Vilko Žiljak

Vilko Žiljak (1946) learned programming in 1969 in FORTRAN, on an IBM 1130 at the Electrical Engineering Faculty (EEF) in Zagreb.¹ He studied at the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Faculty in Zagreb and in 1973 was awarded the degree of graduate engineer in experimental physics. In the same year he first exhibited his artistic computer graphics at the tendencies 5 show, held in the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum, as it is today, in Zagreb, in one of three parts of the show, called computers and visual research. In 1981 he took a doctorate from the EEF, becoming "doctor of technical sciences from the area of computer sciences." From 1982 he was a professor at the Graphic Faculty, where he was in charge of the typesetting and computing technique department, founding an interdisciplinary course in graphic technology, being dean of the faculty from 1983 to 1987. In 1982 he had conferred on him the rank of research associate and assistant professor for the subject group computing technique and simulation languages from the area of computer science at the EEF. He is a member of the Academy of Technical Sciences of Croatia, being vice-president since 2009. During his work he has been engaged in research into and the development and application of information, computer and graphic techniques in a wide area of science. He works in three branches of science: mathematical modelling and simulation, computer graphics and printing; and computer-aided visual research. He published the first book in Croatian about these areas and organised instruction in undergraduate and post-graduate courses. He has published wholly or partially authored books in the scientific fields of technology (computing, graphic techniques, geology), medicine, social science (education, sociology, information, economics), humanist science (science in art) and natural science. His bibliography contains 510 titles. He has published more than a hundred research papers.²

He applied computer modelling and simulation while designing big economic systems such as the Cokery in Bakar (1973-1974), the Port of Rijeka (1974-1979) and the Yugoslav Oil Pipeline (1979-1982). He brought new technologies of protective printing into the graphic industry. With a group of associates, he undertook the design of documents of the Republic of Croatia using digital techniques (passport, citizenship certificate, personal identity card) in the Croatian Printing Institute in Zagreb 1991. With Miroslav Šutej he co-authored the design of the Croatian kuna, or kruna, banknotes (1992-1994). He has received the Golden Marten Lifetime Achievement Prize (2008) and State Prize for Science, 2010. He is a full member of the Zmaj od Kune, and of the Brethren of the Croatian Dragon, where he has held the office of master of the Social-Humanist Division (2008-2016).

Žiljak started creating artistic computer graphics in 1970, from when he worked as head of the department for mathematical modelling and optimisation of large systems in the firm Industroprojekt.³ There he used the computer IBM 1130, on which "one print was computed in about 8 hours".⁴ The prints were printed on a line printer on standard 42 cm-wide paper, including perforations along the width. The numbering that accompanies the title on graphics such as RN Transition 1/34 (1971), RN Transition 14/34 (1971) and Breakthrough of circle 2/18 (1972) do not indicate the size of the edition and the individual number, as is common in the labelling of art graphics, but are there to distinguish the pieces in the same group of motifs. The author says about the beginnings of his creation of artistic computer graphics:

"The graphics came into being just as my personal artworks. I had always been in love with maths. I wondered: how can one see complex abstract mathematical relations? How can they be combined into a new abstraction and seen? So the need arose for the publication of new mathematical structures as images. At that time visualisations of mathematical relations were explained only through elementary forms (line, parabola, exponential forms...) for no one had time to do "on foot" all the steps in the rich world of mathematics and present the new fantastic forms. Music school taught me counterpoint and solfeggio. I can play a dozen instruments. Since I am a musician, I developed methods for programming, or composing, a stochastic sequence."⁵

At the first public presentation at the show tendencies 5 in 1973 he presented his art work with 14 computer graphics of 1972, their titles being Simulation of transition, Ground, Development, Mixed Sets, Interaction of Sets. Some prints were 30.5 or 60.9 cm long, and were chosen from a larger group of graphics. A short description was printed in the catalogue, relating to all the works shown. "In five data bases data of a stochastic-discrete system are saved, and in two databases data about continuous space. The MSMG programme is used to simulate interactions and changes."⁶ With a line printer, these abstract images were written out in letters, creating what is called an ASCII image. Added visual values of computer-generated images are printed with the chosen letter of a line printer. After tendencies 5 they were shown the same year at the next important international exhibition of digital art, Sigma 9, Contact II in Bordeaux. He presented these artworks in the years to come at numerous collective shows, a practice he continues down to this day; as for the earlier ones we might pick out ICCH/2 in Los Angeles in 1975⁷ and Computers in Visual Art in Brussels, in 1981.⁸

