of Lichtenstein to Christo’s mountain wrappings are acceptable, it ispossible that computer graphics will also take its place in the perplexing spectrum of present-day art. Leavitt’s book shows that there is agreement among artists that computers can aid in the visualization of ideas that are too complex to be executed manually. Computers can readily concretize visual concepts. Like composers of computer music, computer artists try to expand the sensual limits of perception. Frequently, they fill reams of paper with variations on geometric themes. In many cases they appeal to serendipity in the hope of producing artistic masterpieces. Of the 35 individuals (from the U.S.A., Canada, England, France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Federal Republic of Germany and Japan), 22make geometricdesignsout of symbols,mathematical curves and real images.The rapid combinatorial capacity of the computer is exploited, performing random, accidental, planned and fortuitous alterations, transformations, rotations and size changes. Subjective aesthetic criteria are used to nudge a computer in an encouraging direction when chance arrangements appear unusually pleasing. I call this class ‘controlled serendipity’. Thenext largest number of those represented use imagestaken from drawings, photographs or television pictures-altering, simplifying,multiplying or combining them imaginatively.Some build up imagesby means of computer programs, others control the visual output manually with interactive devices, such as a tablet, joy stick, mouse or light pen. I call the results obtained ‘narrations on a theme’. A smaller group of artists use computer printouts to aid the execution of works in traditional media: acrylics on canvas, sculpted forms in marble, metal, wire or Plexiglass,even woven fabric, going back to one of the origins of the computer-the ‘Britton House, Roosevelt, NJ 08555, U.S.A. Jacquard loom. Cinema film or video is used by some to turn their sequential images into nonfigurative or figurative films. Lastly, cybernetic structures have been built by some of the artists to respond to environmental variables along the lines of Grey Walter’s Machina speculatrix, tortoise-like cyborgs that display an uncanny animal-like behavior. Leavitt’s book, more than any I have...