University Daily Kansan, June 20, 1984
INSIDE
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The University Daily KANSAN
omputers: New ways to creat
Computers aren't just for computer scientists anymore.
Computers aren't just for computer scientists anymore. Computers are for anyone who can use them, including the grandchildren and dancers.
The capabilities of computers are now so diverse that almost no task is impossible, and almost anyone can put a computer to those tasks, regardless of his occupation or interest.
Statistics and forecasts on computer and software sales show the scope of the home computer industry.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- Computer industry revenues for 1984 will total $148.5 billion, growing 14.3 percent annually.
These figures were compiled in April by Predicasts, Inc., a Cleveland research center which collects data each quarter on sales figures of specific items from articles in magazines and journals.
- Three billion home computer systems will be sold in 1988, a 31.6 percent increase from 760 million sold in 1983.
- Sales of computer graphics systems will rise from $1.7 billion in 1982 to $23.3 billion in 1992, an increase of 29.9 percent.
- Sales of personal computer software will rise from $570 million in 1983 to $2.42 billion in 1987, an annual growth of 43.5 percent.
- Sales of design computers will increase from $900 million in 1982 to $10 billion in 1992.
But these figures only hint at the variety with which the computer is being used by Americans today. People everywhere are finding ways to use their home computers — and not just to play video games and balance their budgets.
Three Lawrence residents — an artist, a musician and a geography professor — use computers in their work. Their innovative projects are typical of those that are pulling computers out of the office — and into the arts.
Stories by Michele Hinger
Is the microchip the bridge between art and science?
EDWARD MATTILA: Creating new sounds
"The potential is endless." said Mattila, who began writing music with computers while on sabbatical at Princeton University in 1972. "It's a new outlet for her creativity," he said, while whole source just starting to be ruined.
They've been buried in nature for eons: Not ancient fossils, but new sounds, never heard by human ears. Until they are discovered via computers by composers such as Edward Mattila, KU professor of music theory, these sounds remain buried, shutting out unlimited possibilities.
When Mattila wants to dig up a new sound, he designs a new instrument. The composer picks the pitch and register, which determines how high or low it sounds. He then writes it into the terminal, and he's ready to write the score.
Writing the score is Mattila's forte. He usually works on digital synthesizer sound conversion声音转换 on electric guitars to electric basses.
"You can do very complex things with digital synthesizers," said Mattila. "You can create rhythms and sounds highly attainable through acoustic instruments, but it is so accurate — absolutely mathematically correct."
Unlike the older analog system still being used, programs on digital synthesizers can be saved and reproduced. Only audio tapes, which are subject to wear, can be made from the analog system.
A computer can play to octaves, Mattila said, all that the human ear can hear. The composer can specify any note in an octave using an encoding item, that, with many programs, doesn't involve staff.
For example, middle C on a piano keyboard would be C4 on a computer terminal keyboard. After the score is finished, it can be played back with a one-stroke command and saved for editing or re-reading.
Some composers shied away from electronic music, Mattila said, because computers implied complex programming. But the systems are becoming easier and more useful learning process is no longer as necessary, he said.
Mattta combined his music with the University Dance Company's spring concert by writing the score for a piece choreographed by several dancers called "Dance Electronique a la Jazz."
The piece was featured in the School of Fine Arts' 1984 symposium of contemporary music held last February, a program including 25 performances, 14 of which were electronic pieces. He also composed the background music for the University Theatre's production of "Terra Nova."
"You can hardly ignore the medium," Mattila said. "It's here, it' to be used. There are lots of reactionary people out there. All I can say is that it's their loss."
Mattila said that computer composing also wasn't for everyone.
"Some composers it doesn't appeal to," he said. "Everyone didn't write an opera. Brahms didn't, and it's a good thing he didn't. Chopin wrote almost every major work, and those are those who only use the electronic medium."
Mattea said he didn't forget the whole world of acoustics. He still composes sometimes on a standard piano with 88 keys, keeping his mind open to all mediums. Mattila is intent on excavating those new sounds and bringing them out into the open for all to hear.
ROBERT NUNLEY: From weaving to choreography
Nunley, professor of geography and technical director for the center of Latin American studies, teaches classes in computer applications orientation and dynamic modeling and visual communications. He has worked with computers to do things other than math problems since the 60s.
Robert Nunley seems to have his fingers in a lot of pies, but his feet always stay planted near a computer. Nunley has done a little bit of everything, and behind everything he or his students do, there's usually a computer helping out, whether the project is dance choreography, weaving or map-making.
He found that he needed graphic capabilities on a computer to produce maps that would show the distribution of towns and the population potential. Because Nunley needed to develop more hardware and software, he had to use applications to justify the expense, and discovered that weavers had a problem that computers could solve.
"Weavers have a special problem," said Nunley, "because they could weave with 15 different threads, and if the color of the one thread changes it changes the nature of the whole weave. Weavers know that intuitively, but there has been little opportunity to study it."
Nunley said that anyone who worked with complex spatial concepts could benefit from the graphic thinking skills.
In the late '65, Nunley, Bob Haralick, a former KU professor of engineering, and Walter Sedelow.
professor of sociology and computer science, taught a course in cybernetics — the comparative study of electronic computers and the human nervous system. The course brought engineering and science students together in a classroom with social science and fine arts students.
