Antibes

Antibes combines a computer-generated image together with the entire computer program used to generate that image (it's called "software art": "purists believe no artist should work with software unless they can write code" - see here). The intention is to create the strongest possible link between an artwork and the method of that artwork's construction.

The image is of the Château Grimaldi in Antibes as seen from the nearby beach. I hope the picture appears full of "la joie de vivre".

The computer program (on the extreme right of the image) is a simple polygon renderer - one of the building blocks of a modern computer graphics system. It can draw convex quadrilateral polygons (see diagram below) and triangles. (It's not possible to read the computer program in the low-resolution version of Antibes presented here, but you can read it in HTML form here).

Antibes has stylistic links with two movements from Russian Modernism [1][2]:

Suprematism (c. 1915)

The Suprematist painters aimed to celebrate man's recently-acquired supremacy over nature (it is important to remember how great a threat was once posed by the uncontrollable forces of nature). Suprematism was founded by Kasimir Malevich. I have reproduced two of his pictures below (Malevich expressed no clear preference as to which way up his paintings should be hung, so I used my initiative). As you can see, Suprematist paintings were composed of purely geometrical objects - shapes which would never occur in nature.

Malevich aimed to create a spiritual effect through his pictures: "A pure sensation of infinite depth". Basically, he used overlapping shapes to create an impression of depth, employing a white background to give an impression of infinity.

What I find interesting, though, is the shapes of Suprematism: convex polygons and triangles - precisely the shapes which can be produced by the simple polygon renderer. I think the Suprematists would have been delighted to discover that the shapes they revered so much would become the basic building blocks of computer graphics techniques over half-a-century later.

Constructivism (c. 1919)

The Constructivists embraced technology and the recently-developed techniques of industrial mass-production in their art. They believed that the artist had to become a technician able to use the tools and materials of modern production (is not the computer program the new form of modern production?). As a result, their artworks possessed a "machine aesthetic" with the technical nature of the constructive process clearly visible. It is this link between the constructive process and the final artwork that Antibes seeks to emphasize. (There is also a link between Constructivism and the beach at Antibes: Gerald Murphy [3]).

The concept of a "construction" is a term still used in art. It is used to refer to a sculpture which has been produced by connecting various industrial materials (such as plastic and aluminium) which would be glued, welded, or screwed together. This is in contrast to the traditional method of creating a sculpture by carving out of a block. This tradition of constructive sculpture was started by Picasso's Guitar [4].

By using these industrial methods and materials the Constructivists destroyed the concept of the sanctity of the "unique work of art". An exact copy of a piece of Constructivist art would be its precise equivalent: "If a part of a construction broke it would be possible to replace it with a piece of the same material cut to the same size and fixed in the same position" [5].

This is precisely the same position now occupied by digital art - a digital copy is an identical clone of the "original" [6]. This raises questions about ownership of an artwork: who owns the original? This poses problems for the future of art galleries and the art market. (However, I'm not one of those doom mongers so eager to predict the demise of the gallery. After all, they incorrectly predicted that TV would kill the cinema. People seem to like the shared, communal experience. Also, you can only get an impression of a picture's scale by seeing it in a gallery).

I believe Antibes poses new questions. If you take the supplied computer program and compile and run it then you can create (construct?) an identical picture in a manner which is the precise mathematical equivalent of the way I created the picture (in fact, you will find the flag will have "blown" to a new random position, generated by the program. Does this mean you have created an "original" picture?). This raises questions of authorship: I did not make the picture - you made it.

As Picasso said about his Guitar construction: "I'm going to hold on to the guitar but I shall sell its plan. Everyone will be able to make it for himself" [4]. Well, I'm trying to give you the plans.