Vera Molnár
Vera Molnár (1924-2023) was a Hungarian-French artist and a pioneer of generative computer art. She was among the first women to use computers in a fine-art practice. From the late 1960s she wrote programs in Fortran and BASIC and drew the results with plotters. Her programs explored simple geometric forms (squares, lines, rule-based compositions) and, above all, the tension between order and controlled disorder. She introduced small, deliberate amounts of randomness into rigorous grids, which she called her "1% disorder", the phrase she is best known for.
Learn more:
- Vera Molnár on Wikipedia
- Notable works and series: Interruptions (1969), (Dés)Ordres, Transformations, and her studies of concentric squares.
Recreations here
- Interruptions, a field of short line segments at random rotations. A noise threshold omits some of the segments. The grid is the order, and the rotations and gaps are the disorder. It is after Molnár, in the spirit of her Interruptions (1969). Click to recreate a new variation.
swift run Example-Recreations-VeraMolnar-Interruptions- (Dés)Ordres, after Molnár's (Dés)Ordres (1974). It draws a grid of concentric squares, and each square is drawn only ~95% of the time, so the orderly nesting breaks down into disorder. The title is a pun: désordres (disorders) versus des ordres (some orders), which points to the logic within the apparent disarray.
mouseXseeds the randomness, so moving the mouse scrubs back and forth through the patterns.
swift run Example-Recreations-VeraMolnar-DesOrdresThese sketches are homages after Vera Molnár, made for learning. They are not reproductions of specific works. They are not affiliated with or endorsed by the artist or her estate.