Nunley said that at the time, two or three acceptable notation systems were being used for dance choreography, but all were extremely crude and more difficult for ballroom dancing than ballet or modern dance.
The final projects from this class were pioneering experiments in the limits of the computer - African games, simulated urban sprawl, sailing regattas, art projects and dance choreography.
The computers can't handle what choreographers want, which is to replicate exact sequences, find ways to portray the sequences, take outstanding dancers and create three-dimensional space and see all the body positions.
"The best training for a dancer is to be in the presence of a ballerina," said Nunley. "But how many of us have had experience with ballerinas?"
Nunley said that videos of dancers helped others to learn, but were limiting because they portrayed only certain types of movements.
Nunley said most computer companies focused on non-graphic features and threw in token graphic capabilities. He said the four outstanding companies making the most sophisticated systems were
Apollo. Mass-Comp. Sun and Syte
Kansas State University has an Apollo system, but KU does not,亨廷顿 said, and a good graphic is available. KU's systems are also good.
and cost between $30,000 and $50,000. Nunley said that there was strong support in the art department for computer projects, but that the computer science department was already scrambling to meet the needs of an enrollment that had doubled in the last 10 years.
"By the end of next year," Nunley said, "courses will be in place for design students who are genuinely interested in computers, and courses will double in number each year thereafter. In four to five years, computer courses will be required in any subject. Technology is becoming so universal, there won't be any special courses, but the courses will be permeated with computers."
One factor that's putting a computer at the average person's fingertips is the increased affordability of the machines.
"To get an effective price comparison," Nunley said, "consider that 30 years ago a computer cost like a jumbo jet. Twenty years ago, it cost like a small Cessna, two years ago a greyhound bus, five years ago, a car, two years ago, a first-rate motorcycle and two years from now, it will cost like a 10-speed bike.
"In five years, a computer will cost the same as a pair of shoes. There're not many people who can afford a pair of shoes."
COLETTE BANGERT and JEFF BANGERT New brush strokes
Lawrence artist Colette Bangert has something Michelangelo and Picasso never had — an IBM personal computer.
Bangert, her husband, Jeff, the director of computer graphics at the University of Kansas, and their computer form a team that creates art signed "CB." which represents each of the three collaborators.
Tucked away in a small second-story room of Bangert's spacious brick home with gleaming hardwood floors and cozy furniture, is the microcomputer — a mechanical means to an artistic end.
Geometric forms are evident in the line art, but the prints are not perfectly symmetrical. Midwest landscapes are drawn with delicate strokes of color by computer printer at the direction of the written program.
Jeff Bangert, who also has an art background, creates the programs to produce the art, with the aid of Colete Bangert's art skills and the technological skill of the computer.
Bangert said that very basic books about how to write graphic software were just now appearing.
"The software is what it's all about," said Colette Bangert. "It took hundreds of years for paint to have been processed enough so you could get it in a tube. Before that, you had to make your own. That's the way it is now with software — you have to make your own."
"Why use someone else's software though?" she said. "You might use it differently, but it's still not the same thing. You create the medium with software."
"This is how we all work together," she said.
Bangert said that creating software for art required computer science experience, plus a notion of desired result and of how to get that result.
"Without Jeff, I would not know enough about mathematical formalism, pure geometry, or computer science. Without the computer, neither Jeff or I could do the calculations and therefore I cannot help him. I do not have a strong visual direction. The computer, Jeff and I are able to expand upon what each of us knows and can do."
Bangert said the mixture of her art and her husband's computer skill evolved naturally. Years ago they played with drawing spirals with a pendulum made from bricks, board and rubber bands. In 1967, they began to experiment with calligraphic drawings using computers.
"It was a very slow process," Bangert said.
"Working with someone else means you don't always get your own way. The trade-off is you get to see things through the other's eyes and head."
Bangert said computer graphics had become more popular, "but there aren't really many doing what Jeff and I would call art," she said. "There's lots of computer graphs, but that's a whole different area."
Bangert said she and her husband usually saved the programs they created, but they wouldn't go back and run them again, adding that computer art was not likely to be mass produced.
"The idea is to see something you haven't seen before. Once you get used to seeing it, the adventure plateau begins."
Bangert said the work had been shown in the Kellas Gallery in Lawrence, in Kansas City and Oklahoma City, Okla., and at the University of North Dakota. Mr. Bangert also met with students currently showing in St. Joseph, Mo., through July 15.
Computers expand and enlarge possibilities for Bangert, but they remain simply another form of expression.
"Nothing is limitless, not even this medium," said Bangert. "There are things you can use a computer for, that you can't do without. It changes what I know about the aesthetics of drawing."
Although Bangert has grappled enthusiastically with the challenge of computer art for more than 15 years, others in her field have not been so enchanted with the medium.
Bangert said most fine artists still frowned on computer art, but the commercial world of movies, design and advertisement were very receptive.
"Computers will change fine art," said Bangert. "But to know what's going on, you have to know something about art and computers. Up to now, no machine-depth art and computer science background."
Bangert said that although artists generally agreed that work with computers not art yet, attitudes were
"At this point they have a wait-and-see attitude. The world's still scared of computers."
The world may still be scared, but the pioneering team of Jeff and Colette Bangert and their trust IBM have nothing to fear. They already have a 17-year head start on many of their contemporaries, and are now off and running, with no intentions of looking back.
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