I wrote this letter after visiting one of their museums, in Los Angeles, California. I never heard back from them. Maybe I should have sent it to Guiness' World Records instead! Anyway, it seems to me that if they can have portraits of people done entirely in laundry lint, that "the world's most 'prolific' artist" could get a mention, too!
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
90 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 510
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA M4P 2Y3
Feb. 7th, 1994
To Whom It May Concern:
After visiting your museum in Hollywood, CA last December, I realized I have an item you may be interested in. Enclosed are samples of "RANDOM COMPUTER ART" which I have created using the computer language called BASIC, a Panasonic six-pen plotter and an NEC laptop computer. My unique procedure was written about in Clifford Pickover's Journal of Chaos and Graphics some years ago.
Each drawing is completely unique because the program that creates them uses hundreds of random numbers* (sometimes thousands) to decided precisely how big, what color, and where shapes will be placed. Leaves on trees are randomly placed as are the branches. Houses are of random width but a standard height.
The round tree images were originally drawn on the computer and then the exact locations and other features were randomized, while the pine trees and other images are purely computer generated. Some of these patterns take minutes to draw while others in the enclosed batch took over an hour.
There are currently about five basic patterns. I have given away close to 20,000 of these drawings and each one is unique. Interestingly, when I lay out a hundred or so on a table people will sort through them ALL and pick out the one they like the best--but all are eventually picked! Not one ever stayed on the table all day long! If I lay out 200 drawings people will still sort through them all--and it takes too long so I limit it to a hundred at a time. I really think this says something very interesting about "art" and the perception of beauty.
If you think you might like to exhibit these I have some larger examples (8.5" X 11") which took as much as 10 hours or more for the plotter to draw. These could be photographed or litho printed or something for display since the colors on these samples will fade fairly quickly in bright light.
I hope you are interested in my work and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, in advance, for your kind attention and in any event, keep up the good work at your amazing and interesting museums!
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman,
Owner and Chief Programmer for The Animated Software Company
* Although computer-generated random numbers are not, technically, truly random, they are generally accepted as being equivalent and certaily are unpredictable unless one knows the precise formula and starting number (or "seed.") The author (artist) doesn't know these things so the art is fairly called random.
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The Animated Software Company
http://www.animatedsoftware.com
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
First placed on the web June 8th, 1996.
Last modified March 27th, 1997.
Webwiz: Russell D. Hoffman
Copyright (c) Russell D. Hoffman