"ZGRASS Opens New Vistas for Computer Artists"
By David Needle
"InfoWorld," April 5, 1982: 25-26.


Computer artists working in areas such as animation and video synthesis have 
usually had to negotiate access to expensive ($80,000-plus) mini- and mainframe 
computer systems. Now the creator of a high-level graphics language called 
ZGRASS says he's developed a far less expensive system that costs about $11,000 
and is more interactive than the equipment video artists are used to dealing 
with.

ZGRASS was developed by Professor Thomas De Fanti of the information 
engineering department of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Much of 
the groundwork for ZGRASS had been done previously in another graphics language 
De Fanti developed called GRASS (Graphics Symbiosis System). GRASS was designed 
to run on the university's PDP-11/45 minicomputer.

"ZGRASS falls somewhere between Pascal, Smalltalk, Lisp and BASIC. I've tried 
to take the best features of each one," explained De Fanti. "You don't have to 
deal with storage allocation because one third of the code is directly related 
to graphics. You can just say circle and you have one; you don't need an 
algorithm."

Words probably don't do the ZGRASS system justice; it is a visual and 
"nonstatic" medium. Describing the ineffable is a problem De Fanti is used to 
dealing with. "I've devoted my career to doing things you can't do in print--
then I always get asked to describe my work," he said.

ZGRASS runs only on the UV-1 computer system. The UV-1 offers less resolution 
and fewer colors than larger, more expensive systems, but De Fanti said, "If 
you're moving images (which is what ZGRASS is designed to do), you don't need 
as much resolution. And when you use character generators and paint programs, 
those are not done in real time--which makes for major production problems," De 
Fanti said.

De Fanti formed a software company called Real Time Design (RTD) to market and 
further develop ZGRASS (RTD is currently working on a consumer version of the 
ZGRASS system).

A separate company called Data-max, Inc., sells the complete UV-1 package, 
which includes ZGRASS firmware (32K EPROM), 32K RAM expandable to 64K for CP/M 
compatibility, Z80A microprocessor, Winchester hard-disk drive, 320x202x2-bit 
resolution, 256 colors with four colors per area, two RS-232 ports, video 
output and NTSC (National Television Standard Code) compatibility.

"ZGRASS is a language that's easy for artists to use because it gives immediate 
feedback," said Copper Giloth, a computer-graphics artist at RTD.

Many other artists involved in computers and video in the Chicago area use 
ZGRASS as well. Jane Veeder and Philip Morton have used it for several 
productions, combining computer graphics, video synthesis and film and audio 
synthesis into unique sound-and-motion works that have appeared on public 
television.

Veeder bought one of the first UV-1 systems a little more than a year ago when 
she was an artist-in-residence for the city of Chicago. Veeder said she doubts 
she would even be using computers in her work today if it weren't for the UV-1.

"If I had had to go back to school to learn FORTRAN or some other language--
forget it, I would never have done it. I went from practically a know-nothing 
having to do with programming to [ZGRASS] becoming my main addiction. It's an 
extremely rational system that does a lot for you without getting in your way," 
she said.

Veeder works mainly in the area of video synthesis, which-- before getting the 
UV-1-- meant using large analog computers to generate patterns and manipulate 
video images. Veeder would then record the images on tape or use them in live 
performances.

[Image: By Copper Giloth, Real Time Design]

"Computers are just at the point where real-time processing is a capability, 
and ZGRASS is just fast enough to get into that," continued Veeder. "I wouldn't 
work with a computer-graphics system where you had to work with a series of 
still pictures. ZGRASS offers the artist incredible latitude of control and 
personal evolution, which is extremely important to most artists," she said.

Fellow artist Morton, a professor at the School of the Arts Institute in 
Chicago, uses a UV-1 and about a dozen Bally arcade "home-computer video games" 
to help give his art students hands-on experience in computer graphics using 
the arcade's BASIC language capability and sound synthesizer. (The three 
customized video chips in the UV-1 were developed by Bally for its Wizard and 
Gorf video games.)

Morton said the UV-1 is in use "24 hours a day." In addition, many of his 
students take home the Bally arcade games to create graphic images they can 
manipulate across the screen while making various sounds with the sound 
synthesizer. "ZGRASS is the hottest thing moving right now in terms of 
graphics," he said.

Morton claimed that most of the students in his classes "know that in order to 
be an effective electronic-image producer they're going to have to use 
computers, and they're looking for the fastest, hottest, most powerful way of 
getting there. Even the classic problem student just goes like wildfire in 
ZGRASS because the little bit of effort that goes in turns back such a huge 
reward compared to [personal computers], video games and other things they're 
familiar with."