Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (block portrait / “Computer Cubism”)

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Leon D. Harmon

1971

8.5"x10"
From computer-generated block mosaic

Description

Where does the boundary between representation and abstraction lie? At Bell Laboratories, Leon D. Harmon worked to understand how the human brain recognizes familiar forms from limited visual information. His research in perception and computer vision focused on faces, exploring how much detail can be removed before identity is lost.

Harmon selected the portrait of Abraham Lincoln that appears on the 5-dollar bill (taken by photographer Anthony Berger in 1864) because it is universally recognizable. Using a flying-spot scanner, he digitized the image into numerical data and divided it into roughly 200 squares, each rendered in one of 16 shades of gray. Created in 1971, Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Block Portrait / ”Computer Cubism”) was printed photographically from computer output. The image reduces a familiar face to a geometric field that exposes the mechanics of visual perception.

Harmon’s 1973 Scientific American article on face recognition introduced Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Block Portrait / “Computer Cubism”) without ever using the word “pixel.” Created before the term entered common usage, the work anticipated the visual language that would come to define digital culture.

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