Derivation of the Laws

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
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Roman Verostko

1990

Book

The Library

Description

Roman Verostko’s interest in the English mathematician and philosopher George Boole stemmed from his application of Boolean logic as a conceptual framework for algorithmic composition. This artist’s book takes its title from Boole’s 1854 essay “Derivations of the laws of the symbols of logic from the law of the operations of the human mind,” and an excerpt of this text is reproduced inside.

Boole is considered the father of symbolic logic. His contributions underlie the development of switching theory essential for computing circuitry and thus the digital revolution in the 20th century. When producing the illustrations for this book, Verostko adjusted his generative algorithms to use terms from Boole’s theories, distributing 1s and 0s randomly around a center of attraction. These visual effects, demonstrated by the image on the front cover, are intended to suggest the dynamism inherent in logical systems.

The book was printed by Verostko in a limited edition of 125 copies, bound in leather and folded by hand at the St. Sebastian Press in Minneapolis in 1990. It features a series of algorithmically generated illustrations coded by the artist and executed by a multi-pen plotter machine connected to a PC. The frontispiece of each edition includes a unique pairing of pen and Chinese brush plotted drawings created in the artist’s studio.