painting is like writing
Introduction
The Statement
painting is like writing (vice versa)
transition between painting and writing
- counting in the shape of simple figures,
which are mostly geometric ones
holes, scratches, drops, hand prints and outlines, lines,
…in, on,
… stone, walls, caves, wood, bones, lather and other
lost textile materials - simplifying, stylizing figurative paintings to be easy
formulated and iterative reproduceable (rebus, “pars pro
toto”; …Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs; …ideographic, logographic,
syllabic morphed, reduced into alphabetic)
Egyptian writing and art is the main-base of the Western Arts - the Mayan “Glyphs” writing system doesn’t participate in the
Western tradition. It is worth mentioning though, because it is
another mix of painting and writing unlike the calligraphic
tradition.
One may find similar tradition in Western writings till
the end of the 18th, beginning of the 19th century.
The later two transitional aspects are no subject in this paper. Primarily the focus lies on the method of account, recount, count; the simplest form of telling with painting or writing, where the division is minimum between both. In this term the common mind-picture closes the gap, which traditionally, but unnecessarily exist, as it is a konkrete depiction.
I use writing - a program - to paint a picture, while the program utilizes concepts of writing and accounting - recount by count.
account and counting
an art, programming, visual experiment to demonstrate
- how painting and writing relates together
- why they are similar, if not even the same
“painting is writing vice versa” <-> “the mind picture”, imago, imagine is quintessential for both.
Writing and painting happened in and on the same materials. They share the same technical implementations: stone and carving, pen and paper, print, the digital sphere, which relies on binary data, numbers.
why account and counting
It is the simples form of note taking which is still painting, drawing, scratching though a transitional, a transfer media even over the time and ages down to binary, up to the digital media
social, historical background of the artworks
account and counting Part1
numeric systems like duodecimal(dozen) versus decimal
-> time trekking/tracking, traces -> periodical systems -> Meander <- flow <- time
other (non)numeric systems of (ac)counting
Fibonacci and Prime Numbers as count-, account-, order-system in the context of painting and writings, in short, the Arts.
account and counting Part3
(ac)counting in the visual arts, prehistoric, early history, historical, modern and nowadays
Chauvet Cave, …, …, Hanne Darboven etc.
account and counting Part2
When did the Western writing direction changed?
Between 800 BC RTL, Boustrophedon, and 403 BC Athens LTR
finally forced by the Romans - Republic and Empire - over the
Western civilisation, converting the Etruscan Alphabet(RTL) to
Latin (LTR).
The Experiments
Remark 1:
I use a 6x6 units grid, because I want a picture
face of 4x4 units and a frame height of 1 unit.
This makes assembling the prints into the image
corpus easy.
Remark 2:
The tweetRandom library generate the pseudo random
numbers. Therefore a text is source of the generated
image. The picture is reproduceable with the same code
and text.
free lines
free line(s) on a grid
6x6 units with half-units,
so overall a 13x13 points grid from 0,0 to 12,12
causes -> calligraphic effects
Findings:
- a wide view of automatic writing, free flow painting,
but it not narrowing down to the point of transition
between painting, drawing and writing
| lieschen mueller | © September 2024 |
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| “free”-lines on the grid collection_bm_wave_10.html |
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the pseudo letters
the pseudo letters with different “painting” directions
a “letter” uses the grid-points of a single grid block
as Bezier-Control and Start-, End-Points
and
the line letters
vertical, horizontal, diagonal lines, and square in different position on the grid
with different “painting” directions
a specific subset of the pseudo letters
Findings:
- Programming painting on a canvas is biased by the Western Reading & Writing traditions
| lieschen mueller | © September 2024 |
|---|---|
| automatic writing with fantasy letters on the grid collection_automat_write_9.html |
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| LTR linear automatic writing with lines and squares collection_automat_write_9a.html |
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account/recount and counting
account/recount and counting
as method of transition between writing and painting
each single grid block is a square, but it is divided by 0-5 divisions
Null is presented by the full square block, each other
number by 1 to 6 rectangles vertically or horizontally arranged
in the grid block according to the direction
directional writing/painting is applied:
linear, boustrophedon, circular and spiral
account/recount and counting with triangles
account/recount and counting with triangles
the same as the prior program, but with triangle pointing
in the direction
Findings:
- It take a lot of effort to circumvent the Western writing traditions, which are baked in any common programming language.
- The writing directions disturb the ways of reading and allow meta-
figures like meandering structures - the triangles give more visual guidance
| lieschen mueller | © September 2024 |
|---|---|
| stripe counting as letters, starting with (0-5) and repetition (1-5) 12x12_automat_write_4x4.html |
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| with triangles 12x12_automat_write_tri_4x4.html |
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