Talk: Heinrich Heidersberger: Rhythmograms. 1950ies Vector Graphics before Digital Computers
Rijeka / Deltalab / 03.10.20 / 15,00
Heinrich Heidersberger’s Rhythmograms
The German artist, photographer and tinkerer was born 1906 in Ingolstadt. After studying architecture in Graz he went to Paris in 1928, intending to become a painter and visited Fernand Leger’s “Academie moderne”. The reproduction of his own paintings with a camera from the flea market brought him to photography and he became eventually one of the leading German architectural photographers after WWII.
Among Heidersberger’s free and experimental works are the Rhythmograms which he developed from 1953 to 1965. Inspired by “Physik in graphischen Darstellungen” by Felix Auerbach (1912/1925) he was searching for graphical elements for a still existing mural at the University of Wolfenbüttel. A room-filling machine with four pendula deflect a point of light on a photo plate, a process that take about 10 minutes. Jean Cocteau wrote a beautiful text about the Rhythmograms and the Museum of Modern Art bought several for their study collection.
In 1980 Benjamin Heidersberger translated his father’s mechanical analogue computer to electronics allowing for real-time manipulation of the Rhythmograms. The output is an oscilloscope screen.
The lecture by Bernd Rodrian (Head of the Institute Heidersberger) and Benjamin Heidersberger will explain the machine, now in the Castle where the Archive and the Institute are located. A 6-minute film will show the machine and it’s function.
The Institute is supported by the City of Wolfsburg where Heidersberger died in 2006.
