Bill Urmenyi Ltd.
Reviews
KINETIC ART ORGANISATION
This time we focus on a most useful tool for Kinetic Artists; KAO member Bill Urmenyi's CD "Electronics For Artists" available for 35 British Pounds at www.urmenyi.co.uk. This CD is truly a labor of love with over 400 pages chock-full with photos, animated graphics and schematics. It serves as an excellent introduction into mathematical concepts, all types of electronic components, etc, but most importantly, a truly useful "How To" approach, that will get your electronic design up and running with minimum sweat and frustration.
It is presented in Acrobat PDF format, which makes it a great research tool and library as well. All you do is hit the CTRL-F keys on IBM compatibles (or click on Find under the Edit menu) and you can type in your search word, for example RESISTOR. Then you will immediately see all the concise info about Resistors, their color codes, etc., including any associated pictures and animated graphics.
For anyone who wants to use electronic and electric components in their art, I highly recommend this CD which is a great value at on 35 British Pound.
The only suggestion for improvements would be to include a Chapter and Topic Index in the front of the CD.
KAO RATING: Excellent - 4.5 out of 5 Stars
Review by Ralf Gschwend
Please note that the Chapter index is by way of the 'bookmark' facility of Acrobat and that the topic index is at the beginning of the last chapter and can therefore be accessed by clicking on the bookmark. Clicking on the topic takes you straight to the topic.
FineArtForum
Please visit http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_15/faf_v15_n12/text/review03.html
for a comprehensive review by Glen Wetherall
Please note that there is a word/phrase search facility, so if you have forgotten the meaning, you can quickly find the explanation.
ARLIS UK & Ireland news-sheet Sept./Oct. 2001
by Nikki Phillips. Copies are available price £3- from sfrench@arlis.demon.co.uk ARLIS is the Art Libraries Society.
The review is good, intelligent and fair. I would however make two comments.
There is a bookmark facility in acrobat which enables a single mouse click to take you directly to the beginning of any chapter and you do not have to scroll through 400 pages to get to the index, it is just a click away.
I take the valid point that some/many readers would like to have some reference to the work of kinetic and interactive artists. However I am trying to enable the artist to think beyond the past and only want to show and to facilitate what is available technically to add to the artist's language/repertoire.
Bill Urmenyi
I am expecting some more reviews later.