Roger Coqart got the opportunity to employ the computer selectively in the generation of computer graphics in the mid 70’s during his tenure as a technician at the Free University Brussels. His Computer Graphics were based on square grids, subdivided further by diagonals and bisecting lines.
In many images, Coqart employed “weighted chance”, the graphic structure became more or less concentrated into configurations with arbitrary or “specific symbolic significance”. He transferred some computer graphics manually onto canvas, hardboard or Perspex – “a welcome distantiation in opposition to the machine” but he reproduced most of them using photography. Coqart views this medium as an effective supplement “and that is because photography tends to simplify visual perception, whereas during the design of computer graphics, one is compelled to lay down creative inspiration in programmes.” (Quoted from Franke 1978, p. 457) 5 In the 1980s, he combined photographs and computer drawings to create large-format diptychs. Coqart is a member of the artistic council of the Gesellschaft fur Computergrafik und Computerkunst e.v., which was founded in Munich in 1978, he has been a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp.He lives and works in Brussels (Belgium).
