Computer-aided art
By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer
Butler Institute of American Art
Beecher Center for Technology in the Arts
viral portraits of StŽphane
Sikora
Viruses usually are thought of as
destructive.
In the human body, viruses can
make you sick or even kill
you. In a computer, a virus can
wreck your hard drive or
delete volumes of important
information.
When he started learning about
computer viruses, Joseph
Nechvatal wondered if something
good could come from
them. HeÕs spent almost two
decades proving that viruses
can help create art.
NechvatalÕs aesthetic Ñ which is
shown in an exhibit at the
Butler Institute of American Art,
Youngstown Ñ evolved
from his drawings and paintings
in the age of Reaganism.
The Soviet Union was still around
and people felt the threat
of nuclear annihilation. The
emergence of MTV and cable
news stations barraged viewers
with information they had
never had access to before.
His works were dense landscapes
of overlapping lines. He
wanted them to feel chaotic, and
for the figurative images
Ñ sometimes traced out of magazines
Ñ to be shrouded
by the chaos.
Nechvatal, 55, who lives in New
York and Paris, started
using computers in 1987, during a
residency in Knoxville,
Tenn. He found he could
manipulate his images with
computers, a metaphorical
reflection of his belief that
people are manipulated by the
images they see.
The computers helped him make his
images even more
dense than they already were.
ÒThese paintings, the more you
live with them, the more
you discover in them,Ó he said,
contrasting his work to the
clear, simple images of Pop Art.
Another residency in Arbois,
France, in the early Õ90s had
an equally explosive effect on
his art.
The Chicago native was working at
the Louis Pasteur
Atelier under a program where
artists were brought into
interact with local people to
create new work. Because of
PasteurÕs connection with Arbois,
Nechvatal wanted to
create work that had some
connection to the famous
scientist, who made important
discoveries about the
behavior and control of bacteria
and prevention of disease.
He settled on computer viruses as
a metaphor for Pasteur
and the then-newly emerging AIDS
virus, which was killing
off friends and loved ones.
Viruses also gave him a chance to
add randomness and
chance to his works, something he
enjoyed about the art of
Marcel Duchamp and the music of
John Cage, who had no
desire to strictly control the
presentation and interpretation
of their works.
Nechvatal, who teaches at the New
York School of Visual
Arts, elicited the help of
computer scientist Jean-Philip
Massonie to create viruses.
ÒIÕm not a marvelous programmer,
myself,Ó he said. ÒI enter
into collaborative processes with
other people and they
show me the tools with which to
experiment.Ó
In 1999, Nechvatal started
working with StŽphane Sikora, a
collaboration that continues.
Nechvatal sets parameters for the
viruses, then sets them
loose. The viruses can ÒeatÓ
colors, leaving behind different
colors and patterns. Sometimes
they obliterate the image
they have just eaten; sometimes
they donÕt.
He also works with artificial
life, in which viruses act as they
would if they were in nature. In
some cases, a virus
ÒmocksÓ the rules he has set, he
said.
The viruses reproduce and
continue working until they run
out of Òfood,Ó or until Nechvatal
tells them to stop.
Nechvatal compiles collages of
dense images Ñ
superimposed and manipulated
photographs, paintings
and drawings created by himself
or others Ñ before
scanning them into a computer and
unleashing a virus.
Once an image is complete, he has
it printed with acrylic
paint on canvas, and calls the
finished works
Òcomputer-robotic assisted
paintings.Ó
Nechvatal stressed that he is
fully in control of what he
creates. He sets the parameters
for the viruses, creates
the environments in which they
work and decides when a
work is finished.
ÒI was never going to surrender
my artistic will to any
(expletive) machine,Ó he said. ÒI
was going to use and
master the machine.Ó
Art without human control is bad
art, he said.
To remind viewers of a human
touch, Nechvatal frequently
inserts a stripe. Barnet Newman
was famous for such
stripes, which symbolize sublime
man or the presence of
man.
The Butler show is in two parts.
One gallery displays large
paintings, and a second exhibits
projected portraits of
friends and people Nechvatal
admires as the images are
attacked by his viruses. The
portraits change frequently,
and the viruses act differently
each time.
In two of the projected images,
viruses also create sounds
as they work.