Adventures In 10 Print

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Adventures In 10 Print is little corner of cyberspace which enables people of all technical abilities to play around a classic computer art algorithm and see what gets generated.

The original 10 Print algorithm started life as a one-liner party trick on the Commodore 64. The program filled up the window with a maze-like pattern by randomly printing a forward slash ( / ) or backward slash ( \ ) to the screen.

The sequence of randomness the computer generates in order to create the artwork has a near 0% chance of ever repeating again. But we get to control the visual rules of the piece, such as the line size and background colour.

These two characteristics of 10 Print means it generates an entirely new pattern every time it runs, but in a style we choose.

10_print_original_code.B

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

Explore how this single line of code offers a way to understand the cultural context of computing.
https://10print.org/

Commissioned by Chester Visual Arts

Chester Visual Arts brought the major V&A touring exhibition Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers to Chester in 2019, with the support of principal funder, The Tyrer Charitable Trust, and Arts Council England.

Since the 1960s, artists and programmers have used computers to create prints, drawings, paintings, photographs and digital artworks. Chance and Control drew on the V&A’s rich international collection of computer-generated art and includes work by pioneering digital artists such as Frieder Nake and Georg Nees – who produced some of the earliest computer art – through to the younger generation of artists practicing today.

Read more about Chance & Control on the Chester Visual Arts website.
Download the code for 'Adventures In 10 Print' via Github.