Exploring the image’s flesh, its texture, Miguel digitized his painted slides and discovered an initial style, an electronic-era variant of Georges Seurat’s pointillism. Interestingly, Seurat himself having been inspired by the theories of Michel-Eugène Chevreul on the diffraction of light – the light diffraction that is to be found, once again, in the cathode ray tube.3
The discovery led to Chevalier’s artistic program: “doing painting with computers.”4 Not only would he be able to create through the “geometricization of shapes,”5 but Chevalier would also be able to use the computer “like a light dimmer” rather than a “mixer of colored paints.”6 In this sense, the computer could be regarded as “another palette, distinct from the old one,” one which opened “a new field of possibilities.”7
The result: Miguel understood “each point was accessed with mathematical precision, each point was calculable; you altered it exactly where you wished on the screen and assigned it the desired color.”7 While the application was
limited at first, choices would soon grow “to over sixteen million tones.”8
Returning to the video we recommended you view at the beginning of this article, Digital Abysses, it becomes evident that even today Miguel is still painting with computers – and yet, doing so much more as iterative becomes
active over time.
The Range of Work
Think about this for a moment.
Miguel digitized his painted slides and discovered an initial style, an electronic-era variant of George Seurat’s pointillism.
— Food Central Kitchen
Right:
Dear World... Yours, Cambridge 2015
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
Curators: Helen Marriage and Bill Gee / Artichoke Trust
Credit: Miguel Chevalier
37