Digital Art

From 1975, the date of his first digitization experiment, and for the next ten years, Yvaral used a rudimentary, ingenious but archaic system: projecting a black-and-white slide onto a grid screen, moving a photoelectric cell mounted on a mobile support that slid along rods in front of each screen tile, and measuring the “resolution” of the image.

Yvaral has only been using computers since 1985. The contribution of a configuration built around a personal micro-computer, equipped with specially developed software, has eliminated all tedious handling, saved time in production and improved the quality and reliability of digitization.
 

In this way, Yvaral has freed himself from cumbersome tasks that are not involved in the actual creation. It would be hard to tell the difference between a Mona Lisa created with an archaic tool and one created with a computerized one, if you didn’t know when they were made! the light intensity on an associated luxmeter; recording the measurements on paper (one thousand for one Mona Lisa, two thousand for another); blacking out the work area to obtain the most complete darkness; collaboration with an assistant.

Above all, the system is laborious: it takes a day’s work to digitize a single photo, and the result depends on the quality of the slide and projection, not to mention the possibility of measurement or reading errors. The beauty of Yvaral’s digital images owes nothing to the computer. Digital art owes nothing to computers.
 

In his exhibitions, Yvaral does not present a gallery of portraits. He does not seek to express a personality or a character through a portrait, nor even to pay tribute to the person represented.

On the contrary, he chooses the most universal image, and even the most impersonal one. The aim is therefore not to present us with a multitude of images subjected to digitization and the multiplication of recognizable faces. Sometimes, an exhibition by Yvaral proposes only a single theme.

The interest then lies in creating a confrontation between the different treatments applied to the same image, and in showing us, to use Abraham Moles’s expression, “the systematic exploration of the field of possibilities,” excluding any impression of repetition.

Stanley Hopkins