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	ARTWARE  2, digital art exhibition. ARTWARE is an International Biennial of Digital Art organized by Umberto Roncoroni and the ICPNA in collaboration with the Unión Latina. El Ojo Ajeno Galería 2003 April 8 to May 4 PUCP Cultural Center Lima, Peru ARTWARE 2. This group exhibition, curated by Umberto Roncoroni includes the work of 11 artists. A catalogue with notes and information on these artists, including one black & white representation of work by each exhibitor, is available in a PDF file. To download this PDF file  click here (1.68 meg). Verostko in Artware 2. The show includes work representing 5 phases in the development of Roman's work. This page, as an RV archive, details those 5 selections with images not available in the catalogue.  Las series (Verostko) Las imágenes presentadas en Artware2, son una selección representativa  de las familias de dibujos realizados por procedimientos algorítmicos en los últimos años.
	Twenty-six Visions of Hildegarde. 30" by 22", 2000. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing on paper with 4 gold leafed medallions. (Original algorithmic procedures date from the early 1990's.) Los dibujos de la familia “Twentysix visions of Hildegarde” son generados con un procedimiento que es muy adecuado para celebrar esta mística y teóloga medieval. Estas visiones reflejan el misterio del cosmos como era percibido en el medioevo en los algoritmos de las máquinas digitales. Notes on arrays of form: The pen plotted "Visions of Hildegarde" invite meditation through arrays of improvisation. Each vision, one more improvisation in the seemingly countless array of possibles, points to the manner in which the limits of the drawing procedure, like life, are unknowable.  Each improvisation emerges from a sequence of random decisions within a set of controlling parameters established by the  artist's code. The procedure is appropriate for celebrating a medieval mystical theologian. Hildegarde's visions embodied her response to the mystery of our cosmos as perceived in her day. Research with coded procedures today, whether with the human genome or with intelligent machines, embodies the cutting edge of our own confrontation with the mystery of cosmos. Hildegarde  of  Bingen (1098-1179), a medieval theologian and mystic organized her  major prophetic work,  Scivias, around 26 visions divided in three parts (6,7,13). Her work includes hymns composed with chant notation that  appeal to the  human spirit and the search for spiritual fulfillment.  Two of  Hildegard's  hymns in Latin and English with links to source manuscripts with chant notation may be found at:   http://www.irupert.com/HILDEGRD/hildetext.htm.  For a Hildegard biographical see:  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07351a.htm
	Cyberflower IV, 4.  29" by 23", 2000. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing on paper with artist's studio seal in red. The seal characters read "Little Path Studio" for "Pathway Studio" “Cyberflowers” son flores digitales cosechadas desde el universo virtual generadas a partir de variaciones de trayectoria de líneas curvas empezando desde un mismo conjunto de coordenadas. Este mundo virtual  y sus habitantes digitales  están todavía inexplorados, pero ya es claro que es desde este espacio que  llegará, para un renovado placer estético, la cultura visual del futuro. Notes: Some years ago an artist colleague entered Verostko's studio and saw his algorithmic pen plots for the first time. Spontaneously and with some gusto, he exclaimed  "Computer flowers!". Since then the algorists of the late 20th Century have been generating a cyber landscape with many faces . Verostko believes we have seen only the tip of a huge continent of unbelievable dimension, a marvelous world of form to be explored and enjoyed in the 21st Century. These cyberflowers, harvested from this new world, are several of his best at the turn of the Century.   The algorithm driving this series generates its curvilinear procedures from a single set of coordinates. Algorithmic improvisations based on a single set of coordinates introduce a self similarity that permeates the form on several levels.
	Gaia EVII, 5. 30" by 22", 1995. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing with artist's studio seal in red. The seal characters read "Little Path Studio" for "Pathway Studio". Las piezas de la serie “Gaia” son caracterizadas por una fuerte semejanza entre sí y se podrían considerar como un jardín digital criado por el software del artista  Notes on familial resemblance. The software procedure generates a "family" of forms with a strong familial resemblance. This work bears a strong familial resemblance to others in the Gaia series because they were created with the same form generator sharing a common set of parameters. This work demonstrates the similarities between the artist's software and epigenesis. In this instance, somewhat as in a garden, members of  the the "family"  were "grown" with the artist's software. The text-like characters, derived from the same visual initiators as the central clusters, add to the "self similarity" of the whole. This holds true for works from each series of works such as the Pathway and Hildegarde series of works.
	Pathway Series. 29" by 23",  2000. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing on paper with 2 gold leaf elements. In this work  the  "all-over" distributions are linear random walks with numerous iterations.  The text-like inscription is an algorithmically generated visual label bordered on either side with a gold leaf enhancement. La serie “Pathway” se compone de recorridos lineares casualmente distribuidos en la superficie del papel y han sido creados con uno  de mis primeros software. Prototipos de estos procedimientos se pueden encontrar en ciertos trabajos de los dadaístas y de los surrealistas. This drawing was achieved with  routines used in the artist's earliest pen plotted drawings. The procedures grew from his Magic Hand of Chance (1982-85), a work that drew animated linear sequences on a monitor.  Prototypes of these software procedures may be found in forms of automatism practiced by some dada artists and surrealists in the early 1920's. "Automatic" writing  and drawing  sought to explore  unconscious regions of human experience using spontaneous or non-rational methods as  in making a thoughtless "doodle".
	West-East,  29" by 23", 2000. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing on paper with 2 gold leaf elements. “West-East” es una serie de imágenes que se basa en la reacción de elementos opuestos. Notes: Linear fields address the attraction and repulsion of opposites - their similarity and their difference are presented simultaneously as "West-East".  These images evoke experience that transcends the tight bounds of  earth and object. The routines were developed from random distributions with parameter controllers for elements such as scale and direction.
	Two Thousand Improvisations, v4,  30" by 22", 2000. Algorithmic pen and ink drawing on paper.   “Two Thousands Improvisations” es una serie de trabajos, empezada en 1999, que reúne en composiciones modulares, trazados lineares siempre diferentes. El ojo queda como hipnotizado al pasar de una improvisación a la otra y puede descubrir formas y configuraciones sorprendentes.   The Y2K improvisations, celebrating 2000 years, were begun in 1999. Three series with various versions have been drawn. Each version presents a different series of two thousand improvisations, each  individually drawn with pen and ink, line for line, without any repetitions.  The detailed originals can be hypnotizing as the eye wanders from one unit to the next discovering unexpected form inventions from one rectangle to the next.

