Digital Art Museum
 
Mark WILSON    
 

Biography

Artists statement

 

For more information visit Mark Wilson's website http://mgwilson.com/

 

This is an archive of the Digital Art Museum for historical reference.
See dam.org for the current site.

   

Since the early seventies, my work has been deeply involved with abstract drawing and the elaboration of complex linear images. In 1980, I began working with computers and started developing my own software. In recent years, I have been concentrating on monochromatic drawings. These images are made in a two-part process. First, images are generated on the screen of a personal computer using a variety of my computer programs. Some of these programs employ simple random procedures; others utilize permutations of graphic elements. Next, a rectangular section of the image is plotted, pixel-by-pixel. The pixels can be drawn as circles, filled boxes, crosses, and so forth. They can be large or small, and can be mapped onto various geometric surfaces, such as planes, cylinders, and cones. Finally, these surfaces are projected into perspective space and plotted on paper. The computer has two important qualities in this process.

Highly complex images can be created swiftly. An interesting composition can be studied, developed, and amplified quickly. More importantly, the computer has excited artists because of the promise of a new aesthetic, a new vision of the world. I have attempted to directly use the digital nature of this medium. Indeed, these pictures would be unrealizable in any other medium. Rather than trying to disguise pixels, they have become the central element of my artmaking. My hope is that this technique will reveal a new visual geometry that could not have been implemented before computers.