Blog 06: “e4708”

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

This week, I came across a cool work of late-20th Century digital art. “e4708” was created in 1980 by Mark Wilson, one of the greatest pioneers in digital image making. Since then, his various computer generated art pieces have been widely exhibited across the world, but “e4708” remains his most popular work.

Wilson’s digital artwork is a combination of both a well-thought geometrical layout and aspects randomly generated by the computer’s algorithm. For instance, the rows/columns of the squares and circles are distinctively arranged to form a certain pattern. However, we notice that the background overlay, circle diameter/stroke width, and the square/circle fill are randomly generated.

This delegation of assigned and random elements create a structured, but very unique piece of art.