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Catalogue Statement: 

NOTES ON ALGORITHMIC DRAWING, 2003  
(Spanish Version - Click here)

A new frontier. For close to 20 years I have been developing a program of  “form generators” for initiating and improvising art-form ideas. The creation and control of these generators provide an awesome means for artists to integrate form-growing concepts in their creative process.

The art work. My work joins traditional practice with algorithmic procedures. Thousands of lines in each work are drawn with a multi-pen plotter coupled to a PC. The pen plotter, with an ink pen in its drawing arm, draws each individual line using pigmented inks on rag papers. The pen drawn lines, easily discerned in the overlapping pen strokes in most of my works, are less obvious in the monochrome cyber-flowers.  However, a close look reveals the cyber-flower color field as very closely drawn lines achieved with disciplined precision.  

Content. Over the years my software has evolved by stages yielding series of works at each stage.  In turn, each series displays distinctive formal qualities associated with its form generators creating a “family” of forms. Yet each work within the “family” enjoys its own unique form reality.  As a unique reality in itself the art-work does not re-present some other reality. It presents itself. As some abstract expressionists observed in the late 1950’s: “It is”.   Just as a botanist might label a newly discovered flower so also I label this or that newly made visual form.  

Meaning. The works are visual analogues of the coded procedures by which they grew. For me they are visual celebrations of information processing procedures embedded in today's culture. They invite us to ponder how the stark logic of a coded procedure yields such surprising grace and beauty. By doing so they serve as icons illuminating the mysterious nature of our evolving selves.

Roman Verostko, Minneapolis, January 2003.

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Spanish Version (traducción de Umberto Roncoroni)

Apuntes sobre los dibujos algorítmicos

 Roman Verostko

Durante casi 20 años he trabajado en el desarrollo de un programa “generador de formas” para crear e improvisar imágenes con el medio digital. El control de estos algoritmos generadores es de grande importancia para los artistas, ya que permite integrar el proceso artístico individual con las investigaciones más avanzadas sobre la vida artificial y con los conceptos de crecimiento y de evolución.

Mi forma de trabajar es un conjunto y una interacción de las técnicas y de los procesos artísticos tradicionales con los procedimientos algorítmicos. Cada trabajo es un conjunto de miles de líneas dibujadas por un plotter acoplado a una computadora. El plotter traza las líneas con especiales tintas pigmentadas, estas líneas se ven muy fácilmente en la mayoría de mis trabajos; sin embargo en la serie “cyberflowers” estas líneas son menos evidentes, primero por ser trabajos monocromáticos y secundariamente por la grande resolución y precisión del trazado.

Durante los años mis programas han ido evolucionando progresivamente y por cada etapa de este desarrollo se han generado “familias” o “generaciones” de diferentes piezas artísticas. Eso ha sucedido porque cada generación de software tiene sus características especiales y luego da lugar a formas y colores que con esta etapa del software se identifican. Sin embargo, adentro de una familia de trabajos, cada unidad es una entidad autónoma e irrepetible, con una realidad e identidad personal. Estas imágenes no representan otra realidad, no imitan, sino son ellas mismas su propia realidad; como dijo de su pintura un expresionista abstracto al final de los años cincuenta: “It is”. Mi relación con estas especies de nuevas formas visuales es parecida a la actitud de un botánico cuando analiza y clasifica  una nueva especie de flor.

Los dibujos algorítmicos son la forma visible de los procedimientos y del código digital por los cuales crecen y se desarrollan. Estos procedimientos informáticos (incrustados con profundidad en la cultura contemporánea) y sus manifestaciones visuales nos hacen pensar con maravilla a las posibilidades estéticas, a la belleza y armonía que estos mismos procesos son capaces de ofrecer.

Cumpliendo esta labor artística estos programas son como símbolos que interpretan e iluminan los misterios de nosotros mismos como seres en continua evolución y transformación.

Roman Verostko, Minneapolis 2003

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