Drawing Out Ideas: Computer Models, Artworks and the Generation of Knowledge

In this paper I describe my implementation of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #123 in an object-oriented programming language (‘Processing’). I defined objects, properties, methods and parameters, based upon explicit or implied details in LeWitt’s original work. Where additional assumptions or parameters were needed, I sought evidence from other sources, such as contextual information from the writings of the artist, previous implementations of the same artwork and experimentation with iterations of parameter values. I reflect upon insights generated through considering this process in the context of my experience in a different field, specifically the development of evidence-based guidance in healthcare. This project was carried out as a part of my PhD in Fine Art, which investigates the commonalities and differences between knowledge production through software development for digital art and healthcare modelling, and the implications that this may have for understanding the potential value to other disciplines of encounters with artistic processes or products.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Jonathan Michaels

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 227-234

Affiliations

[0001]University of Sheffield

School of Health and Related Research

Regent Court, Regent Street

Sheffield S1 4DA, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.49

SO-VID: cb74ffc5-1cac-4930-ace3-a81c55a60721

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2017)

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 11 – 13 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2017.49

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

8. REFERENCES

A. Berthoin Antal 2012 ‘Artistic intervention residencies and their intermediaries: A comparative analysis’ Organizational Aesthetics 1: 44 67
L. BojkeK. ClaxtonM. SculpherS. Palmer 2009 ‘Characterizing structural uncertainty in decision analytic models: a review and application of methods’ Value in Health 12 739 749
G. E. P. Box 1979 Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building Defense Technical Information Center: Wisconsin Univ-Madison Mathematics Research Center USA
P. B. BurnsR. J. RohrichK. C. Chung 2011 ‘The Levels of Evidence and their role in Evidence-Based Medicine’ Plast Reconstr Surg 128 305 10
L. Cardelli 1996 ‘Bad engineering properties of object-orient languages’ ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 28 150
E. CatmullR. Rom 1974 ‘A class of local interpolating splines’ Computer aided geometric design 74 317 326
L. Cooke 2009 ‘Wall drawing 123: Copied Lines.’ Sol LeWittSusan CrossDenise Markonish Sol LeWitt: 100 views Yale University Press New Haven, Conn
E. CowlesG. MarsdenA. ColeN. Devlin 2017 ‘A Review of NICE Methods and Processes Across Health Technology Assessment Programmes: Why the Differences and What is the Impact?’ Applied Health Economics and Health Policy·. 1 9
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries 2017 ‘Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Resources’ http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/resources.htmld/guides/ebmresources.shtml 16 March 2017
P. Dolan 2001 ‘Utilitarianism and the Measurement and Aggregation of Quality -Adjusted Life Years’ Health Care Analysis 9 65 76
T. GreenhalghJ. Russell 2009 ‘Evidence-based policymaking: a critique’ Perspect Biol Med 52 304 18
B. Gross 2012 Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007. Centre Pompidou-Metz Paris, France
A. LagaeS. LefebvreR. CookT. DeRoseG. DrettakisD. S. EbertJ. P. LewisK. PerlinM. Zwicker 2010 “A survey of procedural noise functions.” In Computer Graphics Forum 29 8 2579 2600 Wiley Online Library
N. Latimer 2011 ‘NICE DSU technical support document 14: survival analysis for economic evaluations alongside clinical trials-extrapolation with patient-level data’ Sheffield: Report by the Decision Support Unit
K. Lehrer 2012 Art, Self and Knowledge Oxford University Press New York; Oxford
S. LeWitt 1967 ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’ Artforum 5 79 83
S. LeWitt 1969 Four basic kinds of straight lines: 1. Vertical. 2. Horizontal. 3. Diagonal l. to r. 4. Diagonal r. to l. and their combinations. Studio International London
S. LeWitt 1972 ‘Wall Drawing #123, Diagram’ Andover, USA http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj11577 26 February 2017
S. LeWitt 1992 Wall drawings 1984-1992 Kunsthalle Bern
S. LeWitt 1994a ‘Doing Wall Drawings (Reprinted from Art Now, 1971, Vol 3 No 2).’ Adachiara Zevi Sol LeWitt: Critical Texts Libri de AEIUO
S. LeWitt 1994b ‘Wall Drawings (Reprinted from Arts Magazine, 1970, Vol 44 No 6).’ Adachiara Zevi Sol LeWitt: Critical Texts Libri de AEIUO
S. LeWittA. Legg 1978 Sol Lewitt, Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum of Modern Art
L. R. LippardV. RobertsK. Swenson 2014 Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt. Yale University Press
B. MiddletonD. SittigA. Wright 2016 ‘Clinical Decision Support: a 25 Year Retrospective and a 25 Year Vision’ IMIA Yearbook.
NICE 2014a ‘Developing NICE guidelines: the manual’ NICE London, UK. https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg20 16 March 2017
NICE 2014b ‘Guide to the processes of technology appraisal’ NICE London, UK. https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg19 16 March 2017
A. Noë 2015 Strange tools: art and human nature Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York
K. Perlin 2004 ‘Implementing improved Perlin noise’ GPU Gems chapter 5 73 85 Addison-Wesley
C. Reas 2004 ‘{Software} Structures: A text about Software & Art’ Whitney USA. http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures2016/text.html 16 March 2017
C. ReasB. Fry 2014 Processing: A programming handbook for visual designers and artists. The MIT Press: Cambridge Massachusetts
S. Scrivener 2002 ‘The art object does not embody a form of knowledge’ University of Hertfordshire UK https://www.herts.ac.uk/data/assets/pdffile/0008/12311/WPIAADvol2scrivener.pdf 16 March 2017
C. P. Snow 1959 The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture 1959 Cambridge University Press Cambridge
B. Stevini 2016 ‘Artist Placement Group -Context is Half the Work. A Partial History of the Artist Placement Group.’ http://en.contextishalfthework.net/about-apg/artist-placement-group/ 16 March 2017
G. TremblayP. HainesA. Briggs 2015 ‘A criterion-based approach for the systematic and transparent extrapolation of clinical trial survival data’ Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research 2 147 160
Z. D. WeckT. Morton 2012 Lines of thought Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art London

