Principle of Emergence Imagina 1982


(extract from the Imagina conference in Monaco in 1982 for Group Module Digital Art)

Two basic notions characterize our process for the utilization of images by microcomputers: for the creator, the concept of emergence, and for the end-user: the idea of interactivity which is a concept belonging to the use of binary digital images. If the film industry brings us movement, if video brings feed-back, we may say that the computer brings interactivity and especially the manipulation of symbols. Each tool should be used according to its specialty.

We work especially from a synthetic image that we create directly in the memory of the computer, which, by complex calculations, permits us to give the rules of composition, whether or music or of images. Then, using appropriate algorithms, the computer itself selects the images; the artist, who remains in an attitude of receptivity, of listening, may determine, or allow to emerge, the images which best correspond to his creative idea. Thus, the artist becomes free in relation to his technique.

With the microcomputer it is now possible to enter into the progression of images: the spectator becomes interactor, therefore the spectacle is also transformed.

In the short term, with the usage of videodiscs, we believe it will be possible to simulate the animation of images with even small systems. The microcomputers will allow the utilization of a direct image...

We must not, however, compare what is happening now in tele-computing with the domains of video, cinema or painting.

We have here a new means of expression with its own constraints.

>>>> Bernard Demiaux