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82 Books It is quite interesting to note that what the pieces illustrated have in common, concrete, is of the least importance. All of the pieces are outdoor public works, and some are a response to the assertion: ‘Townscan be humanized. Plastic beauty can be made to reign everywhere in man’s environment.’ Others echo Wyndham Lewis’s view that ‘contemporary art, . . . is unquestionably satiric or comic’. It is easy to guess why Jacques Moeschal’s motorway piece at Hensies, England, is about half the height of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. Among other things, the sizeof the piece is related to what can be grasped of it from a speeding automobile. This suggests an interesting general relationship connecting the possible visual complexity of the piece with its size and the time available for a viewer to see it. The faster the automobile, the more nearly instantaneous is the viewer’s experience of a roadside work. Only simple characteristics can be recognized; detail and refinement become redundant. An alternative approach (though not within the scope of the book) is the work of Andrew Leicester. For his Minnesota Highway Project in the U.S.A., he constructed vast calligraphic figures of chalk on a hillside adjacent to a road. These figures have the properties of perspective,sothat, when viewersarrive at a particular station point, they form simple illusionistic motifs that dramatically detach themselves from their background. Leicestermakes the traveller aware of that instant, but his work also provides a rich and changing visual experience worked out in sequence to punctuate a journey along that part of the highway. The Best of BytcVolume I. David H. Ah1and Carl T. Helmers, Jr., eds. Creative Computing Press, Morristown, N.J., 1977. 376 pp. illus. $11.95. Reviewed by E. Zajec” As the title suggests, this book is a collection of articles that have been selected from the first 12 issues of Byfe:TheS/na//System Journal.The book ismainly addressed to those potential ‘Byters’ or ‘home brew computer builders’ who are just entering the hobby-computer field. Its aim is to offer a primer that would quickly and proficiently lead newcomers to a general understanding of the problems involved.Outstanding among these are the decisionsofwhat system to choose from the available makes, how to build it, how to run it and what to do with it. The section on Opinion takes care of the first problem. Potential home computer owners are advised to carefully consider the possible ‘design alternatives and growth plans’ of the microprocessor they intend to buy, in view of the rapid development and consequent obsolescence of some of the products in the small computer industry. This section, along with the sections on Theory and on Applications, alsooffers someintrospection, along with concrete examples, on the possible tasks that can be performed by a small computer. These range all the way from a ‘total kitchen information system’ and checkbook balancing to more exotic items such as ‘playingthe ponies’and thc stock market and even ‘pipingin with cultural institutions’, these last in connection with larger systems. Much of the book is taken up by sections dealing seperately with Computer Kits, Hardware and Software. These sections are mostly technical in content and are thus beyond the reach of the casual.reader. To be able to read them to some profit would require considerable know-how in dealing with integrated circuitry and systems software. Some of the articles, such as Programming for the Beginner, Hexpan, Life Line and others, deal with problems of structured programming, artificial intelligence, and experimentation and development of patterns, which could be of interest to artists approaching the computer for the first time. Ambitious and forward-lookingart teachers could instead find this book to be a source of valuable information, if they decided to gradually assemble, in cooperation with their sciencecolleagues and with their pupils, a relatively inexpensive minicomputer laboratory, complete with video terminals. The real value of a collection of articles, such as the one under *Via degli Alpini 101, Opicina, Trieste 34016, Italy. discussion, could be its role of popularization and, perhaps, demystificationof the ‘thinking machine’. However, implicitand lurking backstage of most hobby-orientated manuals is the specter of banalization...

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