USSR
Marc Marc held an exhibition at the end of last year featuring a series of paintings and his
Auto-Composer at the
Central House of Artists in Moscow, a museum for modern
art. The three Atari ST's he needed for the presentation were loaned to him
by the Atari computer club in Moscow. Marc says that he enjoyed giving such a presentation
in a country where computers were not yet an everyday phenomenon.
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Netherlands
Presentations are also scheduled in the Netherlands. At this moment discussions are taking place
with Atari Benelux about sponsoring equipment for an exhibition at the
Canon Image Centre in Amsterdam. From September 5 onward,
an installation of Marc's Auto-Composer will be on display. Benten also has exhibition plans
with her computer art, but at this moment she cannot yet reveal details due to ongoing
negotiations. Atari is not known as a company that actively engages with its user community.
If I am to rely on Marc's accounts, this is slowly beginning to change. That Atari is going
to become very busy seems certain to him. How did these artists actually come to involve
themselves with computer art?
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Benten van Schie
Years ago she once saw a presentation where drawing was done via computer on a large screen,
and she knew that she also wanted a computer to work with. Much later (by then the Atari ST
had already been released), she was able to borrow a computer and began working with the
drawing program she had purchased. The Atari ST she borrowed also included several
programming languages. Her curiosity led her on a journey of discovery with the examples
that were supplied. Without fully understanding what everything meant, she changed numbers
in the listings of the example programs. This resulted in many surprising outcomes.
Through this, her interest in programming was permanently awakened and ideas began to flow.
She started to deepen her knowledge of programming in order to give form to her graphical
ideas. Learning to program was not accomplished in just a few days, but the results were
encouraging enough to remain motivated. While stumbling over programming problems, her
so-called moving paintings emerged. Benten also noticed that some programming errors led
to interesting results that were later deliberately used.
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Marc Marc
He was once given the opportunity to draw on an Apple Macintosh and saw possibilities
in that. It was not until the arrival of the Atari ST that he decided to purchase such
a computer. Initially he had no intention of programming himself, but when drawing with
the usual drawing programs could not provide what he was looking for, he nevertheless
began programming. He had hoped that his electronics experience would be useful, but
that proved disappointing. However, once he had found a method to lay out programming
instructions visually (similar to electronic schematics), he progressed quickly. Many
of his ideas were derived from experiences with electronic music, which he specifically
directed toward the visual domain. By training Marc Marc is a painter, and this is clearly
visible in his computer art. He says that in his computer art he aims to achieve a similar
expressive power as in his abstract paintings. What especially intrigues him is the fact
that this must be approached in a very different way when working with a computer.
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PD disk ACN 1000
For the cover disk of this issue both artists contributed material
contained in the folder named 'TARTARTA' on this diskette. Benten provides
with her MIRAKELS art-creation program a portion of her creativity. It is a kind
of drawing program with which remarkable drawing surprises are conjured onto the screen.
By pressing a specific key on the keyboard, a selection is made from one of the many
functions that allow the user to start creating with the mouse. Marc Marc
provided under the name ART MODERNE a program that contains 22 self-composing
artworks. It is truly fascinating to observe how these artworks come into being.
The program is an adapted version of his Auto-Composer with which the
four works shown here were also created. Both programs are worthwhile to
examine and use, because they demonstrate that very beautiful and original
artistic creations can be made with these graphical programs. According to
the artists, this is only the beginning of what is yet to come. That certainly
promises much.
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Postscript Marc Marc
The final part of the article dealt with placing orders for graphics at ACN
and has been omitted because it is no longer relevant.
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marcmarc@xs4all.nl