Graphics and Animation by Personal Computer

Abstract

The use of digital computers in the visual arts began in the early 1960s. Now this is a common field for their application. A substantial number of articles describing such artworks have appeared in Leonardo, and some are reprinted in Ref. 1. I have written three articles myself on the subject, which were published in German (2-4). Generally, such work is done on large computers to which a small number of artists have access. More recently, however, small, rather inexpensive digital computers, called personal computers or home computers, have become available. They are widely used in account keeping, text editing, game playing, learning and control- ling the operation of electrical and of mechanical devices. They can also be applied in the production both of music and of artistic graphics and will undoubtedly be widely used by artists in the future. Thanks to today's technology of micro-electronics, their tiny integrated circuits or chips give them a computing power approaching that of very large expensive machines. The personal computers are not much larger than a typewriter. They consist of a keyboard of letters and numbers and combined units of electronic parts, such as a microprocessor, a memory device and input-output circuits; sometimes a monitor or CRT screen is added to the computer housing. The monitor can be used to display letters, words, text and numbers hand-typed on the keyboard. It serves also as the output for showing the results of computations, which may be in the form of text, numbers or graphics (points, lines and areas). A commercial home color television set may be used as the monitor for some types of personal computer.