ON THE SPIRALPROJEKT BY BETHA SARASIN

Andreas Wenger, President of the Sarasin Foundation Board: Recognizing Betha Sarasin as a pioneer of generative art, the members of the Sarasin Foundation decided to revive the project and make it accessible to the public once again. They also agreed that the reappraisal should be conducted in a contemporary form that reflects the innovative spirit of the original SPIRALPROJEKT.

The roots of the SPIRALPROJEKT lie in Betha Sarasin’s series of computer-manipulated cubes, which she and Markus Ganz began in 1978 in close collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Freiburg, Germany. At that time, not many artists worked with computers, and only a few used them for generative work like Betha Sarasin did. Frederik Schikowski, Dr. phil., art historian and curator in Berlin, emphasized the innovative character of this group of works in his review titled BETHA SARASIN. DIVERSITY – CONSISTENT (2021). He noted, 'The SPIRALPROJEKT, realized with Markus Ganz and Horst Kordisch, was unusually advanced for its time in terms of technology and its implementation as an audio-visual spatial environment.'

One essential question for the SPIRALPROJEKT remained unresolved: How could the diversity of the algorithm's possibilities and the random outcomes of the original generative art be made accessible to the public?

AW: The Foundation's search expanded; I spoke with Sabine Himmelsbach from the House of Electronic Arts in Basel and consulted with software engineers. Ultimately, one of my master's students built a VR application. However, the result was too static, and creating an interactive application on a game engine proved unrealistic.

Finally, we spoke with Armin Blasbichler, who connected the Foundation with you and EXPANDED.ART. For us, it was crucial that EXPANDED.ART has extensive experience in the field of early computer art, particularly generative art. You and your team at EXPANDED.ART have repeatedly collaborated with pioneers such as Herbert W. Franke and Hans Dehlinger. We were all the more pleased that you were enthusiastic about the SPIRALPROJEKT, something we rarely experienced in the traditional art world.

However, the original software from 1984 was no longer available and was not fully documented. Fortunately, Peter Amrhein, a friend of Markus Ganz, emulated the program for Apple Macintosh in 2003, in consultation with Betha Sarasin, Markus Ganz, and Horst Kordisch, the original software developer at the Fraunhofer Institute. An update followed in 2019. Starting at the end of 2023, we organized workshops with Peter Amrhein and the young coder Benjamin Berger, who was recommended to us by Armin Blasbichler. The team concluded that Peter Amrhein’s software should be ported to P5.js by Benjamin Berger.

We explored the new possibilities of P5.js while paying close attention to the historical dimension of the software. We checked this by entering the parameters of some original spirals and comparing the newly created images with those of the original plotter drawings. We were relieved when, after some experimentation, we were able to confirm that the images matched.

AW: Markus Ganz plays a central role in translating the original concept devised by Betha Sarasin. He developed the original music alongside Betha Sarasin and has been a member of the foundation board since Betha and Teff established it. Throughout the development process from the Fortran software to its current form, he has accompanied and helped initiate all development steps, serving as a contemporary witness and companion to the entire journey. In this respect, Markus ensures that the original artistic concept has been preserved in its current form, despite the limited possibilities at the time.

AW: What we have achieved in P5.js today is an algorithm that enables a variety of results, in which the individual original parameters are essential. This was already the case in the 2003 version, which I still remember seeing in Betha's studio.

Experimenting with individual parameters produced unpredictable and surprising spiral iterations, but sometimes resulted in nonsensical and uninteresting visual representations. However, today’s new random function in P5.js, which determines the values of up to 46 parameters within carefully defined ranges, makes a significant difference: it creates optimal conditions for publication in a long-form generative art release. This function allows us to better utilize the countless possibilities and highlight the fascinating diversity of the spiral.

Another new feature is the spatial integration of selected, spatially placed fragments of the original music, which also change the background color. Additionally, there is now the option to output the cube iterations in black and white, multicolored, or with multicolored gradients. Imagine that the original spirals could only be plotted and visualized with black pens. Without abandoning the original basic idea, we have implemented many more possibilities than were available with the original pen-and-paper plotter drawings.

AW: The purpose of the Foundation is “primarily to preserve the work of Elsbeth and Theophil Sarasin, as well as works created in collaboration with third parties, to make them accessible to the public, and to sell them.” The inclusion of Teff Sarasin is important not only because, as an architect, he advised his wife Betha on many of her geometrically influenced works and projects, such as the SPIRALPROJEKT.

In close collaboration with him, many design works were created, including furniture and modular glass elements for Venetian hotel chandeliers. The joint design of the iconic TRACKMASTER stopwatch, released in 1966 by the Swiss watch manufacturer Heuer-Leonidas, is particularly noteworthy. Teff Sarasin also made an artistic contribution with idiosyncratic sculptures and paintings. In addition to stone sculptures, the so-called "labiles" form the main part of his sculptural work, a name he borrowed from the Latin verb "labare," meaning "to threaten to fall."

