Leonardo

The Envelope as an Art Form: Computer-Aided ImagesAuthor(s): Brad McCormickSource: Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1984), pp. 20-23Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574852 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 20-23, 1984. Printed in Great Britain.

0024-094X/84 $3.00+ 0.00 Pergamon Press Ltd.

THE ENVELOPE AS AN ART FORM: COMPUTER-AIDED IMAGES

Brad McCormick* Abstract-Manual skills, such as freehand drawing, have long been a prerequisite to artistic creation in many traditional media. Using examples from his own work in creating computer-generated envelopes, the author shows how computers can assist explorations by those otherwise frustrated by lack of such skills. He also discusses aesthetic and philosophical concepts related to his work.

The drawings illustrated in this paper are selected as an example of computer technology applied to art. This technology has provided an avenue for artistic explorations not otherwise possible for me. The work illustrated here is the result of the computer nurturing new insights, as opposed to its merely providing a new way to do something that would have been done anyway.

If art is manipulation of materials to instill in them new meanings, then the ability to manipulate material is a necessary precondition for artistic creation. Before a person can explore ideas in traditional art forms, he or she needs to acquire uncommon manual craft skill; I believe that one without mastery of some craft is excluded from creating in the traditional veins. I find that the computer offers a vehicle which does not require special manual craft skill before a person can bring forth new meanings through graphic images. If one's artistic aim is to produce 'effective symbols' [1 ] that energize the viewer's perception of their world [2]-and this, I believe, is the highest promise of art-then lack of manual craft dexterity need no longer handicap anyone in this quest. Although the works produced in this new way look different from those produced through manual craft (the computer does not bestow freehand drawing virtuosity), the richness of their meanings is not necessarily diminished.

The development of the present work is based on a chain of coincidences. I am a computer programmer. For a long time, I had tried to draw things, including clumsy pictures on envelopes for letters sent to a friend who may have originated the practice by a frivolous drawing of his own. My lack of freehand drawing skill had hindered the development of my ideas in these drawings; I did make some progress when I shifted from freehand drawing to collage techniques, which are less manual- craft intensive. One day I decided to learn to use a computer graphics system. I drew a picture of an envelope because that seemed a simple exercise for orienting myself in the learning process. I remembered an envelope design (Fig. 1) I had drawn by hand that seemed especially suitable for drawing by computer, both because it looked technically easy and because the design had been inspired by certain pictures in IBM computer manuals ('Control Block Diagrams'). My computer- generated 'Envelope Art' sprang into existence in a single day.

If this work has a spiritual heritage, it is Duchamp's 'ready- mades'. These had long fascinated me for their austere clarity, intimate elegance, gentle but uncompromising irony, and the way they decoupled artistic creation from manual craft and raised objects of everyday use to artistic status. I had long perceived myself as lacking 'artistic talent' but desired above all to 'see'. As both Duchamp's art and modern physics show,

*Artist and computer programmer, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, U.S.A. (Received 3 May 1983).

seeing is a probing, not a spectatorial, endeavor and therefore needs apparatus by which to conduct experiments. I was also deeply concerned about the banality of everyday life and was searching for ways to make ordinary activities more meaningful.

My belief concerning the centrality to human existence of having and sharing insights (new ideas) derives from reflection over a long period. I have been most deeply influenced by the philosophical writings of Hermann Broch, Martin Heidegger, Laura Riding Jackson and Emmanuel Levinas.

I approach my work in terms of a three-fold problem: communication, transfiguration of everyday life, and design integration.

COMMUNICATION

The primary goal of each envelope is to say something about a matter important to the intended recipient and to enrich the recipient's life by offering a new perception of the matter. The envelope may bear a message of encouragement, as in Fig. 2. The subject may be as profound as the recipient's professional ideology, as simple as a fondness for dogs, or, preferably, both combined, as in Fig. 3.

The envelopes are reflections on the nature of communica- tion. There is 'saying something' (making a move in a socially stereotyped script) and there is 'saying something' (where the speaker shares new insight-something previously unknown- with the listener). Each envelope attempts to say something in the latter sense and, through example, to encourage the recipient to say something back. One of my criteria for a successful envelope is that it inspires the recipient to draw something to send back to the author, especially if the recipient does not customarily express himself or herself 'artistically'.

TRANSFIGURATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE

I find Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's words suggestive: "But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life" [3]. Great adventures are rare. To escape everyday life is often not possible. Even if it were possible, it might not be desirable, since most interesting times are characterized by events like war and plague that make many persons suffer. Envelopes are ordinary objects of everyday life. My envelopes are experiments in making life extraordinary, not be escaping everyday life, but by transfiguring it.

I think the most extraordinary things are not big events, but creative insight and communication. In making the envelopes, I have new insights. In mailing them and otherwise sharing them, I attempt to communicate my insights-in an activity that clearly qualifies as ordinary: sending and receiving mail.

I hope the envelopes, in addition to transfiguring one small part of everyday life, will serve as models that inspire others to rescue from ordinariness other parts of everyday life.

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The Envelope as an Art Form

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seit U%OJ

J0IDOI SsaIppy UJirpia gyvu

1UOUIOla a5qO ad 43IOlf Uor1vuI1soa ?1a

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Fig. 1. 'Pointers', II x 8Y inches (folded envelope approx. 8%7 x 4 inches). This envelope is self-describing. The underlying symbolism alludes to 'Control Block' interconnection diagrams in IBM computer manuals. The recipient is a computer systems programmer who works with these diagrams every day. Thus the picture is especially meaningful to him, even in details like the acronym 'CVT'. This stands for 'Communication Vector Table' and both describes the block it labels in the drawing and is the actual name for an analogous 'Control Block'-the most important of all control blocks-in the IBM computer

system the recipient maintains. (Note: This illustration shows the envelope blank prior to folding.)

DESIGN INTEGRATION

The envelopes are artworks, not illustrations for a philosophical theory. Their power comes from their strength as images to attract the interest of the recipient. Each is different. But there is a unique formal consideration relevant to all of them, which motivates their specific designation as 'Envelope Art': How strong is the bond between the design and the components of the envelope as an envelope?

An envelope is a sealed package that protects its contents from the environment. Every envelope has a front and a back, with a destination address and postage on its front. Most envelopes have a return address. I see the challenge of making envelopes as integrating their functional components into a unified design so that the result is not merely an envelope with a design on it, but a design that includes the functional components of the envelope (Figs 1 and 4), a design which would not be the same if they were removed.

Symbolically this involves not just associating extrinsic meanings with otherwise meaningless events of everyday life (ornamentation), but transfiguring the meaningless events themselves to a new level of meaning (desirability). The destination address can become a dog's bark (Fig. 3). The return

address can become a river snaking its way through the New Mexico desert. A stamp can become blackboard graffiti or the cover of a book. The edge where front folds over to back can become the ground line down through which pipes from a rooftop solar energy collector (on the front) pass to an underground storage tank (on the back). Destination address and return address and stamp can all become part of the design or assertions and responses in a conversation.

'MAN-MACHINE' SYNERGY

The three design criteria-communication of new insights, transfiguration of ordinary events of everyday life, and design integration-define directions for open-ended exploration. The process of designing an envelope is an interaction between artist and computer graphic system, through which, the artist can venture toward the three criteria.

But making a drawing is at least as much defined by implementation details as by theoretical reflection. Resonance exists between the artist and the computer graphics system used. I use an IBM program that produces graphic images indirectly. In working with this system, the user writes an analytic

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22 Brad McCormick

9

8

7

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5

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3

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from:

Brad McCormick 150 Overlook Ave Apt 4r Peekskill NY 10566 es

9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81

8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72

7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 to: 6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Danny Katcher

4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 39B Feldstone Dr

3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 Hortsdole NY

2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 10530

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

X 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Fig. 2. 'Science and Math', approx. 87/ x 4 inches (foldedfrom 11 x 8/Y2 inch blank). This envelope was addressed to a nine-year-old boy who was having motivation problems in learning the multiplication table. The letter contained computer-generated multiplication exercises. (Note: This illustration shows

the front of the folded envelope.)

t4ir shhornr

to Sa Doffr odf Road

Stamford CT 06903

Fig. 3. 'C2 K-9', approx. 878 x 4 inches (foldedfrom 11 x 82 inch blank). The recipient of this envelope is a Transactional Analysis-orientedpsychotherapist. 'C2', in Transactional A nalysis jargon, is the part of the human personality concerned with creativity and play. The recipient also isfond of dogs and hadjust acquired a new puppy ('K-9'). He is "very much into" his C2, so the playful tone of the design is appropriatefor him. (Note: This illustration shows thefront

of the folded envelope.)

