
Basic Information
Title: P-148 Inschrift (Inscription)
Artist(s):
Manfred Mohr
Date Created: 1973
Framed Dimensions: 26 x 26 in.
Unframed Dimensions: 19.5 x 19.5 in.
Medium: Plotter drawing on paper
Inventory ID: Mohr-1973-01
Description
signed and dated lower right
The drawing is constructed from a series of 2 horizontal solid lines spaced a distance apart. Between each pair of lines, a third line is broken up into short equal length pieces and a random sequence of 0’s and 1’s decides the position of each piece.
For each short line if it’s random number is 1, it is drawn at the bottom of the top line and if its random number is 0, it is drawn at the top of the bottom line.
As an aesthetic decision, not to start or end with a solid horizontal line, the surface is treated as a torus. Thus the top and bottom of the drawing have complementary short lines (as described above). The original version of the program, also from 1973, did not have this – i.e. the surface was treated as a flat plane.
Detail images of the work
signed and dated lower right in graphite titled lower left in graphite artist’s name, title, date, measurements, and medium printed on artist’s label attached to the back of the frame
signed and dated in graphite lower right “Works from Mohr’s Line Cluster phase (1989-1990) are based on the 5-dimensional hyper-cube, a structure built from a set of eighty lines. A subset of twenty lines, containing four lines from each “dimensional-direction” are chosen from this structure. Each “dimensional-direction” consists therefore of four parallel lines, represented by […]
signed, titled, and dated on the reverse in graphite image conceived: 1970 drawing on canvas: 1990 “Mohr’s work is an important bridge between handmade manipulations and machine-calculated structures in art. Following a series of geometric experiments, a shift toward hard-edge painting by 1967 immediately preceded Mohr’s use of the computer as a tool for art. […]
“The P-2400 series is based on the 1978 algorithm from the work phase Dimensions I. The first version of this alogrithm did not include the possibility of rotating the four-dimensional hypercube. In 2017, Mohr pursued this original code and directed the algorithm into a different visual solution. Again, the basic 32 lines which constitute the […]