Daniel Pirofsky, born in Portland, Oregon, USA, in 1957, has studied philosophy at Reed College; apprenticed with poets Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Philip Whalen; written several small books of poetry and philosophy; lived in Mexico City and Hiroshima; completed a degree in Buddhist studies at Naropa Institute; studies and practices with the Tibetan meditation master Lama Sogyal Rinpoche; and currently works in the area of Macintosh color and printing technologies. He is also developing a system to effectively publish Tibetan texts and study materials in the original script and in translation with Macintosh computers.

Through my in-depth explorations in the early eighties of holoscopic narrative and recursively self-referential language, an area now popularly but ambiguously known as "hypertext", I originally entered the realm of Macintosh computing in order to extend the possibilities of liberating mind from the heavy conditioning imposed by the word. I envisioned a mandalaic fiction-computer capable of generating textual arrangements designed to focus or tune the reader into states of energy more fundamental than the simulated reality of linguistic conventions. Unknowingly and with great pleasure I have been lead through many turns and pathways away and around my original intent, primarily through the seduction of the graphical interface. Thus entranced by digital imagery and the transmission of light through a thought-screen, I have explored 2-dimensional media with an eye for process, using the juxtaposition of formal procedures and chance to elicit novelty. Current exploration appears to deepen this work into 3-dimensional and temporal considerations, which in turn appear to suggest the imminent opportunity to design and implement holoscopic simulations for human interaction. My intention throughout the abstract, linguistic, visual and temporal media is to return mundane and entrapped conceptioning to its pristine, inherently energetic and spontaneous activity.

This image was created using GraphistPaint II Color and PixelPaint Professional software on a Macintosh II with 5 megabytes of RAM and an 8-bit color display.

I have chosen to image my work with film, using the Agfa Matrix film recorder. Positives are then used to print Cibachromes of varying size and resolution. I regard the positive as the original work or as first-generation from the original light-image.

Technical Background

HW: Macintosh II
SW: Pixelpaint Professional