Einstein Digital Series (1973)
Einstein Digital is one of Franke’s most famous series. The art work of around 20 photographs is one of the earliest examples of picture processing art. First, a black-and-white portrait of Albert Einstein was scanned and the resulting digital code was stored using a punched tape. The image data were then fed into a picture processing system, ‘Bildspeicher N’. THis was a nuclear-medical diagnostic device in the research center of Siemens.
The computer system was originally developed to convert scintigrams to optimize the visualization of the distribution of radioactive tracer substances in a patient’s body. But in this case, the scintigram was replaced by the digitized portrait of Einstein, which was displayed on the screen as a rough raster image. Then a variety of iterative picture processing methods were applied interactively under visual control to satisfy the aesthetic criteria of Franke. Then the finalized images on screen was conventionally photographed as there was no tool to do a digital “screenshot” at that time.
In this artistic process, the content of the image becomes increasingly abstract and simplified to the point of complete dissolution. Thus, Herbert W. Franke gives expression to a consequence of Einstein’s theory of relativity, namely the dissolution of our seemingly concrete, visible world into an abstract space-time continuum. To create the images, Franke used a method he often employed, that is, the appropriation of the instruments of science, technology and medicine for the purposes of aesthetic design. A historic text by Herbert W. Franke captioning the moments of the first vision of the results on a screen in the research labs of Siemens here.
The Photographs directly from the screen were shown in the form of single enlargements at famous Tendencije 5 in Zagreb. Even better know as shown very often is an edition of nine images grouped together in a matrix arrangement and reproduced as offset prints. Most of the photo enlargements are part of the Collection Franke in the Kunsthalle Bremen.
Additionally, there were several presentations using cross-fade projection of the slides, utilizing two Kodak projectors and a dissolve control unit. In the 1990s, the Munich-based sound artist Jörg Stelkens composed a digital music sequence for these cross-fades.