ART AND THE COMPUTER - MELVIN L. PRUEITT

All the following images are taken from Melvin L. Prueitt's book Art and the Computer.


The human visual system integrates line segments into subjectively perceived surfaces. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)


Richard F. Voss used fractal geometry to produce a very realistic scene. (1982 Benoit B. Mandelbrot, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center)


"Artic Twilight." Experimenting around with an erosion program. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)


"Concession to Scifi." There are number of ways to create abstract art with a computer. (1980 Darcy Gerbarg)


"Vanishing Essence." The reason that these plates are effective in producing a pleasant picture is that our visual systems are able to connect them together into unified curving surfaces. (1983 Melvin L. Prueitt)


Vibeke Sorenson's computer graphics design class in the Department of Communication Arts and Design at the Virginia Commonwealth University found that home computers could produce colorful patterns.


This was produced by James Squires as a graduate student using a Chromatics 7900 in the Fine Arts Department of UCLA.


"Rainbow Valley." The stripes in the rainbow actually consist of bent tubes. (1982 Melvin L. Prueitt)

UNDERSTANDING COMPUTERS

I found this book for a dollar in a second hand bookstore this weekend. I was thrilled.
This volume is one of a series that examines various aspects of computer technology and the role computers play in modern life. Computer Images, Understanding Computers, Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1986

Cover: Interlinked toroidal, or dougnut-like, shapes and cut-apart surface that unwraps from one toroid onto the other represent, in effect, a three dimensional space - an image virtually impossible for humans to visualize before the advent of the computer.

Artist Mark Lindquist created this portrait with a computer graphics paint system in much the same way that oils are applied to canvas. The image began as a rough, charcoal-like sketch to which the artist then added color, sparingly at first, but with increasing complexityas the work progressed. "I feel the most fluent, freest, working on the computer,"said Lindquist. "I love the idea of working with light rather than paints."

Melvin Prueitt

David Em

The main challenge presented by Rowes Wharf, a commercial building planned for the waterfront in Boston, was to design a structure that would blend esthetically with the city. Architects, thus spent much of their computer time creating models such as this one - a view of the Wharf with its surfaces filled in, integrated with a wire-fame view of the Boston skyline.

To generate this realistic rendering of the finished wharf, an artist called up a model and designated surfaces, colors, angle of light and point of view.