Roman Verostko: Cyberflower Duet: Red and Green

Artist(s):

Roman Verostko

Title:

Cyberflower Duet: Red and Green

Exhibition:

SIGGRAPH 2003: CG03: Computer Graphics 2003

Collection:

SIGGRAPH Artworks in the Victoria & Albert Museum

Creation Year:

2003

Size:

Two framed works, 27 in by 35 in each

Artist Statement:

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 artwork. My work joins algorithmic procedures with traditional practice. 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. A close look reveals the cyberflower color fields as very closely drawn lines achieved with disciplined precision. The stroke in the lower left identifies the initiator for these strokes. This stroke embodies the controlling information with which every pen stroke within the entire work was improvised.

Content. My software has evolved by stages, yielding series of works at each stage. In turn, each series, as a family of forms, has distinctive formal qualities associated with its form-generators. Yet each work within the “family” enjoys its own unique form of reality. As a unique reality in itself, the artwork does not represent some other reality. To the question “what is it?” one could respond as some abstractionists did in the late 1950s: “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 celebrate the information-processing procedures driving 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.