The long-term project GENERATIVE IMAGES formed the synthesis of two different generative systems. The system of multiple geometric optics of the camera obscura engaged in a dialogue with the digital algorithms of camera electronica. The camera obscura produces results by analyzing light, optics, and light-sensitive materials. The camera electronica uses arithmetic operations to digitally construct new images. Interactions are formed based on empirical experiences with natural sources (light, vision) and calculated interactions involving the virtual and non-visible (numbers, programs).
The process demonstrates the immense technical informational distance and difference between the two systems, which represent a developmental period spanning over 30 years. Today, interactive access to the earlier static images is available: all design parameters used in each of the pinhole structures can now be applied and observed directly through digital potentiometers, without delay. The artistic problem of selecting and setting the image still exists, despite the elegance of this access.
The first promising attempts with the "lochbl" program began at the University of Bielefeld’s Visualization Laboratory in 1996, printed without a title in DIN A4 format. A second, smaller series of works, printed up to 130 x 130 cm, was produced by the firm Fineprint in Bielefeld in 2000. This arose in connection with the preparation of the solo exhibition GENERATIVE IMAGES at the Lutz Teutloff Gallery in Bielefeld and consisted of a series of large-scale, blurred points: purely digital, photo-based images.
However, the original light and photo sources of computer-generated images should not be forgotten. Typical photo colors from the spectrum, such as blue, green, and red (additive), and yellow, magenta, and cyan (subtractive), were applied.
The titles PUNKTUM and INFINITUM refer to theoretical and historical photo correlations, while the term SFUMATO consciously refers to scenic intentions.
"GENERATIVE IMAGES are what I call digital works based on the computer program 'lochbl,' developed by the computer scientist Peter Serocka in 1996. It allows the optical conditions of the PINHOLE STRUCTURES from 1967 to be digitally simulated and further developed. Accordingly, similar earlier motifs and new generative works can be created. The work returns to the constructive beginning to determine the structure. The precision achieved digitally is much greater than that available through optical means."
– Gottfried Jäger
