Bogdan Soban was born in Vrtojba in Slovenia on 10th December 1949. After graduating from grammar school in Nova Gorica, He registered at the Faculty of mechanical engineering in Ljubljana and gained degree in 1974. It was in the faculty preparing he diploma that he came into contact with a computer and data processing for the first time. It was the time of punched cards and remote batch terminals. That was a turning point in his life and he entered in the world of computers leaving forever a field of mechanical engineering.

His firs job was in the domain of information science. In his informational technologies career in several companies in Slovenia he was engaged in developing and programming commercial and business applications. Actually, he work on the field of e-commerce in the Research and Development department of the Slovenian biggest casino company.All those years being in contact with computer programming never disappear from his mind the crazy idea that a computer can do more than simply data processing. He had in mention the possibility to simulate the human creativity especially in the area of visual art. This challenge caused the development of a very interesting project that was his favourite occupation more than 15 years on his free time.......

He developed a lot of programs using generative approach to generate always new and unpredictable pieces of visual art. Each artwork created using his genetic designed software is an absolute unique item and could be lost forever if not saved or printed. Often he used to organize exhibitions and live presentation, to publish articles and papers with the intention to propagate the basic idea of generative art method......x

Art Work :


















Artist Statement :

The main purpose of my project is to create pictures – artworks on the screen of the computer, to choose interesting and aesthetic examples and save or print them. Pictures are created using my own genetic designed software without applying any existing program of graphic design available in the world. At the beginning I used GWBASIC programming language but later I began to apply VISUAL BASIC. The method I use is known as “Generative Art”. Each picture created in this way is an absolute unique item, it was never be seen before and will never be repeated in future. Practically it exist the real infinite number of possibilities. Using the very simple example composed of three colored squares (16 colors of background, 16 colors of square, 100 different dimension of squares and 135.000 possible position of each square on the screen) it needs more than 80 billions years to see all possible combination creating one per second. It is nonsense to calculate the number of possibilities for a little more complex picture. For the human understanding it means infinite and so the unexpected result of the generative process could be a creation. To realize unpredictable pictures I use random number generator calculating seed out of starting time value of the generative process. Theoretical could be possible to anticipate the image but not knowing the precise starting moment is quite impossible. The other very important method of my approach is not to interfere with running program. During the creation of the image any communication with the program is impossible. It is absolutely free to create the picture. I also never change or elaborate generated image and if I don’t like it I leave it to be lost. And finally I never print the artwork more than once so I guarantee unique item with no copies.Developing my programs I use pragmatic or mathematic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed with different influences on the level of unpredictability of results. In the area of artificial design the pragmatic code type are used because we have to know the object we want to create, unpredictable is only its variant. Mathematic instructions are much more appropriated for creating art where we don’t need to have the least idea of the final result. Examining closely mathematic type of programs I discovered that until the program is alive the image exist in an immense 2D space because all mathematic expressions have definite values for all values of x and y in Cartesian coordinate system. I arranged one program that makes me possible to “walk” up and down, left and right and discover how the image looks on different distances from the starting-point of the coordinate system. No canvas or screen limits any more, such an image exist in universe. Important is to apply right mathematic expressions that can create interesting shapes far from the point (0,0).