Artist: Earl Einhorn

Earl Einhorn started programming in Fortran in 1968 as the Master Actuarial Programmer for Equitable Life. His educaton was in Electrical Engineering at CCNY but he ended up in Mathematics. “My love was always for art and I hoped I could produce work that no one has ever seen,” says Einhorn. “I started early, writing Fortran with the Calcomp Pen plotter, creating schematic drawings in color in 1974.”

Einhorn continued writing Fortran for an actuarial consulting firm and used a teletype connected by a modem to a mainframe computer--this was called time sharing. He got into art in 2001 when he retired. He employs a fast computer with 4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz of memory and a 10,000 RPM Hard Disk. The speed of the machine is 3.2 GHz over-clocked with an 8MB cache. The video card is a dual 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800. The monitor is 30 inches with a resolution of 2560x1600.

Einhorn says his work is designed to be printed, and he uses special techniques to achieve a picture resolution of roughly 12,000x8000. When printed on his Epson wide-format printer, “the work looks like an oil painting when printed on canvas and stretched,” he says. “I write my own programs and do not use self-generating algorithems (Fractal,Chaos, etc.). I write color information to each pixel using 256 shades of RGB. Therefore, I use about 16.7 million colors (256x256x256). I believe I am the only one that can produce what I am doing. I also use Adobe Photoshop to change colors, size, and put together pieces of programmed art.”

Einhorn considers himself an artist, not just a computer artist, he says. “Even if someone has the skill, the actual picture must be created and be beautiful. I used my own techniques and style, and the work is quite unique. I have great expectations.”

Earl Einhorn can be contacted by e-mail at earleinhorn@aol.com.