Bulges & Dents 2022

The first version of Bulges & Dents was produced in 1975 at Michigan State University. In the medium of the day it was a Plotter Drawing written in FORTRAN and executed on a mainframe. The original work can be seen at:

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/102533321289937785770383303242324483383336827215255965779615131544848265379841

It was the early days of computer graphics/ computer art and I was still acquiring programming skills. I was fortunate to have my friend and collaborator Christopher Scussel help me write the algorithm.

I met Herbert W. Franke in 1977 and we became friends. I asked him to submit some of his work to a show I guest-curated at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in 1980, which he did. Later he honored me by a mention and thumbnail of Bulges & Dents 1975 in his book: Computer Art - Computer Graphics, Second, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Springer-Verlag) 1985, p118.

Bulges & Dents 2022 is an encore collaboration between Chris and me. A redux and re-imagination of a concept we worked on 47 years later. What a thrill to be working with Chris again. I believe we took it to the next level.

Our picture plane is truly a plastic space that consists of a tessellation of tiles with a white central dot and a gradient background. Chris has transformed the bulges and dents into spatial forces that push and pull at that space. The number of bulges and dents, their locations and their sizes are controlled by random variables. Also, for purely aesthetic reasons, it's a coin toss as to whether the white bounding boxes of the tiles are drawn by the program or not. Bulges and dents often collide in the picture space forming complex interactions that tear at the space frame and often distort its edges. The random intersections of push and pull forces produce a very visually dynamic image.

Because of the interesting connection of this work to Herbert w. Franke I submit this work as a precursor to his Tribute: https://www.tribute-hwf.com/

Please visit http://www.drbillkolomyjec.com