400 identically formed soldiers coded in red and black diminish into a vertical ground plane. Two lists of serial numbers and names, one for each army, stretch across the top. The lists indicate which soldiers have died, which were wounded, which remain missing, and which survive.
One hero is recognised on each side and is listed above the medals awarded for valour, good conduct and efficiency.
Csuri served with the U.S. army in Europe during World War II and witnessed first-hand the insanity and absurdity of war, where fate is a matter of circumstance and luck. To reflect this fact, Csuri uses an iconic little green toy soldier to represent the individuals in Random War.
He captures the chaos of the battlefield by using a random number generator to place the forms on coordinates and to rotate the bodies in two-dimensional space. The names of the soldiers are all real people and include Csuri himself, whom the generator assigned to the list of the wounded.
Charles Csuri began attending The Ohio State University (OSU) in the early 1940s and, after serving as a combat soldier in Europe in World War II, returned to OSU to complete his BORNF. A. and M.A. degrees in art in 1947 and 1948, respectively.
As an art professor and oil painter, Csuri taught art at OSU for 18 years and showed professionally in New York between 1955 and 1965. In 1963, Csuri began creating art with computers, thus commencing his life-long exploration of the play between form and abstraction, the relationship between texture and movement, and the creative and expressive possibilities of randomness and chance. His computer art began receiving international recognition in the 1960s, including numerous computer art awards.
In 1967 Brussel’s 4th International Experimental Film Festival awarded him the prize for animation for his film Hummingbird, which the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York purchased for their permanent collection. His work was highlighted at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition, held in 1968 at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). Csuri’s art is represented in museums and over 75 private collections worldwide, including those of Walter P. Chrysler, Jose Ferrer, Roy Lichtenstein, and George Segal. His art is referenced in dozens of books and magazines.
He has been referred to as the ’father of digital art and computer animation’ by Smithsonian Magazine (February 1995), and in August 2006, Csuri’s computer art career was honoured by AMC-SIGGRAPH through an extensive retrospective of his work, Charles A. Csuri: Beyond Boundaries, 1963 – present. The exhibition is scheduling to show in Asia, Europe, and the United States beginning in 2008.