In recent years, the Foundation has commissioned Frederik Schikowski to research the work of Betha and Teff Sarasin and has organized various exhibitions of her works in Aarau, her birthplace, and in Basel, her main place of residence. So far, this has been the most feasible way to make the works owned by the Foundation accessible and to disseminate them. As a result of many contacts with art experts, numerous works by Betha and Teff Sarasin have been donated to various museums, such as the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Kunsthaus Aarau, and the ZKM in Karlsruhe. These activities are part of the immediate working environment of the Foundation and the main sphere of activity of Betha and Teff Sarasin.

Recognizing the greatly increased recognition of Betha Sarasin’s work, the Foundation has sought new ways to make it accessible to the public. In the case of the innovative SPIRALPROJEKT, it was clear that using NFTs for worldwide distribution would effectively present Betha Sarasin as a pioneer of computer-generated art to a new audience. Therefore, we invested significant time and resources to elevate this project to a new technological level and to further develop the multimedia dimension that Betha Sarasin had in mind. The Foundation and its members work on a voluntary basis. The Foundation's activities are discussed by the Board of Trustees, and the work is distributed accordingly. All members of the Board of Trustees knew Betha and Teff Sarasin personally or worked with them during their lifetimes. This personal connection forms the fundamental bond between the members of the Board of Trustees and the artists, shaping the Foundation's actions.

Markus Ganz, musician and member of the Sarasin Foundation Board: In fact, from 1966 onwards, the cube played a prominent role not only in Betha Sarasin’s work but also in her thinking. In the poem MY FLAG, Betha Sarasin writes:

"The cube is my flag / It is unwieldy / Unloved and useless / It cannot flutter / It cannot be the pride of the nation, for it has six sides."

However, the cube always represented a limitation in her eyes, as it was static, regardless of whether she cut it with the computer, alienated it with a trompe-l’œil effect, or gave it physicality as a marble or metal sculpture. That was probably the main reason why she wanted to set the cube in motion—to let it fly through space.

Together with her husband Teff, she developed a geometric method to generate such a sequence of cubes; an employee of his architectural office drew it by hand on a sheet of paper. Based on this sheet and extensive discussions, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Freiburg, Germany, developed the software that became the core of the SPIRALPROJEKT. In workshops, the possibilities were refined and expanded with new parameters.

This software was an act of liberation not only for the cube but also for Betha Sarasin as an artist. She wrote in the artist monograph BETH SARASIN – A HEART OF GLASS, "I spent a lot of time searching for multidimensional reality. I drew it in the form of trompe l'oeil situations on the edge of a cube. In my dreams, I could move incredibly quickly in the structures and spirals." She also understood the spiral as a symbol. She particularly liked this vision by Hildegard von Bingen: "Angels fly in spirals; the devil only flies straight ahead."

It was a happy coincidence that in 1985, the Gewerbemuseum Basel (Museum of Design) showcased the many aspects of the spiral in the exhibition WONDERS OF THE WORLD – THE SPIRAL IN HUMAN LIFE AND IN NATURE. We were able to present the SPIRALPROJEKT there for the first time in multimedia format, although not yet with animated spirals.

The spiral must have been a theme for Betha and Teff Sarasin much earlier, as they often consulted each other on design issues. In 1973, Teff Sarasin used the spiral as a symbol for eternity: as an architect, he designed a semicircular pipe organ for the Breisacher Church in Basel, which he "built around the organ," as he stated then.

MG: After attending the Basel School of Applied Arts in the 1940s, Betha Sarasin began to earn money through illustrations in the graphic arts sector. By the end of the 1950s, she produced artistic paintings that can be classified as informal painting in the early 1960s. Asian-inspired pictures with gradient colors and abstract works using the spatula technique were followed by those that approached a hard-edge aesthetic, explains Frederik Schikowski. In the second half of the 1960s, the artist discovered various new media for her art production, such as "rapidograms"—abstract ink pen drawings with geometric motifs.

From then on, the precise, sharply drawn black line seemed to fascinate her for decades. An influence was certainly her husband's architectural office, which worked with precisely that kind of line and which she increasingly used artistically. She also created her first spray paintings with the help of a spray gun, characterized by geometric, overlapping constructions. At the same time, in 1969, she began to design variably assembled play objects made from metal, which can be classified as concrete-constructive art. This art movement became her defining feature in the 1970s, according to Frederik Schikowski. The cube emerged as her central motif.

AW: In his reappraisal and qualification of Betha Sarasin's work, which the Foundation has closely accompanied, Frederik Schikowski shows that her work with computers and software came about less through inspiration than through a fortunate coincidence:

"In 1977/78, Betha Sarasin visited the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Freiburg im Breisgau for technical material and stress tests on a glass chandelier she had designed. There, she met the two employees, Horst Kordisch and Franz Doll, through mediation, which ultimately led to a long-term collaboration. (…) Betha Sarasin's first works are titled QUESTIONS TO THE COMPUTER in accordance with the dialogical principle of the work process and thematically tie in directly with her previous oeuvre. Here, data corresponding to the artist's drawings of trompe-l'œil cubes are fed into the electronic computer."

