Hans Dehlinger
Generative art is focused on the design of rule-systems, which, if executed, will return aesthetic events, measuring up to the criteria of the artist. This type of art-production exposes the artist to all the known and strange properties of design-processes at large. One of them: The result is a plan or a guideline; In general, someone else, not the designer itself, executes it. For that reason the descriptive layout has to be delivered in advance and with precision to bring about the wanted result. Usually, an artist on his work enjoys a direct feedback. In generative art there is a feed-back-gap between the design of the generative system and the evaluation of its results. This is a challenge and at the same times a pleasure to enjoy.
However simple from a mathematical point of view, the objects on display touch on fundamental issues of mathematics: Numbers, counting, the transition from figure to data, the problems of visualizing the meaning of data. The context here are 4 x 4 Magic Squares (MS), and each cell of such a MS holds another 4 x 4 sub-matrix of squares constructed with perforated, laser-cut lines on black paper. It serves as a container for the figures 1, 2, 3, . . . , 16 of the 4 x 4 MS. To represent the figure n in a cell of the MS, n cells of the sub-matrix are manually flipped up. The result is a 4 x 4 MS represented by a kind of relief. The algorithmic generation of the perforated lines delivers identical templates to construct all possible 4 x 4 MS.