Rhythmograms

Heinrich Heidersberger’s rhythmograms explore the language of abstract formal structure in photography, with an intersection between geometry, technology, and perception. During the 1950s and 1960s, Heinrich Heidersberger created complex patterns that captured the invisible and fleeting of time and movement in singular image fields.

Almost like an orchestra in motion that composes and traces the light onto the photographic plate through time and space. Heinrich Heidersberger developed a completely analog media art from this approach, which could hardly be created with digital means. The works seem part photography, parts sculpture, and parts architecture; they evoke a concrete sensibility that is both sensual and mathematical.

The aesthetics of the rhythmograms are similar to the generative computer art of the Stuttgart School or artists like Herbert W. Franke and Manfred Mohr programmed generative processes with early mainframe computers.