Bob Writes About His Art

For most of my career I have not been an artist, but a professional computer programmer. Since 1983 when I bought my first personal computer I have been teaching myself how to turn a computer into an artist's tool and myself into an artist. Over the years I have written several graphics programs. The one I use now is rather unusual. It is not a painting or drawing program. The images are made by a method more radical than painting or drawing. This program, which I call E-Run, executes computer algorithms that generate images directly. The notion, so crucial to the visual arts throughout its history, of the artist's mind driving the artist's hand, is here abandoned. My hands are relegated to typing programs, editing them and making menu selections to run programs, save images or print them. Is something gained for the loss of the hand? Yes, we are now operating in another domain of the human spirit. Another talent of the human mind is here liberated and allowed to speak, thanks to the computer.

There are worlds of order and beauty lying dormant in our various mathematical systems that these simple algorithmic processes are able to make visible. This is the beauty of pattern, rhythm, symmetry, asymmetry, form, variation, balance and movement. These are the worlds that I explore in my art.

To make an image I write a small, usually simple computer program in a language called E (named in honor of Mauritz Escher, the brilliant artist who found hundreds of playful, original, striking ways of expressing mathematical themes in visual form, all masterfully executed).

E is a simple programming language designed for making visual images by means of numerical algorithms. E-Run is the software that executes programs written in the E language. It is controlled interactively from the keyboard by making menu selections offered on the screen. There is support for writing and editing E programs, for passing parameters to E programs, for catching errors in E programs, for painting E-generated images on the screen, printing them on a laser printer or saving them in a file, and for controlling image color.

Back to Home Page