Theoretical Space Projection, Manfred Mohr

Exhibition Label:
“Holding Pattern: New Works at the Spencer Museum,” Sep-2014, Susan Earle and Cassandra Mesick
German-born artist Manfred Mohr is a pioneer of digital art. Having started as an action painter and abstract expressionist, he began making work exclusively with a computer in 1969 and has followed that path ever since. He prefers to call his work “algorithmic art” (rather than “computer art”). In the late 1960s and early 1970s-a very fertile time period for artistic experimentation-Mohr wrote his own programs (in Fortran IV) that explored space-dividing algorithms using lines and arcs of circles. The drawing uses a plotter pen or brush controlled by a computer, with built-in random variables that the artist could not predict or control. He was able to use a supercomputer to create photogravures and screen prints of his plotter drawings to allow for multiple results from a single algorithmic activity. This work considers projection into abstract, fabricated spaces.