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] A. Berthoin Antal 2012 ‘Artistic intervention residencies and their intermediaries: A comparative analysis’ Organizational Aesthetics 1: 44 67

[2] L. BojkeK. ClaxtonM. SculpherS. Palmer 2009 ‘Characterizing structural uncertainty in decision analytic models: a review and application of methods’ Value in Health 12 739 749

[3] G. E. P. Box 1979 Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building Defense Technical Information Center: Wisconsin Univ-Madison Mathematics Research Center USA

[4] P. B. BurnsR. J. RohrichK. C. Chung 2011 ‘The Levels of Evidence and their role in Evidence-Based Medicine’ Plast Reconstr Surg 128 305 10

[5] L. Cardelli 1996 ‘Bad engineering properties of object-orient languages’ ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 28 150

[6] E. CatmullR. Rom 1974 ‘A class of local interpolating splines’ Computer aided geometric design 74 317 326

[7] L. Cooke 2009 ‘Wall drawing 123: Copied Lines.’ Sol LeWittSusan CrossDenise Markonish Sol LeWitt: 100 views Yale University Press New Haven, Conn

[8] E. CowlesG. MarsdenA. ColeN. Devlin 2017 ‘A Review of NICE Methods and Processes Across Health Technology Assessment Programmes: Why the Differences and What is the Impact?’ Applied Health Economics and Health Policy·. 1 9

[9] Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries 2017 ‘Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Resources’ http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/resources.htmld/guides/ebmresources.shtml 16 March 2017

[10] P. Dolan 2001 ‘Utilitarianism and the Measurement and Aggregation of Quality -Adjusted Life Years’ Health Care Analysis 9 65 76

