FRAMES AND WINDOWS: VISUAL SPACE IN ABSTRACT CINEMA
A.L.Rees
This article features the precursors of electronic imaging who worked in avant-garde film and video. It looks at numbers and screen geometry in the early abstract work of Richter and Eggeling. The author shares with Malcolm Le Grice the view that Diagonal Symphony was the first programmable film. Rees traces the lineage down through Lye, Kubelka and Littman, through images and systems in Hall and Barber to words and text in the work of Sharits, Wood and the Tomato Design Group. The point is not that it has all been done before - which the author does not believe - but to show some origins of current digital forms in the shapes and structures of the classic and contemporary avant-garde.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Malcolm Le Grice
Digital media bring together computers, various audio-visual display and recording systems and remote multi-user networks, like the Internet, all with the capacity for interactivity characteristic of the computer interface. It seems able to incorporate or interface with almost all previous media - the written word, pictures, music and even the time flow of images and sound which makes up cinema and video and communication forms like the telephone, or TV. Though it does not as readily incorporate the physical, spatial forms of sculpture, performance or drama, it has a growing presence in these art forms through interactive systems applied in three dimensional construction and the arena of performance.

MARK ROBERTS' VANISHING POINT
David Company
"There is a common urge, namely, to visualise a thing in its beginnings, because the beginning is the simplest mode in which the thing is to be seen. But the simple beginning is something so insignificant in itself, so far as its content goes, that for philosophical thinking it must appear as entirely accidental."

ATOMS IN THE NET
Keith Brown
Until recently it would have seemed like some form of magic for the fine art sculptor to be able to conceive of and make manifest their ideas using a micro-computer and three-dimensional input and output devices, for either virtual or physical worlds, What many designers are now beginning to take for granted, as the desktop computer and related technologies have become an integrated aspect of their creative process, has only recently become a reality for the fine art sculptor. Sculptors are only just beginning to realize the power that this technology offers as a viable means for the production of their artwork.
FREE-EYE DRAWING
John Tchalenko
A device used in eye-controlled computing allows the eye to move the pencil of a painting and drawing software program. In so doing, the eye can draw simply by looking at the computer screen. The resulting artwork reflects the particular way the eye moves, as well as eye skills that seem to be strongly developed in painters who draw from life. In eye-controlled computing, the cursor, which is normally operated via the mouse, is controlled by the eye alone and without the use of the hand. Clicking is done by closing and opening the eye or, alternatively, by dwelling for a set time on an icon. This "eyemouse" system, of which several commercial models are available, is designed for situations where it is more convenient to operate a computer with the eye than the hand, either because the hand is busy (e.g. a pilot flying a helicopter), or incapacitated (e.g. applications for the disabled). My own research is in Drawing and Cognition, and I use the device to investigate what the eye is good and not so good at doing, and whether people who draw regularly develop special eye and eye-hand skills. I'm also looking at the system's potential application for disabled students in art colleges. An early offshoot from this research arose when the cursor was made to become the pencil tool of a drawing software programme realising that the eye could "draw". It was a special kind of drawing, jagged and nervous, made so fast that it felt like a thought laid down on paper the instant it had been conceived (Plate 1). Normally the perceiving eye (and visual brain) guide the drawing hand but here the eye was both drawing and perceiving simultaneously. How was such a free-eye drawing produced? Was it simply the result of the eye's natural spontaneous movements, or was it also reflecting an element of volition and skill which differed from one person to another and could, perhaps, be learned and perfected?

YELLOW
Ron McCormick
Yellow l'jelau / ad., n., & v.
Adj. 1. of the colour between green and orange in the spectrum, of buttercups, lemons, egg yolks or gold. 2. of the duller colour of faded leaves, ripe wheat old paper etc. 3. having a yellow skin or complexion. 4. colloq. Cowardly. 5. (of looks, feelings etc.) jealous, envious, or suspicious. 6. (of newspapers etc.) unscrupulously sensational. N. 1. a yellow colour or pigment. 2. yellow clothes or material (dressed in yellow). 3. a. a yellow ball, a piece, etc., in a game or sport. b. the player using such pieces. 4. (usu. in comb.) a yellow moth or butterfly. 5. (in pl.) a. jaundice of horses etc. b. US a peach disease with yellowed leaves. v.tr. & intr. make or become yellow. yellowish adj. yellowly adv. yellowness n. yellowy adj. [Old English geolu, geolo from West Germanic: related to GOLD]

"ROUGHNECKS": REALITY, RECOMBANCY AND RADICAL AESTHETICS
Paul Wells
This paper addresses the computer generated televisions series, Starship Troopers (aka Roughnecks), engaging with the relationship between its aesthetic strategy and the points of graphic association it draws from a range of visual sources allied both to the deep thematics of animation, and the technological preoccupations of 'war' texts. It seeks to demonstrate that the limits of computer generated animation are used to facilitate an aesthetic approach which recalls and revises the post-modern design strategies of dystopic science fiction, while appropriating the exoskeletal and elemental aspects of films within the animated tradition. This recombinancy redetermines the idea of the alien, and attempts to create a humanising process within a dehumanised aesthetic and social space, working as a comment about the computer game aesthetic/culture it echoes.

THE MANIPULATED IMAGE
Keith Griffiths
In 1966 George Lucas foresaw the future and prophesied that all digital movie production would "eventually create a more democratic filmmaking environment. Anyone will be able to create movies. Pretty soon you'll be doing it on your PC". Digital filmmaking was not a new idea: Francis Ford Coppola had been talking about an "electronic cinema" since 1982 and he attempted to bring his dreams to life in One From the Heart. Much of the current interest in digital video filmmaking has been generated by the startling success of ultra cheap features like The Celebration and The Blair Witch Project. Whilst the pressure to go digitalis coming with equal force from both ends of the economic spectrum - the mega-budget Hollywood film and the nobudget indie camp - there remains an open question whether either side has really confronted the central aesthetic issues behind the rise of the manipulated digital image.

VISIBLE, ALL TOO VISIBLE
A review of Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play in New Media Genres by Andrew Darley.