Return to Square (color version)

Description

Yamanaka’s program interpolates between a woman’s profile (traced from a William Klein photograph in Vogue) and plain squares set inside and outside it, printing intermediate steps, so the transformation reads as concentric contours. The idea is Kohmura’s.

The algorithm was recreated by Oizumi, who extracted 126 coordinates from the profile and measured the spacing of the printed outlines. Version (a) spaces its outlines at equal intervals: ten outside the profile, fifty inside. Version (b) in contrast compresses the spacing toward the profile following a quadratic rule, with twenty outlines outside the profile and thirty inside, each at a distance proportional to the square of its step count. The gaps start fine against the face and widen steadily toward the square.

One-off colored variants were part of CTG’s practice around the Tokyo Gallery show. A fluorescent Kennedy in a Dog is also recorded.

The work proved to be popular: version (a) was published as a Motif Editions lithograph in London, while version (b) appeared on record jackets including Morton Subotnick’s 1969 Columbia LP Touch and as the poster for the Tokyo Gallery exhibition.

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Computer-Kunst: On the Eve of Tomorrow Ephemera

Graphic Design, Issue No. 33, Spring (March) 1969 Ephemera

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Miracle Stones Print

Return to Square (Motif Editions Poster) Print

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