Heinrich Heidersberger | Escape the Darkness

HEINRICH HEIDERSBERGER: ESPACE THE DARKNESS. RHYTHMOGRAMS, 1953-1965
29 AUGUST - 9 SEPTEMBER 2023

On view is a selection of RHYTHMOGRAMS Heinrich Heidersberger has created since the early 1950s using a self-built drawing machine. He had an influence on the history of generative photography and algorithmic art with his RHYTHMOGRAMS which are, among others, in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and influenced contemporaries such as Jean Cocteau and Herbert W. Franke.

The RHYTHMOGRAPH, as Heidersberger called his device, was redesigned several times and perfected. The larger version, which was made of conventional scaffolding, still stands fully functional in the exhibition room of the Heidersberger Institute today and takes up close to twenty square meters of floor space. Using four harmonically muffled pendulums, it creates traces of light on photographic material via a mechanically linked mirror and a point source of light. Three-dimensional images are produced by controlling the frequency, phase difference, amplitude, and transmission of the pendulums—two drive the mirror vertically and two horizontally.

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