WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA.- Denenberg Gallery is presenting the debut exhibition of beautiful, contemplative videos and color prints by Los Angeles artist Tony Gerber. The exhibition will continue through December 2024.

Artist’s Statement: The work is based on algorithmic inference and computer programming, and is in a sense a fulfillment of a lifelong ambition to fully combine a background in science and engineering from my early days of research in machine learning, today called AI, and a lifelong passion for art.

On July 25, 2024, I sat down to conduct an interview with Anthony Gerber in his “command central” computer studio, surrounded by stacked flatscreens on imposing high-tech mounts, some freestanding and some coming off the wall. There are up to 9 screens, each showing as many as ten videos, each 3-6 minutes long, in a continuous and repeating sequence. A computer operating system is set up to view as many as 90-100 of his works over the course of an hour or so. Within the screen’s frame, swirling, organic shapes of brilliant color moved elegantly, silently in space, as if choreographed to an imaginary soundtrack. Meanwhile, the computers in the studio were working overtime, rendering new work as we conversed.

Gerber is preparing for his first solo exhibition titled Art and Science Embrace at Denenberg Fine Arts in West Hollywood, opening on September 28th. We had been introduced by Stuart and Beverly Denenberg, the gallery owners. This exhibition of moving image artworks is a first for the gallery and because of my background in Video Art they wanted me to meet the artist and see his work in situ. It is no surprise that Dr. Gerber, who goes by “Tony,” has a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of London, King’s College, and has long held a fascination with art and technology. He was an early contributor to the development of AI--which he insists should stand for “Algorithmic Inference” rather than Artificial Intelligence (he prefers to call it machine learning.) He was an innovator and principal of a computer technology company in Silicon Valley but has dedicated himself to creating art and sharing it.


“MARRIAGE,“ 2024. High resolution color print, edition 5, 26 x 26 inches


Donning white gloves with the careful handling of an art professional, Tony’s wife Linda pulled from the flat file a few colorful computer prints that the artist himself had recently printed. She too is an artist; her sculptures are displayed throughout the loft-like living space among plants, furniture, and their personal art collection. The fragrant smell of roses cut from elevated garden beds the couple co-designed were in vases, providing a delightful olfactory ambiance.

After an art tour and acknowledgment of our shared interests, Tony gifted me a copy of Paradigms in Computing, co-authored by his son Dr. David Gerber, an architect and professor at USC where he leads a research lab on innovations at the intersection of design with computation and technology. The interest in art and design runs deep within the Gerber family.

Sensing a certain hesitancy on Tony’s part to talk about the conceptual underpinnings of his art, yet at ease discussing the technological processes in which he works, I suggested that we talk about technology as we would any other subject, with the intention of making it more accessible and less daunting to a general art viewing public.

CAK: At the time of this interview, different terms are used for artworks that are produced or created algorithmically. And “Video Art” is a default term, but yours is a very different presentation and process that doesn’t encompass the complexity and engineering you use to create these videos. What term do you use to define your work? Is it Algorithmic art? Is it New Media art? Is it Digital art? How would you describe it?

AG: Well, it's certainly Digital Art. It's not based on anything other than the ability to process things on digital computers. It's certainly fundamentally mathematics and, therefore, algorithmic. One advantage is that I have a good understanding of related mathematics and the ability to select useful parametric values that provide avenues for exploration.

And then a further ability, I think, is to construct graphical programs that are embedded in off-the-shelf software, such as Bifrost in MAYA. This adds another layer of potential inventiveness or challenge, if you will, to make complex--but artistic--creations. It stimulates the creative process and provides an avenue for manipulating mathematics leading to results that are sometimes surprisingly better than one’s original thoughts. So the advantage of digital media is that once you fully understand the parametric issues it allows a broader expansion of your abilities than you might think.

CAK: Would you say that software is your creative tool?

AG: Let me take you back a bit. Over a decade ago or more, before there were comprehensive off-the-shelf packages by various companies like Adobe, Microsoft, and Autodesk, we had limited capability to be creative with standalone software. One couldn't reproduce, for example, the behavior of gases and liquids or fire. While the mathematical basis was understood, software capable of dynamic simulation had not been developed. Since then, companies such as Autodesk have filled that need with the development of powerful and embedded programming methods; I use Bifrost. Moreover, powerful GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) were generally not available for a reasonable price ten or fifteen years ago.

Currently, computational ability as it relates to hardware provides huge increases in processing efficiency. The rendering times, instead of being weeks, can be…minutes or seconds. In addition, there have been phenomenal increases in computer CPU processing power. Modern renderers provide capabilities like “ray tracing” (a method of graphical rendering that simulates the physical behavior of rays of light as they strike model surfaces.) I would say yes, software is a big part--it's the key--to almost all of the artwork produced.

CAK: The term ‘rendering’ is used differently when using a machine rather than making a drawing by hand, right?

AG: I find expressing myself without a pencil in my hand to be very expanding. Designing the model for a video is like a pencil or paintbrush, but it takes advantage of modern ways of expressing creativity to establish forms, albeit not on paper. Producing an art video is the creation of a moving sequence of still image frames, usually thousands of them. Unlike hand-drawn images, for example, in the production of early Disney cartoons, the computer will make the changes and produce frames, provided, of course, you instruct the program correctly.

