Pathway Series 5, AAB:D05:1988

Pathway Series 5, AAB:D05:1988 combines the use of generative algorithms, programmed drawing machines, and traditional Chinese calligraphy—teasing an expressive, gestural composition from computational  processes. After returning from teaching in Hangzhou, China, in 1985, Roman Verostko acquired his first pen plotter machine, a HI DMP52 with fourteen pen stalls. In the late 1980s, he created Hodos, a program coded with Basic and Digital Microprocessor/Plotting Language (DM/PL) that directed the plotter’s use of both colored ink pens and Chinese calligraphy brushes. These events marked a turning point in Verostko’s practice, in which custom software, conventional art materials, and controlled unpredictability converged. He demonstrated that algorithms are capable of producing abstract compositions with genuine feeling and emotional resonance.

The background consists of thousands of multicolored “pathways” generated by the Hodos software and drawn by various pen-bearing arms. Over this visual field the plotter, now fitted with a Chinese brush, swept bold black strokes reminiscent of kasuri, or “flying white” calligraphy, a technique Verostko learned in Hangzhou from the master calligrapher Wang Dongling. Two algorithmically positioned rectangles, later illuminated by hand with 23-karat gold leaf, invoke medieval manuscript bars, linking the artist’s computerized processes to monastic scriptoria. As a final gesture, Verostko applied cinnabar seals bearing his studio name and signature—custom-carved for him in China—on the lower left, reinforcing his ongoing dialogue with East Asian artistic customs. Overall, the arrangement of marks exhibits a distinctly painterly sensibility, demonstrating a conscious effort to resolve relationships of “chance” and “order,” formal considerations throughout most of Verostko’s algorithmic work.