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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Digitales Bild B-786
Arthur Schmidt
Original: Digitales Bild B-786 | 3017 * 4425px | 38.4 MB
The different layers of the digital image by Arthur Schmidt, which looks like a painting, merge into one another. The smooth structure of the surface is characteristic for "computer paintings".
I came to computing after dealing with experimental projects as a painter over several years. These projects were about interlacing painting, photography, printing techniques and other non-traditional working methods and materials. The computer gave me new artistic perspectives on how to integrate my work and experiments of previous years, into the pictures I make currently. The openness of this working system is the basis for reassessing experiences and discoveries I made, in order to render them visible. Images do not present themselves as materially tangible obstacles, but as a host of neatly organised neutral data that can be changed at any time and in any place, without having to safeguard against losing what has been done before, or having to finish it.
Therefore, the pictures always remain there and yet are open to new changes. A different kind of emotional experience and a new idea of values is created when I work on my pictures. This new working rhythm very much corresponds to my own idea of life and time. I create my images directly on the computer with the help of a graphic table and a pressure sensitive pen. The images are stored and transferred to photographic material if desired.
The final size of my images is determined by the format of the information stored, and by the file size available (1. 5 - 20 MB). The hard copies of the pictures can be sized up to 185 by260 cm. The abstract images B 242, B 460, and B768 which I entered for Prix Ars Electronica, have a final original size of 125 by 180 cm.
(Arthur Schmidt)
Technical background:
HW und SW: Mac II X8/89, Grafiktablett Kurta, Wacom
I came to computing after dealing with experimental projects as a painter over several years. These projects were about interlacing painting, photography, printing techniques and other non-traditional working methods and materials. The computer gave me new artistic perspectives on how to integrate my work and experiments of previous years, into the pictures I make currently. The openness of this working system is the basis for reassessing experiences and discoveries I made, in order to render them visible. Images do not present themselves as materially tangible obstacles, but as a host of neatly organised neutral data that can be changed at any time and in any place, without having to safeguard against losing what has been done before, or having to finish it.
Therefore, the pictures always remain there and yet are open to new changes. A different kind of emotional experience and a new idea of values is created when I work on my pictures. This new working rhythm very much corresponds to my own idea of life and time. I create my images directly on the computer with the help of a graphic table and a pressure sensitive pen. The images are stored and transferred to photographic material if desired.
The final size of my images is determined by the format of the information stored, and by the file size available (1. 5 - 20 MB). The hard copies of the pictures can be sized up to 185 by260 cm. The abstract images B 242, B 460, and B768 which I entered for Prix Ars Electronica, have a final original size of 125 by 180 cm.
(Arthur Schmidt)
Technical background:
HW und SW: Mac II X8/89, Grafiktablett Kurta, Wacom
Arthur Schmidt (D) was born in Essen, Germany, in 1961. From 1981 to 1987 he studied free painting at the College of the Arts in Berlin with Professor Engelmann. Since 1987 he has been working as a freelance artist. Numerous single and group exhibitions in Germany and abroad, e.g. 1985 Quergalerie, HDK Berlin; 1986 Galerie Depot, Berlin; 1991 Mac World Expo 91, Prisma Art Galerie, Berlin. Since 1989 he has been working with his own computer Prize- Winner of Swiss Computer Art Competition, 1991.