Lots of digitally produced frames are played in sequence; and so a one-minute-long video at thirty frames per second will require 1,800 frames to be free of flicker. Depending on the complexity of an image, it might take a second or several minutes to produce a single finished frame. This is done with one of several different renderers. I have a couple of them, but I prefer “Arnold,” named after Arnold Schwarzenegger (!) It is a powerful renderer developed by Autodesk either as a standalone or integrated into Maya. The rendered frames are stitched together to form a video in a separate process requiring a compositing program. This results in the modern equivalent of a flip book where you would see the image move by watching as pages are turned rapidly from one to the next.


Black and White No. 2, 2024. High resolution color print, edition 5. 28 ½ x 20 ½ inches.


CAK: You have mentioned modern artists such as Brancusi, Klimt, Bacon, and Schiele, among others, as influences. I see a stronger affinity with the cross-media artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He's one of the most versatile artists of the 20th century, the first to work in multimedia, photography, film, painting, and design¬. He made the very first motorized kinetic sculpture. His work redefined the way we look at art because his shapes and forms established a way of seeing three-dimensionally, with moving shapes and forms, creating a different interaction with the art object.

The artists you mentioned as influences create art that is very emotive and figurative. There's a lot of passion and a lot of pain in their art. I would say, for the most part, your work is very meditative without, in my opinion, that kind of emotive quality. It is more calming, meditative. Do you agree?

AG: Well, I do. In fact, most of the work is contemplative. It is not intended to chronicle major issues of our times except to show where some aspects of technological development have taken us. It's intended to be a calming and reflective form of visual stimulation without the viewer hampered or enamored by the mathematical complexity within.

CAK: How else do you envision the gallery viewer interacting with your work?

AG: That's a very good question. Perhaps we would have to segment it down to those who have experience with technology and those who don't. Both scale and resolution have an impact on perception. I work on an accessible, even intimate scale with high resolution on newer displays so that one can live with work installed in a home or office. I avoid the grand scale mindful that I want the digital content to be my primary contribution, not the spectacle of huge display media.

CAK: In addition to the technical, you’re thinking about space, light, and the different ways that a shape moves within a frame.

AG: Well, I'm viewing objects in motion in three dimensions in my mind’s eye for the most part, although I have produced many two-dimensional works. The digital works themselves are in fact are two-dimensional since they are shown on flatscreen displays—however they are viewed as three-dimensional. I even see the potential for the development of sculptures created from selected frames.

My work is somewhat arbitrary, abstract, and, to some extent, experimental. I get bored quickly doing the same thing over and over. As with any creative tool, you must be willing to take chances with what you do; some content will turn out good, some bad—there’s a lot of wastage.

CAK: When you say some are good and some are bad, how do you make that determination?

AG: How it appeals to me when I'm done. It’s totally subjective and personal.

CAK: And intuitive. So how do you see the symbiotic relationship between the machine and your concepts?

AG: It's the only media that I feel comfortable working in because I can produce enough work in a reasonable time frame to express whatever I might randomly feel at that time and whatever I might like to project. If I were to use a pencil I could not produce as much and it wouldn’t be stimulating; it doesn't create the degree of randomness and surprise as does playing with parametric mathematical forms. It’s just the best medium for me.

CAK: Well, as you know artists have been developing and using theories of mathematics and science in their art for centuries, such as the Golden Triangle. What would you say you bring to it?

AG: This is a difficult question to answer. I bring a uniqueness of form that you won't see anywhere else, a very good sense of color, brilliant color at times, and the computer allows for infinite combinations. Also, I can produce a lot of work in a decently quick time, which is a matter of efficiency, so I generate a lot of ideas, a few of which hit to my satisfaction. That's about all I can say.

CAK: Is there “authenticity” in artwork that is written in code using algorithmic geometry and computational power?

AG: I don't know how you define authenticity--I think everything is authentic. One could say “if you can’t measure it, it ain’t real, its faith.” It’s our sensors which are the rather limited set of organic measurement devices we humans have developed, (eyes, ears, etc.) that make it a perception of reality.

CAK: Early on, people working creatively with computers would say it is authentic because the computer is constantly refreshing itself. Each moment is authentic, and you are emphasizing the fact that time is an important factor. It's not exactly a matter of ‘classical’ authenticity—it must take into account the time in which the work of art exists.

AG: It's a subjective question whether there is a contribution regarding authenticity that people can agree on.

CAK: In the past, authenticity had to be proven. Now, it's much more liquid.

AG: It's definitely gaseous. Arthur Danto’s book The State of the Art theorizes that “ART” as we have known it is essentially dead, replaced by many opportunities in many media, from the simplest magazine advertising to the 2.3 billion-dollar Las Vegas Sphere! Not very long-ago photography wasn’t considered an art form by “connoisseurs”.

It's all as real as we perceive it to be; who's to say it is not art? That's where I have a problem with some of the critics who write about art. Their predisposition is for the “historical” basis of art, but I don't know if the historical basis is how one must look at it.

CAK: Laurie Anderson, the performance artist, says “now everybody's a media artist.”
AG: It is true to some extent. Let's start from that NOW. Here we are.

C.A. Klonarides is internationally known for her pioneering work in video art as a curator, educator, producer, and writer. Her 50-year career, first in New York City and since 1991 in Los Angeles, produced early exhibitions of such artists as Gary Hill, Pierre Huyghe, Diana Thater, and Jennifer Steinkamp. She was Curator of Programming at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and Media Arts Curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art (LBMA), known for its early support and outstanding collection of video art. Klonarides served as the main consultant for the LBMA video collection when acquired by the Getty Research Institute and she conducted taped interviews of seminal video artists for the GRI archive. Since 2012, Klonarides has worked with artists as a career strategist, and as an independent curator. She currently teaches at Art Center College of Art and Design in Pasadena, CA.