Detailliertes Programm - Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach

den relevanten Textsorten gehören Forschungs- und Abenteuerberichte, fachwissenschaftliche Artikel
und Monographien, populärwissenschaftliche Darstellungen, Gedichte und Erzählungen, wobei die
Grenzen zwischen den einzelnen Textsorten häufig ineinander übergehen. Diese Unschärfe wurde von
den Protagonisten (Abenteurer, Wissenschaftler, Schriftsteller, Publikum) mitunter selbst thematisiert
– „Ein seltsames Gemisch von Wahrheit und Dichtung“ – und für die eigenen Zwecke
instrumentalisiert.
Die Untersuchung dieser Konkurrenz und der darin implementierten Legitimationsstrategien
veranschaulicht den großen Anteil der auf Bilder gestützten Medialisierung von Forschungen zur
Verwandtschaft von Mensch und Affe für die Rezeption der Darwinschen Theorien in der zweiten Hälfte
des 19. Jahrhunderts. Gleichzeitig lässt sich zeigen, wie durch diese in der Öffentlichkeit
ausgetragene Rezeption sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der scientific community ein
bestimmtes Verständnis der Darwinschen Theorien konstruiert wurde, das auch heute virulent ist.
Ann-Sophie Lehmann
Institute for Media and Cultural Studies, University of Utrecht
How to render Jupiter. The interaction of scientific and artistic
processes in the production of photorealistic computer
graphics
In 1978, computer scientist James Blinn developed the first computer generated fly-by animation of
the planet Jupiter for NASA. The short movie, loosely based on visual material gathered by the Voyager
space shuttle was intended to present the public with color images of the planet and broadcasted on
television as real life footage. Blinn used ray tracing to generate his images. In an article describing
the method he writes: “The algorithm was created to model electron density maps of molecular
structures, but it can be used for other artistically interesting shapes”. This statement from one of the
pioneers in the field characterizes the initial position of computer graphics as images in between
scientific and artistic praxis.
This paper wants to analyze the reciprocal relationship in several steps. Looking at the early history
of CG and the Special Interest Group for Graphics (SIGGRAPH), I will analyze how the development of
algorithms in computer science informs the use of photorealistic CG-images in non-scientific contexts.
Vice versa, the paradigm of photorealism in the movie and game sector has influenced the
appearance of scientific imagery, challenging the idea of objective visualization.
Yet not only the application of CG images fuses scientific and artistic motivations. Already at the
developmental stage of CG, scientists obliviously turn to artistic traditions. Using the example of ray
tracing and that of a more recent algorithm to render the appearance of translucent materials like
human skin, it can be shown that scientific analysis preceding the development of algorithms, is
essentially linked to pre-photographic artistic procedures. Thus, scientific CG does not only adhere to
similar visual conventions, also the making of CG follows similar paths of production as artistic
imagery.
Recent media studies have mostly concentrated on the relation between CG and photography;
foregrounding the analogous history of CG and pre-photographic image production and questioning
the art/science dichotomy, helps to establish a more thorough theoretical framework to study the role
of CG in contemporary visual culture.
This research is part of my larger project The brush in the computer. A critical history of computer
graphics and the ‘painterly’ turn in visual culture (financed by the Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research until 2010).
Vom roten Mars und runden Atomen | HfG Offenbach 25-26.10.2007
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