A complementary exhibition to the concurrent Line, Smudge, Shade: Contemporary Drawing in Our Los Angeles, Two-Way Stretch explores electronic drawing in experimental animation and computer art of the twentieth century. Titled after a 1969 computer plotter drawing by Fred Hammersley that will be on view, the exhibition includes both moving image works (such as Norman McLaren’s drawings on the optical track in his early 16mm films from the 1940s) and works on paper (a grid of rare works by Hammersley in the Benton’s collection).
Two-Way Stretch suggests that artists have always blurred the boundaries between handmade marks and machine-driven processes. Among the works are those made with oscilloscopes, a device that generates waveforms resembling geometric abstraction (while demonstrating mathematical equations) when recorded as photographs, TV art, or films. Also featured are computer algorithms that create line “plotter” drawings—simultaneously mechanical and filled with human idiosyncrasies.
These early forays into electronic drawing are placed into dialogue with contemporary moving image works by Jennifer Reeves and others that combine electronically generated sound from machines with the practice of direct cinema, works created by drawing, painting, scratching, and burning holes in acetate film.
Organized by Solveig Nelson, curator of photography and new media