From my personal perspective and from a distance, it must have been the artist's fascination with being surprised by the "answers" of the computer and its software to "her questions." In my view, the unpredictable, surprising, and coincidental played an important role, as did the playfulness associated with it. Perhaps the best way to translate this into our time would be to compare it with ChatGPT's responses to absurd questions that we ask. The answers are surprising, sometimes absurd, but they open up new areas of thought and association.

MG: Surprisingly, both implementations seem equally difficult to me, but they are different. Back then, the technical possibilities were very limited and prone to failure, requiring constant improvisation. Everything was also time-consuming; we were pleased if, after an afternoon at the Fraunhofer Institute, we had managed to implement a new parameter in the software and could hold three plotter drawings in our hands.

Today, there are many more possibilities available, which in turn requires more time to understand their peculiarities in order to achieve the desired goal. Since the technical possibilities are very specific, more specialists are needed. There is also a significant risk of getting lost in the endless technical temptations.

MG: When Betha Sarasin and I wanted to work on spirals in the early 1980s, we had to travel from Basel to the Fraunhofer Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. There, we discussed possible further developments with Dr. Ing. Horst Kordisch and Franz Doll, while Betha's husband, Teff, often translated artistic wishes into geometric constructions. The changes to the software that this required could usually only be implemented during our next visit. After the meeting, there was typically little time left at the institute's computer to generate and plot spirals, as this process took much longer back then than it does today.

One of Betha Sarasin's wishes was to include colors. Although she loved the strictly straight black line, she also wanted to contrast it with color and figurative elements. She achieved the latter by combining spirals with figurative drawings; however, the former was difficult to implement. Even back then, there were a few colored pens that could be used with the plotter, but she didn’t like their colors.

She was all the more pleased when Peter Amrhein's emulation of the spiral software in 2003/2004 not only allowed for the choice of many colors but also for color gradients. With the new software implementation using P5.js, colors and color gradients could be applied much more subtly. We tried to match Betha Sarasin's color preferences, which can be seen in her works. This applies to the color of the spiral lines (of the iterations, 50% are in classic black and white, 30% in a two-color palette, and 20% in vibrant multicolor) as well as to that of the background. Additionally, the generatively determined music not only influences the colors and shapes of the background but also makes it pulsate accordingly.

Armin Blasbichler, Consultant of the Foundation: The SPIRALPROJEKT stands as a prime example of the power of an artistic vision to expand prevailing boundaries, intertwine disciplines, and challenge technical frameworks beyond their conventional applications.

From the outset of implementing the SPIRALPROJEKT in its current form, it was crucial to honor the code's provenance and push the potential of its temporal genius loci to align with the artistic vision. Originally written in 1983 by Horst Kordisch at the Fraunhofer Institute in Fortran, primarily for plotter drawings, much of the code was lost over the years.

In 2003, Peter Amrhein, under the guidance of Betha Sarasin and Markus Ganz, reconstructed the algorithm in Pascal for animated screen displays that could be saved as movies; an update followed in 2019. This led to its current implementation in P5.js by Benjamin Berger, which not only enables plotter drawings but also comes closer than any previous iteration to realizing the generative audio-visual experience envisioned by Betha Sarasin together with Markus Ganz.

MG: Since the SPIRALPROJEKT now has a historical component, I wanted to revisit the original piece, BERNOULLI AUF REISEN, but use new technical possibilities. At first, I tried to fit old passages into the flow of the spiral using time-stretching, but that seemed clumsy in its linearity and did not correspond to the generative character of the SPIRALPROJEKT. So, I divided the old piece into several sound spectra using an audio editing program, which now works surprisingly well thanks to artificial intelligence. Guillaume Massol then extracted 75 samples from this sound material. The software now randomly selects 10 of these samples for each iteration and positions them in space.

We had to make some adjustments because the combination of certain samples caused too much dissonance. With a few selection rules, this issue could be resolved without a significant loss of sonic diversity.

MG: Betha and I were surprised by the results of the software and the sheer beauty of the plotter drawings, although we already knew of such a spiral from a hand-drawn geometric construction created by an employee of Teff Sarasin's architectural studio using a ruler. Betha had already realized other generative projects, such as the cube cuts with the Fraunhofer Institute, using the same approach: define a system and ask the computer for solutions.

For us, this was not a conscious choice of an innovative method but rather the logical use of a relatively new tool in art. Betha was very aware that the SPIRALPROJEKT would open up new paths for her artistic work. However, we were both unaware that other artists were doing something similar at the same time and that this would later be called generative art.

Looking back, I am still surprised that more artists did not seize the opportunity of generative art back then.

AW: Well, it's clear and simple: as a Foundation, we want to share our fascination with the early work, the SPIRALPROJEKT, by Betha Sarasin—a fascination that we, as members of the Foundation, feel ourselves. That is one point.

We firmly believe that the multimedia aspect of this originally generative work by Betha Sarasin is best realized on the blockchain. At that time, the possibilities were much more limited, and the technical efforts and challenges were greater. Now, the medium is available that allows long computing and display capacities to be generated and displayed within seconds, presenting a singular opportunity for an almost infinite number of potential forms and iterations.

Ultimately, we aim to make Betha Sarasin's work accessible to a global community, and this kind of dissemination is only possible with blockchain technology.