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By Stewart Dickson

The following is the fourth incarnation of "uniman", begun in 1978 at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Delaware. The first incarnation produced a pen plotter drawing, from a program in C Language. The work was inspired by the Carl Sagan/Linda Saltzman Sagan Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques.

Carl Sagan/Linda Saltzman Sagan Pioneer plaque

My wish was to express our primitive nature which persists despite our technology. The piece has seemed to survive to depict our journey through information space, communication space and cyberspace as well.

The second incarnation of the work was in 1983 at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, Illinois. At this time it was written in FORTRAN and was output to a STARE electrostatic paper plotter and to 35mm high-resolution microfilm using the Information International, Inc. Comp80 printer. At this time, the image was combined via Xerography into a postcard format with text comprising a digitally encoded message and key for decoding the message. The return address was in my own version of UPC bar code. A signed, numbered edition of 500 was mass-mailed at this time and became part of the Quarterly Journal of the International Society of Copier Artists (ISCA) (Vol. 3, no. 2, Winter, 1984).

ISCA Quarterly Winter, 1984 Cover ISCA Quarterly Winter, 1984 Title Page UNIMAN Postcard, ISCA Quarterly Winter, 1984 Back UNIMAN Postcard, ISCA Quarterly Winter, 1984 Front

In 1984 the program was translated into PL/I and a proposal was made to execute the drawing using the Remote Laser Stone Carving project of Joe Davis, Fellow of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

The third version was written in C-language again and produced PostScript output, which prints with reasonable quality on my LaserWriter II/NTX. I hope applications such as Abode Illustrator, FrameMaker, and various Display PostScript tools may be able to read it. I have not verified this.

The present program also produces Wavefront Technologies ".obj" ASCII object description language and I am working on an HPGL version and one which can be executed on a Numerically-Controlled machine.

The UNIHOM figures were modeled in 3D and printed in plastic at Shapeways.com

UNIMAN 3D Shapeways Preview UNIWOM 3D Shapeways Preview West End Collectibles Glass Planets UNIWOM 3D Shapeways Preview

Questions and comments are welcome. 

Stewart Dickson                                                 (707)813-0385
110 N. Whipple St. 
Fort Bragg, CA  95437                               MathArtSPD@gmail.com