Digital Art Museum
 
Laurence GARTEL    
 

1990

What makes the 1990 series unique is the fact that new input devices allowed me to capture pictures and objects in a very different way.

Still-Video technology was developed by Canon for the Gulf War. The Canon 760 was a SLR camera with interchangeable lenses of varying millimeters from 8 to 600. What was even more unique was that small Still-Video disks dropped into the camera. Twenty five 640 x 480 pixel images were able to fit on a single disk.

A video capture stand also manufactured by Canon allowed objects to be frozen and captured with various special effects software. Images were just 8 bit at that time so dithering of colors were obvious (256 colors to be exact). The first large toner printers were also introduced at that time called the Canon Bubble Jet.

Also introduced at that time were programs such as Time Arts "Oasis" software and Electronic Arts "Studio 8" and "Studio 32" software. These were the programs of choice before Letraset's ColorStudio and Adobe's Photoshop really took hold of the market. These early programs however allowed me to explore unique possibilities that were currently non existent prior. For example, one could create all sorts of color ramping in order to make unique fills. Colors could also be smudged and manipulated. In the case of the Studio package, images could be made in multiple perspectives thus allowing a single image to be replicated in space. Either way the tools were giving way to myriads of creative choice.

 

   
 
Colorado Color Magic Horse

Colorado Color
1990
Thermal Laser Print
11" x 8 1/2"

 

Magic Horse
1990
Thermal Laser Print
8 1/2" x 11"

 
Wet and Wild Escape from Planet Q

Wet and Wild
1990
Dye Sublimation Print
18" x 12"

 

Escape from Planet Q
1990
Thermal Laser Print
11" x 8 1/2"

Collection: Erika Unruh, Germany