description-a computer program-which the system translates into a picture (instead of the user sketching the image directly with some sort of electronic stylus). One describes the picture one wants to draw in terms of locations on a rectangular grid, the lower left corner of which is the origin. To draw a small box in the upper right area of the grid, one might write instructions equivalent to: "Position the cursor to 60,50. Draw a line from there to 72,50. Draw a line from there to 72,60. Draw a line from there to 60,60. Draw a line from there to 60,50." If one then wishes to draw a small circle in the center of the box, one can say;

"Position the cursor to 66,65. Draw a 360 degree arc, radius 2, centered on the cursor location", etc. Input information is entered and displayed on one terminal, and the created image is displayed concurrently on another screen. The system updates the image as the user enters or changes the text.

This kind of computer graphics system eliminates manual dexterity from the design process. Whatever one wishes to draw-each individual line segment-must be verbalized as statements in the specification language. Changes are made not by erasing and redrawing lines but by altering the statements

22 Brad McCormick

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23 The Envelope as an Art Form

How To Make An Envelope B. McCormick 19,23 Mar 83 YKT

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Instructions for making envelope M3 M

from an 8-1/2 X 11 inch sheet 'Tfrom. Brad McCormick of paper: 150 Overlook Ave '< *

Apt 4r (1) Draw lines at locations M1 thru Peekskill NY 10566

MB on sheet, as shown o 0 (2) Make 4 folds in sheet, along lines

M1-M2, M3-M4, M5-M6, M7-M8 to: Irene Katcher (3) Cut off the 4 corners of the sheet 39B Fieldstone Dr ,

(indicated by dotted lines) Hartsdale NY 1050 (4) Glue bottom flap to side flops A^ 4"- -- - .. .............

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along lines B1-B2, B3-B4 (bottom Ml a IA 5m M2 O? flap goes over side flaps) ?9 JD Ul'61 | Il3WJOO31t '8 E

(5) Insert letter in envelope O M5-O1 ado7QaU' I-M7 '

(6) Glue top flap to bottom flop l, along line B5-B6 z i ~ ~ i ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o

Fig. 4. 'How to Make an Envelope', 11 x 8/2 inches (folded envelope approx. 87/ x 4 inches). This envelope is self-describing, but in a way differentfrom the envelope shown in Figure 1. Instead of naming its parts, this envelope describes the process of its construction. It focuses attention thematically on the process of making an envelope. The recipient, an artist and teacher interested in the author's work as art (not just for its personal message), appreciated a design that was a commentary on the work. The recipient had suggested that I document the process of making the envelopes, and this was my response.

(Note: This illustration shows the envelope blank prior to folding.)

that constitute the image's analytic description. The system encourages attention to detail: one can ask the computer, "What would it look like if this line were moved 1/100th of an inch?" and the computer will move the line exactly 1/100th of an inch. This system also encourages experimentation, since the previous status can be restored exactly, by changing the original statements back. By encouraging concern for nuances of form-sizes and shapes and the relations of elements one to another-the computer ends up nurturing a mental craftsman- ship and perhaps a new sensitivity to spatial organization.

The details of making a picture this way are not only pleasurable to me; they repeatedly prove to be synergistic elements in the creative process. In terms of graphic image, the computer encourages attention to detail and experimentation, allows simple alteration, and sometimes produces unexpected discoveries of new image possibilities. On the side of the analytic description of the image, a motivation-derived from writing any kind of computer program-arises to make the text that defines the image as succinct and elegant as possible, to strengthen the logical structure behind the image. For example, instead of coding eight statements to draw one box, change position, draw one box, change position, etc., one might figure

out a way to code one statement that says "Repeat four times: Draw a box and change position." Synergy builds within the drawing process itself, through iterated consideration of image and text and the relation between the two. This dialectic is a rich source of unanticipated design ideas (and problems).

After a design is complete, several manual steps are required to produce the finished envelope. The last computer step is generation of a 'hard' or paper copy of the final screen image. This is the blank for the envelope, an 11 X 8y inch piece of paper with the design on it. This blank must then be cut, folded, glued, and have postage affixed, as detailed in Fig. 4.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. 'Effective symbols', i.e. images that inspire personal commitment and action, comes from Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 389.

2. i.e., their 'paradigms', as Thomas Kuhn used the word in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).

3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 'A World Split Apart', 8 June 1978, Harvard Commencement Address (Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 55-57.

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