Stretch provided Aldo Giorgini (1934-1994) with a framework for manipulating vector primitives using his own mathematical model. Although stretch was technical report in 1981, Giorgini had a prior body of work in 1976 that demonstrated the use of stretching algorithms to make art, like in the case of inedited works such as checkerboards, stripes, polka dots and swiss cheese. After exhaustive primary source research at Giorgini’s estate in Lafayette, Indiana, there was no evidence that the manuscript for Stretch was actually published. However, the Stretch framework was found in a manuscript stage and this paper will unveil the methods that Giorgini created for his own artistic production. The program was written in Fortran IV and intended for a CDC-6600 computer.

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In his last decade, Giorgini continued to work in side design projects for people he knew in the Lafayette area, and used the computer in a less artistic way. During this period, his use of computer focused greatly in creating graphics for the visualization of fluid mechanics.
Some of his most significant contribution to this field are: The development of the software and instruction of HEC-1 and HEC-2 and “Apple hydraulics,” a fluid mechanics simulator developed with a grant form the apple foundation in 1984.
For apple Hydraulics he collaborated with his PhD student, Andrea Rinaldo, one that he collaborated on several research papers and grant proposals. His last years are marked by a series of trips to Morocco, Tokyo and Italy. The reason for travel was his inclusion in two international conferences about hydraulics. Giorgini had a busy schedule juggling between his extensive research in fluid simulation, visualization, grant proposals.
In 1988, Giorgini travelled to Morrocco and Tokyo to present the latest techniques in fluid simulation and visualization. During the trip to Morrocco, few manuscripts show his familiarity with the arabic language. Giorgini grew part of his early life in the African country of Ethirea, as a war refugee during Mussolinni’s dictatorship. After Morroco, He visited his Voghera, his hometown in Italy and reconnected with family members as well as Italian researchers.
Regardless of all this endeavors, and his full devotion to teaching in the Civil Engineering department thought he didn’t have enough merits in academia to fullfil the requirements to become a full-professor. In the report found at Giorgini’s, anonymus commentaries state “too much art, need more papers.” The cold approach to a exemplary academic that contributed to the development of computer graphics simulations and computer art, raises questions to how the academic system measures knowledge using certain quantitative research landmarks such as “3 publications per year.” It is important to understand the magnitude of Giorgini’s contribution. He was an active participant in a technological development that impacted the history of computation. In a seminal period in which very few had access to computers, Giorgini devised several methods and instructions to use early computer code and printers to produce graphic information. The foundations of his visualization models were highly mathematical and sometimes statistical. In “Circular Cylinder” you can see that during his scientific visualizations he was also having fun. The program “CYLIN” shows visual cues of Giorgini’s artistic interests. Some illustrations from the CE reports became indeed, the foundations for some of his later art pieces.

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* Blais, J., & Ippolito, J. (2006). Code as muse. In At the edge of art (pp.16-55). New York, NY: Thames & Hudson

“Code as muse” is an attempt to make sense of the different approaches artists have to using programming languages as their media for art making. This chapter is focused extensively in artistic approaches to code writing.

The authors explain that the ‘art’ or craft of a computer program has little to do with fine arts. A clean program from a computer scientist or ‘the art of programming’ is only the mastery of a technique. In the other hand, artists would misuse code to create new meanings of the world and our relation to technology.

“If programming is an art, is any programmer with high standards an artist? No.” (p.17)

Scientific discoveries and visualizations such as the Mandelbrot set are important landmarks of this area of study, however, merely image production does not constitute a piece of art. The value of art relies on its meaning, and the production of realistic images using procedural techniques is addressed in the chapter, but also questioned. Art with code has nothing to do with the mastery of the code, in fact, many artists misuse code to produce new meanings and new uses for this medium.

The limitations of software art are constrained by syntax, if the program is not properly written in computer language, it won’t work. One of the most important aspects of this reading is that art-making is not the main purpose of programming languages, and this “code bending” re-purposes the original scientific intent of this tools.

