Letters from my Mother
Vera Molnar, Letters from my Mother, 1988
Vera Molnar hat auf Grundlage von Briefen ihrer Mutter, deren
Handschrift "nachprogrammiert"
Vera Molnar first started to use computers in 1968. This
screenprint was created from two plotter drawings that simulate
the handwriting of Molnar’s elderly mother as she became
increasingly unwell. In a description of the work, Molnar wrote:
" My mother had a wonderful hand-writing. There was something
gothic in it (it was the style of writing of all well-educated
ladies in the Habsburg monarchy in the early XXth century) but
also something hysteric. The beginning of every line, on the left
side, was always regular, severe, gothic and at the end of each
line it become [sic] more nervous, restless, almost hysteric. As
the years passed, the letters in their totality, become [sic] more
and more chaotic, the gothic aspect disappeared step by step and
only the disorder remained. Every week she wrote me a letter, it
was a basic and important event in my visual environment. They
were more and more difficult to decipher, but it was so nice to
look at them... then, there were no more letters...So I went on to
write letters of hers to myself, on the computer of course,
simulating the transition between gothic and hysteric."
The drawing also functions as a study in symmetry and
counter-composition. Its exploration of the relationship between
order and chaos is common to many other early computer-generated
art works.
Source: Patric Prince Archive, AAD/2009/19
