Sylvia Roubaud is a graphic designer and artist who had a short experimental phase in computer art of the algorithmic kind in 1971/72. She has later repeatedly exhibited the graphic works from that time.
Roubaud was the only artist member of the group MBB Computer Graphics founded in 1971 by her (later) husband Winfried Fischer as an internal working group at the German aerospace company Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) in Ottobrunn near Munich. The other four members of the group were engineers, programmers, or mathematicians (Frank Böttger, Aron Warszawski, Gerold Weiss, Rolf Wölk). The group was dissolved in 1972, which year also marks the end of Roubaud’s and the others’ active engagement with digital art.
The mathematician, Gerold Weiss, developed the software for Roubaud’s drawing according to her sketches and descriptions. A genuine interdisciplinary cooperation existed between the two.
In 1971, Winfried Fischer, head of MBB’s Press and Cultural Department, started a project to bring established German artists in touch with engineers and programmers at MBB. He invited the artists to probe potentials of computers for fine art generation (MBB was willing to provide hardware and human expertise for the experiment). The goal was an exhibition of works resulting from the experiment. In the end, however, Roubaud was the only artist who took part, whereas the other members of the MBB group figured as the technicians. They contributed their own works without artists’ collaboration. A selection from the works was produced as screen prints. Roubaud’s work was well represented in the collection. A precious coffee table book documents the group’s efforts (Johann Willsberger: Computer Graphics 1972).
Results of the group’s work were exhibited internally at MBB in 1972. This exhibition became a large part of the tendencies 5 event in Zagreb in 1973.
Former gallery owner, Heike Werner in Munich, keeps a website on computer art with a large number of the works by Roubaud & Weiss realized in this context.
Roubaud lives and works as an abstract painter in Munich and in Italy. Her painterly work may best be grouped into abstract expressionism.
