Thursday, January 17, 2002

A Portrait of Goldwater Is a Computer-Aided Mosaic of His Own Photographs By SCOTT CARLSON The most famous photographs of Barry Goldwater were those in which he appeared -- as a celebrated statesman, a presidential candidate, and outspoken Southwestern senator. But a new portrait of Goldwater on display at Arizona State University is made up of less famous photographs -- ones he took as a renowned landscape photographer. The portrait is a digitally arranged photomontage, called a Photomosaic, composed by the computer artist Robert Silvers. Mr. Silvers has produced similar work for Life, Newsweek, and Playboy magazines. He composed the picture of Goldwater, wearing a cowboy hat and a snarling smile, using 1,000 of Goldwater's own photographs of Arizona landscapes and American Indian scenes. A computer program helps Mr. Silvers arrange the photos to create the larger picture, which is also modeled after a photograph. Mr. Silvers, who has equal interests in art and photography, wrote the program while he was a graduate student in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even before he graduated, he had received commissions from major magazines, and had trademarked the term "Photomosaic." Barbara Eschbach, director of Arizona State's Computing Commons Gallery, says that the Goldwater project started in 1998, after Mr. Silvers had a show of his work there. Ms. Eschbach got Goldwater's photos from the senator's widow, then passed them to Mr. Silvers, who arranged them for the portrait. Goldwater, who died in 1998 at the age of 89, needs little introduction: He was a titan of the Republican party, trounced by Lyndon B. Johnson in the presidential race in 1964. He represented Arizona in the United States Senate for 30 years, retiring in 1986. He was an outspoken conservative, yet one who didn't always hold to the party line; late in life, he was a supporter of gay rights and abortion, and he once said that the Rev. Jerry Falwell deserved "a boot ... right in the ass." But "not many people know that it was really [Goldwater's] career as a photographer -- he had an international reputation -- that launched his political career," Ms. Eschbach says. "He had these slides, and he took them around Arizona." His work was also featured in Arizona Highways, a well-known travel magazine about the southwestern state. Fittingly, then, the Photomosaic of Goldwater is one that Arizonans might recognize. "It is not Barry with the dark glasses; it's Mr. Arizona," Ms. Eschbach says. Mr. Silvers's preference for that particular portrait had more technical underpinnings: The subject of the photograph has to take up a large part of the field so that the individual photographs can define smaller details on it. The university paid about $40,000 to commission the portrait and make poster replicas. The portrait, which is being dedicated today, will hang alongside a show of 53 of the former senator's photographs. "We really hope that we might one day see this exhibition travel across the country," Ms. Eschbach says. Mr. Silvers's work is not created entirely by the computer. The program gives him a basic pattern for arranging the photos, but he also does quite a bit of finessing by hand before the portrait is finished. The Goldwater portrait, which is 4 feet by 6 feet, is a typical size for Mr. Silvers, although he has produced much larger pieces. One was a building-sized picture of a bottle of Coca-Cola, for a promotional campaign in Mexico; the picture was composed of about 10,000 photos of families in a Mexican community. The Goldwater portrait is part of a series of technology-generated art has passed through the university's Computing Commons Gallery. Jean-Pierre Hébert, whose drawings are created through algorithms, and Lillian Schwartz, who creates computer-generated art films, have been featured there in the past. Arizona State University is selling posters of the Goldwater portrait for $25 each. Proceeds from the sales of the posters will support scholarships for American Indian students. So far, Ms. Eschbach says, the university has raised $10,000. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Suspended student is accused of killing 3 in shooting rampage at law school President Bush names members of new bioethics panel Wrestling coaches sue Department of Education over Title IX College endowments on average posted decline in value in 2001 Education Department blocks college groups from joining talks on student-aid regulations New Pakistani law makes it difficult for Afghan students to enroll at religious colleges A portrait of Goldwater is a computer-aided mosaic of his own photographs Husband and wife use "smart" classrooms to teach policy-making at 2 universities