Electronic Einstein

These nine offset lithographs were created from photographs taken of images on a computer screen. The artist, Herbert W. Franke (born Austria, 1927), used an early form of digital picture processing that was developed by the computer scientists Jürgen van Kranenbrock and Helmut Schenk. Picture processing involves using a specially created computer program to apply a set of processes to an image, such as a photograph. These processes could include analysing, interpreting and manipulating the image, for example. Here the program slowly transforms a scanned picture of Albert Einstein, one stage at a time, into an abstract image. The program was based on the picture processing system used at this time for the analysis of scintigrams, a type of medical imagery that uses radioactive material to show up tissue or organs in the human body.

The images exist as lithographs because there was no output device capable of producing these pictures at the time. Instead, Franke photographed the images as stills on the screen and then produced slides, from which he was able to make a series of lithographs.

Digital picture processing, or image processing as it is sometimes known, is now very common. However, the process itself was only developed in the 1960s. Institutions such as the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Bell Laboratories, both in America, were responsible for developing techniques used in manipulating images, as applied in the fields of medicine and science. By the 1970s, when this image was created, digital image processing was becoming more accessible because of the arrival of cheaper computers and dedicated hardware.

Herbert W. Franke is a pioneering figure in the history of computer art. In 1971, he produced one of the first accounts of computer art entitled 'Computer graphics - Computer art'. In 1979, he co-founded the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, an annual event that combines art and technology. Franke is also well known as a successful author of science fiction novels..