Roman Verostko // Steiner Lecture in Creative Inquiry, 11/24/2019

Verostko’s presentation identifies art-form sources & ideas that dominated his work in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. He illustrates how those underlying art concepts shaped his approach when he began writing computer code for “art-form” generators. He illustrates the transition from “art ideas in mind” to “art ideas in code”. In doing so he identifies the seductive leverage of algorithmic form-generators and the recursive charm of the forms they yield. He concludes with projects celebrating three pioneers of the Algorithmic Revolution: George Boole for “Boolean Algebra”; Alan Turing for the “Turing Machine” and Norbert Wiener as the father of Cybernetics. Verostko, who pioneered robotic brushwork, is also known for his richly colored algorithmic pen & ink drawings. With a major in illustration he graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1949. He entered monastic life at St Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, PA, where he created his “New City” Series and his first electronically synchronized