Jean Stern

Landscapes, Snapshots (extracts)

Possibilities, fragments, points of view, questions, remarks, stages, perhaps

Fortuitous circumstances that come together, an empirical approach to computer imaging, some chance meetings, the FEMS Prize in conclusion and as driving force - herewith the mainsprings of an unprecedented situation. The idea fits into a few sentences : from work on perception, the point of view and the site, conducted with the classical tools of relief and of sculpture, a bridge was to be built toward infography. Brought into the picture for a single reason, a simultaneously intriguing, suspect and seductive reason, namely the possibility of reconstituting in three dimensions the plane image of any object, solely through the resources of a mathematical space called discrete geometry.So the programme is first an original computer programme, invented and written by Romeu André Pieritz, reworked on the drawing board twenty times over through my fault. The software digests images, displays them in 3D through constantly revised parametrisations, and solicits new learning. However, all that interests me are the compromises it admits with the world, with forms, with sculpture. What is important is its functionality beyond the screen. For the three dimensions here are not those of sculpture; if the geometry and the mathematics produce volume, the volume remains virtual : it is actually on the screen that the illusion of space is traced out. (...)

Jean Stern