*Early computer art is difficult to review, yet she's doing a good job of it.
http://www.thisistomorrow.info/viewArticle.aspx?artId=1608&Title=Manfred%20Mohr:%20one%20and%20zero
Title : "Manfred Mohr, one and zero Carroll / Fletcher, 2012 Photo credit: Julian Abrams"
Website : www.carrollfletcher.com
Review by Catherine Spencer
"At the start of his career as a visual artist, the German-born Manfred Mohr also moonlighted as a jazz musician. While the analogy between abstraction and music might be feeling a little tired, in terms of Mohr’s practice it is still productive – specifically the musical idea of potentially infinite variation in modulation and tone, but within the parameters of a set score. In ‘One and Zero’ at Carroll/Fletcher this is particularly evident in Mohr’s predilection for working in series and pairs, which allows him to push the same compositional elements of line, shape and colour through related but constantly changing modulations.
"The musical analogy also has a more direct root here, in that an early encounter with the music of French composer Pierre Barbaud revolutionised Mohr’s practice. Prior to this Mohr had worked in a primarily abstract-expressionist vein: Barbaud alerted Mohr to the possibility of using algorithms to create works, and set him on the path of radical computer art in which he has experimented ever since. Barbaud’s influence intersected with that of the philosopher Max Bense, whose writings confirmed Mohr’s emergent conviction that creativity could be explained as the result of logical process, rather than ineffable terms such as imagination or genius. In 1969, Mohr got his hands on a plotter – an automated drawing machine programmed to make marks – and put these ideas to the test. (((Do you code in Processing, but you're unsure why you bother? Have you tried jazz and metaphysics?)))
"These initial plotter drawings are compellingly graceful and calligraphic. ‘P-52’ (1970) is composed of a series of finely drawn waves, which take on a sculptural, almost geological quality, their op-art flicker creating pleats and folds. In this work the plotter lines mimic those of both the musical score and the seismograph; elsewhere, in ‘P-196’ (1977) Mohr uses the plotter to work through the skeleton of a cube, according to the addition and subtraction of its various planes, resulting in a sheet covered with protean, shifting forms. These drawings are infused with a utopian zeal of endless invention and potentiality, rather than the associations of cold, clinical or repetitive that the term ‘computer art’ might evoke. (((That was then, this is now. Computer art nowadays tends to be warm, sleazy and generative.))) That this potentiality springs from pre-established terms is, paradoxically enough, reminiscent of the Blakean adage of seeing the world in a grain of sand.
"In a 2011 interview with Pau Waelder, Mohr remarked that ‘an abstract content of a work is the purest form of transmitting information. It excludes unnecessary associations and brings interpretation to a new level of communication.’ Mohr’s austere, geometric forms can be powerfully engrossing at a formal level, as in an early short film entitled ‘Cubic Square’ (1973-4) which begins with the four bounded sides of a square and then moves through mesmeric permutations of the cubic form. ‘Cubic Square’ provides an aesthetic (((yup))) and conceptual bridge with Mohr’s recent use of LCD screens in his work and his re-introduction of colour, having worked predominantly in black and white since the 1960s.
"‘P-1441c’ (2010) consists of a small monitor softly glowing with rectangular shapes morphing into each other, while ‘P-777f’ (2004) is an extremely complex array of colours and cats-cradle lines through which shapes are continually formulated and reformulated, moving dizzyingly in and out of flatness and depth. The jointed metal constructions on show in ‘One and Zero’ share this sense of indeterminate, potentially infinite movement, clinging to the walls like crystallisations of one particular moment in a continual train of thought, apparently random yet carefully calibrated...." (((She's got the bit between her teeth here. That's as impressive as someone verbally describing how to tie your shoes.)))