In early 1974 his art graphics were used in the announcement of the TV broadcast For moments of relaxation shown on TVZ (Croatian Radio Television today), probably the first digital TV graphic in Croatia.⁹ Like the Žiljak prints of the time, the broadcasts of TVZ were in black and white, and only in 1975 did they go over to colour. Žiljak had his first solo show in the INA Gallery in Zagreb, belonging to a petrol company he did business with.¹⁰ Among the 22 works on show, computer graphics on paper, there were three women's silken head squares, fashion accessories, on which computer graphics were appliquéd in silkscreen technique.¹¹ The head squares were produced and processed by the Varaždin Industry of Silk (VIS), which distributed them for sale in fashion stores in Croatia. When shown in galleries, they were called Computer graphic 01-blue, Computer graphic 01-red or Mixed groups 101, Mixed Groups 102.¹²

In 1975, at the UNISCOP 100¹³ computer terminal in the oil company INA Naftaplin, he went on with the work on the series Simulation of transition, but this time in colour. These were not images written out in ASCII signs, but vector graphics in a rough raster representation, but with lots of details and half-tones, a wide colour spectrum and great saturation. Along with the title of the series, the works also had subtitles distinguishing the performance parameters, such as Simulation of transition, VŽ 10B/4F-B-GE-FE-CMY-SI-SH (1975). One series of these prints was printed in colour in offset technology on paper, produced by the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb,¹⁴ where they were also exhibited at his solo show of the same year. The exhibition showed not only head squares and series of graphics in colour but also a collage composed of black and white graphics about 120 x 120 cm in size. Also demonstrated in the gallery venue was the UNISCOP 100 computer terminal, lent for the occasion by INA Naftaplin BOAL Technical Preparation and Development.¹⁵ The author wrote about his work in the foreword to the catalogue:

... a physicist is at the same endless job that man is at as philosopher, scientist, artist, as, simply, a thinking being. Having chosen physics as my vocation, I chose only one defined manner of knowing the world, chose one of the particular means that, however, tend to a single objective... A physicist, I see the world of physis as a permanent stochastic process in which physics reveals the lawful game of the elements of chance and determination. But cognitive curiosity did not allow me to be satisfied with shaping knowledge into abstract language of maths alone, but drove me to visualise this knowledge in a visual document...The mathematical language of physics, too, then, like every language, leaves anyone who uses it a lot of freedom of expression. The same thing can be spoken of very diversely in it, as in every language, whether it is non-verbal or visual, for example.¹⁶

The exhibition moved from Zagreb to the Small Salon of the Modern Gallery in Rijeka (today's MMCA). Žiljak went on presenting his works at numerous solo shows; of the early ones, we can mention those in Zagreb, in the Dubrava Gallery (1977), Nova Gallery (1978) and Mladost Gallery, 1981.

The catalogue essay for the 1977 exhibition was written by art historian Zdenko Rus. We quote:

In an age of instrumental and instrumentalised awareness, there is no surprise and nothing unacceptable in the thesis that the medium is the message. We expose ourselves to what for many is a heretical stance in the name of Žiljak\'s work, in the belief that we are addressing its particularities, without getting high and dry in our interpretation on the apathy of a purely technical analysis. We destroy, finally, that magical aura of a thinking machine (in this case a drawing machine), which - paradoxically - is so abundantly used by mathematically and electronically minded artists. (...) We observe the openness and dynamism of the compositional schemes, a high degree of \'improbable organization\' that grows out of a critical tension with \'entropy\' (disorder) and not with \'redundancy\' (order). Therefore, we would say that Žiljak draws extremely freely on the computer, and is not trapped (essentially) by age-old (\'redundant\') categories of measure, order, number, which in computer practice most often result in the worst ornamentalism. Here lies its basic specificity. He is a practitioner of computer Informel.¹⁷

On the following page of the catalogue, the author too publishes a text, beginning with the instruction:

