Do you remember that science class when you took samples of water or animal tissue to observe under a microscope? Looking at cells, parts of the building blocks of life.
What about all of the images that we see today in the electronic world? You know every time you look at televisions, computer screens, electronic billboards, digital cameras, wireless gadget displays, and media that have been printed with inkjet devices.
Like the cells you saw in lab, the building blocks of these images are pixels. These small dots or boxes of different shades and colors are those that comprise the images you see in everyday life. Put a million pixels in a box, and they become Mega. These various groups of megapixels combined together to create the world of digital photography.
In reflection, many years before megapixels, maybe the Pointillists’ art revolution was just way ahead of its time. Maybe they knew the secret to visual arts would keep re-inventing itself, as does the technology influencing it. That Neo-Pointillism would one day become Reality. Because their perspective was to share, naturally like the universe, that each individual part is its own integral player in an infinite image.
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As a crafts person, I am fascinated with how individual elements combine to form shapes and patterns.
In needlepoint and cross stitch, the building block is a single stitch. Pieces of fabric are joined together to form quilts. The interplay of warp and woof weaves designs into baskets, rugs, and fabrics.
Whatever the process, the parts become a whole, both in the creating and in the viewing.
The late artist Richard C. Elliott recognized universality in the composition of geometric designs. On his website he explained, “These designs, echoing the patterns within us, have connected people to the living fabric of life since the dawn of time.”
While Mr. Elliott explored a variety of media, perhaps the most dramatic and original involved his use of industrial grade reflectors as units of color and light. His creations range from personal expressions at the Ellensburg home he shared with his wife Jane to public installations at the Seattle airport and on the roof of Yakima’s Sundome.
A special exhibition, INTO THE INFINITE; THE ART OF RICHARD C. ELLIOTT, is currently on display at the the Yakima Valley Museum.
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines pixel as …the smallest element of an image that can be individually processed in a video display system.”
At their most elemental, do ancient designs and artistic expressions through the ages somehow intersect with modern multimedia technology? Perhaps, Richard Elliott was on to something.
By: Sara on October 27, 2009
at 9:30 pm