[11] T. GreenhalghJ. Russell 2009 ‘Evidence-based policymaking: a critique’ Perspect Biol Med 52 304 18

[12] B. Gross 2012 Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings from 1968 to 2007. Centre Pompidou-Metz Paris, France

[13] A. LagaeS. LefebvreR. CookT. DeRoseG. DrettakisD. S. EbertJ. P. LewisK. PerlinM. Zwicker 2010 “A survey of procedural noise functions.” In Computer Graphics Forum 29 8 2579 2600 Wiley Online Library

[14] N. Latimer 2011 ‘NICE DSU technical support document 14: survival analysis for economic evaluations alongside clinical trials-extrapolation with patient-level data’ Sheffield: Report by the Decision Support Unit

[15] K. Lehrer 2012 Art, Self and Knowledge Oxford University Press New York; Oxford

[16] S. LeWitt 1967 ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’ Artforum 5 79 83

[17] S. LeWitt 1969 Four basic kinds of straight lines: 1. Vertical. 2. Horizontal. 3. Diagonal l. to r. 4. Diagonal r. to l. and their combinations. Studio International London

[18] S. LeWitt 1972 ‘Wall Drawing #123, Diagram’ Andover, USA http://accessaddison.andover.edu/Obj11577 26 February 2017

[19] S. LeWitt 1992 Wall drawings 1984-1992 Kunsthalle Bern

[20] S. LeWitt 1994a ‘Doing Wall Drawings (Reprinted from Art Now, 1971, Vol 3 No 2).’ Adachiara Zevi Sol LeWitt: Critical Texts Libri de AEIUO

[21] S. LeWitt 1994b ‘Wall Drawings (Reprinted from Arts Magazine, 1970, Vol 44 No 6).’ Adachiara Zevi Sol LeWitt: Critical Texts Libri de AEIUO

[22] S. LeWittA. Legg 1978 Sol Lewitt, Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum of Modern Art

[23] L. R. LippardV. RobertsK. Swenson 2014 Converging Lines: Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt. Yale University Press

[24] B. MiddletonD. SittigA. Wright 2016 ‘Clinical Decision Support: a 25 Year Retrospective and a 25 Year Vision’ IMIA Yearbook.

[25] NICE 2014a ‘Developing NICE guidelines: the manual’ NICE London, UK. https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg20 16 March 2017

[26] NICE 2014b ‘Guide to the processes of technology appraisal’ NICE London, UK. https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg19 16 March 2017

[27] A. Noë 2015 Strange tools: art and human nature Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York

[28] K. Perlin 2004 ‘Implementing improved Perlin noise’ GPU Gems chapter 5 73 85 Addison-Wesley

[29] C. Reas 2004 ‘{Software} Structures: A text about Software & Art’ Whitney USA. http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures2016/text.html 16 March 2017

[30] C. ReasB. Fry 2014 Processing: A programming handbook for visual designers and artists. The MIT Press: Cambridge Massachusetts

[31] S. Scrivener 2002 ‘The art object does not embody a form of knowledge’ University of Hertfordshire UK https://www.herts.ac.uk/data/assets/pdffile/0008/12311/WPIAADvol2scrivener.pdf 16 March 2017

[32] C. P. Snow 1959 The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: The Rede Lecture 1959 Cambridge University Press Cambridge

[33] B. Stevini 2016 ‘Artist Placement Group -Context is Half the Work. A Partial History of the Artist Placement Group.’ http://en.contextishalfthework.net/about-apg/artist-placement-group/ 16 March 2017

[34] G. TremblayP. HainesA. Briggs 2015 ‘A criterion-based approach for the systematic and transparent extrapolation of clinical trial survival data’ Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research 2 147 160

[35] Z. D. WeckT. Morton 2012 Lines of thought Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art London

Access over 90 core business and IT titles via the BCS Library - available to institutions and corporate libraries: https://shop.bcs.org/page/subscriptions/