The chapter has a negative bias towards beauty. Computer aesthetics is an important characteristic of the tool and can be used as a catalyst for deeper meanings. It is true that a naive approach to form, without addressing the medium is not worth a lot meaning, but we cannot assume that critical art makes better art. It just makes sense that ‘ugly’ is more critical of the medium than an appealing image. In fact, beauty would seen as a positive outcome of these technologies, therefore non critical. Can art with technology can be critical and aesthetically engaging?

This chapter is an advocate of the misuse of scientific-oriented machines and languages for creative and aesthetic purposes and achieve “the purposeful perversion of code syntax” (p.29).

As these examples indicate, scientific analysis frequently generates images at least as compelling as aesthetic output. Sometimes those with scientific training are to eager to bend their output into a frame defined by art-word norms and don’t recognize the most artistically illuminating option may be to leave the work in the state of a scientific diagram (p.44).

Artists may use simple instructions and code to produce complex visual outputs. It is important that the viewer can make the connection between code and output. The relationship between code and output produces artistic meanings, and for this reason, the code concept needs to be intelligible to the viewers. This could be just an explication of the algorithm, instead of syntax.

“Artists like LeWitt deliberately kept the concepts underlying their works as simple as possible, precisely so that viewers could connect the dots between process and product” (p.40).

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During the past 40 years, graphics technologies have evolved from rudimentary images produced in room-sized computer labs to realistic simulated scenes diplayed in hand-held devices. Fast-paced advancement has been a defining characteristic of computer graphics and very little attention has been placed in the history of this emergent discipline. Society’s lure with new technologies drives today’s computer graphics consumer culture, represented by the film, gaming and software industries.  We live in a world dominated by computer graphics aesthetics, but, what about when computers couldn’t do all this? How did this all happen?

I remember my first computer. It was a Commodore VIC20 that could be connected to the TV and produced graphics in a 22×23 matrix with only 16 colors. I used the BASIC language to program animations and the software LOGO to produce images like the one of an ice cream composed by 3 circles and a triangle. The VIC20 was a tool for home computing aimed for all ages, and it was a lot of fun. Nowadays I feel that computers, including mobile devices in this definition, are mainly consumer tools that do not encourage creativity.  In a nostalgic way, I would like to revisit the days when computers were laboratories for the creativity and experimentation of the fathers of this discipline.

Visionaries from different areas ranging from the sciences to art and engineering found the computer as a tool for something more than repetitive tasks and calculations. Around the late 1960s, research enthusiasts from different universities sought to use the computer as an artistic tool. During this period, the hardware available was very limited and, programming languages were not robust, and difficult to program. Computers for visualization helped develop the concept of object-oriented programming, one of the most important features of contemporary computer languages. Examples of early visualization labs are the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Chicago (UIC), Charles Csuri at the Ohio State University and Aldo Giorgini at Purdue University.

Aldo Giorgini was a pioneer in both computer graphics and the digital arts. His work designing the software FIELDS in 1975 is an important antecedent to the use of computers to aid artistic production. His contribution to computer graphics and the digital arts remains almost unknown, and his material legacy is at risk of disappearing. After his death in 1994, Giorgini’s materials remain untouched at his home-studio located in Lafayette, Indiana. Many of these documents present evidence of an engaged computer-aided art practice. The documents hold an untold history of a computer graphics visionary and I, as a researcher want to bring his contribution to the light. Unfortunately, many of the materials found that include, pen plotted prints, screen-prints, sketches, manuscripts, letters and printed code are not kept in optimum conditions from a preservation standpoint. Part of this research consists in finding the appropriate conditions to conserve digital art.

Learning about Aldo Giorgini’s approach to art and computer graphics will teach newer generations about our relationship with technology, and revive the spirit of creative experimentation with computers.

There is a lot of criticism to technology in our society, but from a Heidegger perspective, technology is nothing else that we already are. We cannot escape technology by denial, but we can seek for meanings. For this reason, writing an educational biography about Aldo Giorgini’s work in the digital arts is important to us today.  This research will give the reader a framework to understand our living relationship with today’s technologies and their impact in the fine arts.

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