Looking at a picture created with the use of a computer one should forget about its machine origin and any connection it has with the machine. Rather one should observe the legitimacy of its origin, that is, the internal justification of the results. ... My drawings made by hand came into being as the result of the wish to experience control of the stroke, to equating the line drawn by hand and that generated with the possibilities of mathematical language, i.e., a programme that will simulate strokes, vibrations, turns, jerks, soft lines, series of controlled and series of uncontrolled strokes, drunken lines, weary and heavy lines, harmonious strokes, big and little, disharmony in small and harmony in big.¹⁸

He went on with the series Simulation of transition and showed the 55 works created in 1976 and 1977 in the Nova Gallery in Zagreb in 1978. The works were in colour, sized 24 x 35 and 9 x 9 cm. In the catalogue, the author wrote again about his work, discussing he relations of science, contemporary art, the computer and its possible use:

Contemporary science is as if with its biggest triumphs denying belief in the possibility of a full and objective knowledge of reality. It demonstrates that human knowledge, which is being enlarged day by day, is increasingly revealing new areas of nescience, new areas of reality, and is increasingly strengthening the belief in infinity, of both reality and of the process of cognition that aspires to know.¹⁹

He opposed to the functional application of the computer the non-functional and aesthetic, which has the advantage precisely of its purpose not being defined... which makes it free... encourages and drives us to explore, to push back ever further the borders of the known possibilities of the computer²⁰ The aesthetic employment of the computer "is almost an obligation, for it can the best and the most fully ensure an investigative attitude to the computer."²¹

On his first personal computer, an Apple II, which he owned from 1979, he was able to look at the results of the work on a TV screen or to record directly on a VHS (analogue) video recorder.²² He shot computer graphics from the screen onto slides as well, which he would later present in series as a slide show. This was the case at the international group exhibition Computer Animation in the Nova Gallery in Zagreb, organised by Tomislav Mikulić.²³ From 1981 to 1983 he worked with TVZ to produce some twenty TV broadcasts about information science, for which he wrote the script himself. Some of the titles or themes of the shows were: Simulation (1982), Drawing by computer (1982) Electronic computers (1982), Data media, mass memory (1983), Programming (1983) Computer networks (1983) and Computer games (1983). He also presented his own artistic digital animations and computer music which he composed "in two parts for two computers applying stochastic principles that he had developed in the area of mathematical modelling and graphics as well."²⁴

The only monograph to date to have been published about early digital art in Croatia is Dora Kinert's Vilko Žiljak: Computer graphics of 1996.²⁵ This richly illustrated large-format monograph has an extensive essay by Dora Kinert and scans of selected pages of exhibition catalogues and periodicals.

Žiljak made numerous technical innovations and with his associates he has won more than a hundred prizes and awards. He introduced a new variable for measurement of the absorption of light at 1000 nm.²⁶ He applied his knowledge of the infrared spectrum to art and design, which he calls INFRAREDART and INFRAREDDESIGN. He teaches infrared painting to artists in Sveti Ivan Zelina Gallery, which he founded in 1994 in the small town of Sv. Ivan Zelina. Žiljak says about these activities:

Computer graphics are the basis of dual programming for visual and near infrared light. InfraRed graphic art is graphic art with hidden images. An area of personal visual expression is opening up, the representation of graphics beyond the scope of our naked eye. We are surrounded by video surveillance abetted by the most varied computer techniques. New visual researches join two light areas that are shown in parallel: they are either mutually dependent or completely separate.²⁷

Today, Žiljak's message about computer programming and computer graphics goes:

So far I have lectured about 14 different languages. One of the first tasks for my students is: Develop your own personal language on the basis of PostScript, your own graphic tool for the creation of your own computer graphics. After being at first taken aback, in half an hour all the students understand the creation of a personal structure of commands for the visual presentation of new graphics. I recall that I made such a suggestion at the symposium Rational and Irrational in Visual Research Today, part of the exhibition tendencies 5 in 1973 in Zagreb, but nobody understood me. To round off, the development of your own language for computer graphics is an essential job if you want to create a personal and original oeuvre of entirely new artworks with the computer.... I still today deal with innovations of algorithms with which I do not just develop new visualisations, but a new approach to mathematical modelling in visual art.²⁸