The Art Style Computer Processing System

Publication TypeUnpublished
AuthorsSherman, Thomas
SourceToronto, Ontario (1974)
Keywordspeople-text
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  "As it is, our perception of things is a circuit unable to admit a great variety of new sensations all at once. Human perception is best suited to slow modifications of routine behavior."      George Kubler A communication system is for sending and receiving messages. A communication system consists of two transceivers; two components that transmit and receive message. A communication system is limited when the message is sent in only one direction, transmitter to receiver. This limited system can be expanded by integrating a processing system at the receiver end to provide access to the message. A processing system permits special treatment of the message at the receiver end of the communication system. The computer processing system described in this article is specifically designed to manipulate the message transmitted to the two dimensional surface of a video screen. The message source is the commercial television broadcast. The message is limited to display on the flat surface of the video screen. An analog is formed between processing the video message and the act of painting. This processing system provides personal choice of how the message source is viewed in the same way the painter chooses to view the environment through his or her method or style of painting. This system is labeled the art-style processor. Style is a phenomenon of perception governed by the coincidence of certain physical conditions. The art-style processing system is constructed of information obtained from every major historically innovative treatment of the two dimensional surface. The system contains the concise history of painting. By block encoding historically successful modes of sensing, the system contains a set of period visions. These period visions are methods of seeing the environment. They are rule governed styles of processing messages. The rules are those instituted by schools of painting dominating particular periods of history. At this time, period visions contained by the system are: Abstract Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting, Arabesque, Art Noveau, Automatism, Barbizon School, Baroque, Bio-Morphic, Cartoon, Classic, Color-Field, Cubism, Dada., Danube School, Divisionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Futurism, Gothic (Late and International), Group of Seven, History Painting, Hudson River School, Impressionism, London Group, Mannerism, Neo-Classic, Neo-Impressionism, Optical, Orphic Cubism, Painterly Abstraction, Photo-Realism, Pointillism, Post-Impressionism, Primitive, Rayonism, Realism, Renaissance, Rococo, Romanist, Romantic, Social Realism, Super-Realism, Suprematism, Surrealism, Synthetism, Tenebrism, and Vorticism. The vision circuit for each period contains additional processing characteristics. These simulate decisions of individual artists contained by schools of painting or period visions. The capacity of each period vision processing circuit depends on sensitive patterning of physical conditions marking the consistent vision. Fine adjustment control of contrast, brightness, color, and form open the end of each processing channel. The viewer fine tunes a wide band of processed message attaining authorship of the message. The commercial cable television system provides structure for immediate integration of the art-style processer in the home viewing system. The art-style processing system consists of a centrally located computer with remote control units functioning as switching devices which afford access to the processing circuits of the system. Passing the message through a chosen period vision is accomplished by switching in the desired circuit by pushbutton selection on the remote control unit. Application of the art-style processing system: The message is the broadcast of a network news program. The information is in color with low interference. The viewer decides to process the message with the period vision labeled Rayonism. (1) This selection is made on the remote control unit. While passing through the processing circuit the message form is disintegrated to simulate the radiation of lines of force emanating from the objects in the news program. Important artists having this period vision are Michel Larionov and Nathalie Gontcharova. The viewer chooses to understand Rayonism through Larionov's vision. This processing circuit is switched in through selection made on the control unit. Larionov's vision is non-objective. Visually the news program is processed into a pure abstraction with objects becoming new forms as they disintegrate in radiating colors. Fine tuning controls permit control of color and contrast with Larionov's radiations. The art-style computer processing system is introduced to provide the best possible system for the study of the history of painting. The system provides a previously unattained view of the artist's systematic attempts to attain efficient communication through the two dimensional channel. The system simulates the collective visual experience of recorded history and offers choice of vision to the one-way communication system of commercial broadcast television. The viewer, in implementing historically incoherent methods of sensing upon a contemporary message can introduce message equivocations, that is uncertain knowledge about the transmitted message when the received message is known. Uncertainty of message increases with degrees of image latency, the time interval between image and response or understanding. Message latency is abstraction. The art-style processing system is a stochastic system. That is, its output is in part dependent on truly random or unpredictable events. Total randomness of message produces monotony, a sense of sameness. Period vision processing circuits pattern and structure the message. The structure provides a familiar visual language allowing new sensations to be perceived through contrast. By processing an available random message, broadcast television, the two dimensional output of this communication system is unpredictable yet structured. The completion and integration of the art-style processing system into the existing cable television system effectively surrounds (contains) the history of painting. Expansion of the methods of communication depend on technological invention. Components of this video processing computer system are being designed and tested by technological artists in scattered communities around the globe. (1) Rayonism was an abstract Russian movement stylistically between Futurism and Abstract Expressionism. Larionov, an instructor at the University of Moscow, published the Rayonist manifesto in 1913.