Holger Lippmann is a pioneer in e-art, generative art, web art, digital art. His revelation came during the electronic music boom in Germany in the 1990’s and ever since he’s been using self programmed digital drawing techniques to create paintings and prints based on everything from concrete motifs such as flowers to geometrical plays with figures and overlapping matrix structures.
To create this work Lippmann composes filigree structures and abstract-geometric patterns which he then overlaps and varies until the pictures achieve the desired look. He compares his process of working to dancing or improvised music, a process of developing a composition through a performance or play. In short the programmes he creates build forms which self organise to create a beautiful image.
What’s most interesting about this work is that his prints are programmed and recorded as vector files so they have an unlimited scalability without any loss of quality which allows him to make work that is based on very dense and finely generated structures. Here’s what he has to say about his work:
Sometimes I take pen and paper. But, often it will happen that after a short while I continue by working on the computer. While drawing I am confronted with too many challenges that I could pursue in a much more excessive way using the computer. Full of energy, there are all kings of variations evolving from a single idea. And I can return to the starting point…Also, with the pen in my hand I feel rather romantic, in a way like a pre-historian trying to make fire using stones. The works shown here have their basis in programs that work with random procedures. There are, to give an example, lines or cylinders that are randomly distributed as fare as number, position, size, direction, rotation, alpha value etc. are concerned. Of course I influence a whole set of parameters in such a way as to generate balanced compositions. Later on, from the multitude of patterns created, I choose fascinating compositions and combine them with others, similarly or differently based on fractal calculations for example generated images and visual levels. The inner process of creation is, however, the same as in my earlier times of creating bodies of work with canvas and colour. This is why I like the expression computer-aided painting for what I do these days.
