Digital by Nature

It took me almost two months but here I am, on the eve of a stressful (to prepare for) Easter road trip that will bring us through Switzerland, Austria, stopping in Piemonte in Italy, then on to Provence, and finally a couple of nights on Lake Annecy, that I should be getting ready for (and that would also likely lead to some nice Blog Moments but will sadly in all likelihood never have its highlights featured on GWMD because who has time for anything these days), writing the long-awaited Miguel Chevalier blog on the exhibition Digital by Nature that took place at the Munich Kunsthalle from September 12th, 2025 to March 1st, 2026 and which we visited at the beginning of February this year.

But first: when Pemulis was a much younger man he spent some time in the early part of the millennium hanging out in the North of England with some shady Brazilians who were big fans of Jorge Ben Jor and his classical Brazilian anthem País Tropical. One of said Brazilians was such a fan that he went to the trouble of translating the lyrics (pre Google Translate, pre ChatGPT) into English. We sang that song so many times that to this day I remember the whole introduction (the English version that my friend translated):

I live in a tropical country blessed by God

And beautiful by nature, I'll tell you what

In February (in February)

There is Carnival (there is Carnival) 

At Carnival I have a car and a guitar

I am Flamengo

And my girl is called Tereza

When Jorge Ben Jor talks about his car and guitar in the original Portuguese he literally says that he has a VW Beetle but I guess Gustavo (the modern translator of Leeds fame) decided that "car" and "guitar" rhyming worked nicer.

Now why this digression you ask? Well only because the line "And beautiful by nature" now keeps popping into my head thanks to this "Digital by nature" exhibition. And isn't it a strange coincidence that I will be (as long as I don't just completely shutdown out of exhaustion from this year and its relentless ways any day now) back in Brazil in just three weeks time? Strange days these are.

But back to the topic at hand: digital art. For those who aren't familiar, Miguel Chevalier is a digital artist who is fairly well established as one of the pioneers of digital art. He has been making art with computers since the 1970s! The show was cool and very kid-friendly. One personal highlight was an Amiga 1000 on display with an explanation that it was the first computer that Chevalier was able to use at his home as previously he would rent time on university computers in the late 70s and early 80s.

The show features many "static" pieces but also interactive displays where you could be part of the art and one highlight for the kids especially was a generative 3D flower art program that the artist developed that allowed anyone to choose from several building blocks on a computer including style of petal, style of leaf, style of stem, etc., and then modify the shape in different ways, the colours, etc., allowing for many thousands of different possible flowers. Once you were happy with how it looked, you submitted it and then later you would see it magically "grow" in the digital greenhouse that you visited afterwards. Good times.