Jean-Pierre Hébert
Back to the Mac
An image from the Hubble telescope of the most distant observed galaxies is interpreted by Hébert's software to create a network of lines on a large-format digital inkjet printer. (Original about 24 inches across.) © Jean-Pierre Hébert
When Apple introduced Mac OS X, with its Unix underpinnings, Hébert decided it was time to take a new look at the Mac. "Around 2000 or 2001," he says, "I came back to the Mac. My first one was a G3 Power Mac—one of those big towers with the blue face. I got it as soon as I heard about it, and I've been using them ever since." These days, he deploys an arsenal of three Macs to create his work: a 17-inch PowerBook, a 17-inch MacBook Pro, and a 24-inch iMac.
For his piece entitled "Deep Field Lensing," for example, Hébert took inspiration from images of distant galaxies acquired by the Hubble telescope. His idea was to generate a pattern of lines that would be shaped by the "deep field" gravitational field and colored by its light, as recorded in the Hubble picture.
To realize the piece, he started in the TextMate text editor on his 24-inch iMac. Using PIL (Python Imaging Library) and the Apple CoreGraphics library, he wrote a script in Python that started with intersecting networks of parallel lines, with a touch of randomness added. The program read the pixel values from the Hubble photo, mapped them over the network of lines, perturbed the line geometry, and added color accordingly. The resulting color image was recorded as a resolution-independent PDF, while a black-and-white version was saved as HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language) for use with plotters or other hardware. Finally, he opened the PDF in Preview and printed it on a large-format Epson printer.
One new challenge Hébert encountered when he adopted the Mac was getting the computer to connect with whatever tool he was using to trace patterns. "Before I used the Mac, I would connect the computer to the machine using an RS232 serial cable," he notes. But Macs had lost their serial ports by the advent of Mac OS X, so Hébert had to find other connections. For a while, he worked through an old serial hub that he connected with the Mac via Ethernet. "It took a while for someone to come out with a reliable USB-to-serial connector," he recalls, "but that was resolved three or four years ago."
Depending upon the tool he’s using, he still occasionally tinkers with these connections: "Sometimes I need to install a manufacturer driver for the USB-to-serial cable, and sometimes I just write the whole driver myself—for instance, to drive a computer-controlled motor."
Capturing the Artwork
In addition to the Macs he uses to create his artwork, Hébert relies on two Mac minis for art installations. In these gallery configurations, the Mac is connected to a tool that runs a series of Hébert's algorithms, creating two to three hundred different pieces during the run of the show. And at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (see sidebar), he runs a permanent show of images on a Power Mac connected to two 30-inch wall-mounted displays.
Hébert also uses the Mac to keep a record of his art. "To document my work, I use iWork '08, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Creative Suite, with Roxio Toast to burn DVDs,” he says. “I make videos by mounting a camera over the machine that's creating the image—sometimes I use a video camera, sometimes a still camera taking time-lapse images—and edit the results with iMovie and Final Cut Pro. For a show in Helsinki, I put up a webcam, and the computer creating the piece was connected to the Internet. I was able to watch and record the creation from my studio in Santa Barbara."
"Mac OS X is a very good environment for me to work in. It offers the best of all possible worlds."
Using a Mac enables Hébert to describe his work as well as create and document it. He often delivers presentations about this work to classes, museum curators, and other art-loving audiences. "I use Keynote quite a lot, actually," he says. "Every time I'm asked to make a presentation. With Keynote I can create a very dynamic presentation of a static, ready-made piece, and give it life and interest."
The ability to create, deliver, document, and present his work—all with the same machine—only intensifies Hébert's appreciation of Mac hardware and software. "The Mac offers a complete set of services that I could not really have before,” he says. “Besides the tools to actually create the work, I have all the other software available to show it to the outside world—Photoshop, QuickTime, and so on. Before, I could create my work, but I could not distribute it. The appeal of the Mac is that it puts everything I need under the same roof."
Hébert also appreciates the Mac's aesthetic qualities—an important point for someone whose work combines visual creativity with elegant code and efficient control mechanisms. "The aesthetics of both the hardware and the interface of the Mac make it a pleasure to work with as an artist!” he says.