Bearded Man

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Charles "Chuck" Csuri James Shaffer

1968

Plotter Drawing

Highlights The Ragnar 100

Description

As part of his early experiments with computer-aided drawing and animation, Charles Csuri used mathematical rules to transform the human figure in controlled yet unpredictable ways. Bearded Man exemplifies this process—known as procedural transformation—by demonstrating how a computer could generate multiple views of the same face from a single image.

Csuri saw the computer as a tool that enabled him to efficiently produce variations from a hand-drawn source, extending skills he already possessed as a draftsman. The creative charge of the work lies not only in the logic of code but in the unforeseen results introduced by the machine. In Bearded Man, the face appears in a sequence of plotted images ranging from highly abstract distortions to more naturalistic renderings, all produced through coded instructions.