For his graphic "A Republic", Jeremy Gardiner was awarded a Honorary Mention by Prix Ars Electronica Jury.
This image is part of a body of work commissioned from me by the General Electric Company. I worked at the Hirst Research Center in Wembley during 1983. I had the run of the place and was able to see all the research work being done.
This work covered everything from missile guidance systems to CAT scans and I distilled all this information with my working process. I looked through 20,000 engineering drawings. I kept a number of these drawings and digitised them into a mini computer. Eventually I had about 2 miles of plotted drawings created using PICASO which enable me to manipulate the images.

I was putting fragments of old engineering drawings into a machine and newly created forms were coming out. These I collaged together. This process I viewed as having taken an heuristic journey. One of the things that interest me about the possibility of computer image-making is the characteristics of the language. Which is what I'm trying to get into the paintings, these hard lines and powerful colours. With computers a new language is evolving, a new reality. Like photography at the turn of the last century, photography moved painting away from representation. It's taken 100 years for photography to end up being used by the right hands.

The artists at the time threw their hands up in despair, thought art was dead. After MUYBRIDGE did his stop-frame photographs of hourses gallopping no artist would dare paint them as he used to with legs splayed.

Also DEGAS in his paintings used a wide-angle vision he'd assimilated from photography. So in a way, I'm trying to distil that side of computer image-making into art. I think the only way to erode this stigma the art world has about these images is to deal with them in art terms; make oil paintings, use traditional materials. (J. Gardinger)

Technical background:

All three graphics were realized at Hirst Research Center GEC Wembley, Middlesex and at the City of London Polytechnic. The hardware was a Tectronix, Benson and Acorn. Software: PICASO and TEGEA.

Jeremy Gardiner, British artist, born 1957 in Münster/FRG, living and working in the USA. Studied at Newcastle University (England) from 1975—1979. Absolved the Royal College of Art in London (1983). During his studies there, Jeremy Gardiner became interested in computers. Since 1983 lectureship at various universities. 1983—84 visiting professor at Ealing College of Art (for microcomputer graphics). 1984 visiting artist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1986, Jeremy Gardiner teaches computer graphics at PRATT Institute New York. With the sponsorship of General Electrics–Hirst Reserach Center, London, Jeremy Gardiner realized a series of images with the PICASO Programme. Numerous prizes and awards as well as various one-man and group exhibitions in the USA, Canada and Europe.