An Artistic Dimension

An air of subdued curiosity permeates Kohn Hall, the building that hosts the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), where researchers from around the world seek to decipher the universe’s mysteries.

Artistic passion, computational mind

The journey that led Hebert to that auspicious meeting in 2003 began in his childhood home of Vence, France, a small town set in the coastal foothills of the Maritime Alps. The region was a hub of the modern art movement, counting among its residents such luminaries as Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

And Hebert was fortunate enough to have a close friend who owned one of the fine art galleries in town. The space showcased pieces from titans of the early 19th century as well as work from artists who were not classically trained. “I had open access to the gallery, to the reserve,” Hebert recalled. “I could go there whenever I wanted. I could touch everything.”

In college, he developed an interest in computers and landed a summer internship at IBM’s Paris office, located in the city’s famous Place Vendôme. The company hosted the first IBM mainframe in all of Europe, according to Hebert.

The internship proved a formative experience, and soon Hebert was joining the French Army’s Center for Operational Research after being conscripted into the military. After his service was over, he became a software consultant.

Algorithmic artistry

Hebert pursued his artistic passions throughout his time as a computer scientist. However, his penchant for algorithmic art arrived later, at the convergence of artistic inspiration and technological innovation.

One day, as he perused an IBM brochure, he came across the work of Anni Albers, an artist, printmaker and weaver. “She was making art from geometry,” he said, “and I decided to explore the process.”

And advances in computing now made this a possibility. Until that point, Hebert had worked on mainframes, and couldn’t afford to use computer time for artwork. But, by 1974, Hewlett-Packard had introduced smaller computers ideal for this pursuit. Hebert bought one and set to work.

Many of his first pieces were grids and fractals, as the computer software allowed him to create precise patterns that would be difficult to achieve by hand. “But symmetry is boring,” Hebert remarked.

For the better part of two decades, Hebert essentially worked blind. Computer monitors weren’t good enough to render his drawings, so he didn’t know precisely how they’d turn out until he plotted them. Even after decent monitors became available in the late 1980s, the displays were mostly for code. They couldn’t capture the nuances present in the finished work for quite some time.

Around this time Hebert and his wife first visited Santa Barbara on business. The couple fell in love with the sunny, beach-side city and moved here from Paris in 1985.

A fortuitous meeting

A confluence of events brought Hebert and David Gross together in 2003 to begin what would become a fruitful partnership. Hebert, now a full-time artist, was holding a show in the former Monlleo gallery in Santa Barbara. KITP had just finished the west wing expansion of Kohn Hall, and Gross had rediscovered funds set aside to provision the building with artwork and décor.

Artist in residence

Dozens of Hebert’s pieces adorn the corridors of Kohn Hall, but his influence on KITP extends beyond merely what is visible. Hebert has organized workshops for the visiting fellows as well as exhibitions featuring his work and that of other artists working with mathematics and computers. “He just adds a dimension to KITP that doesn’t exist most places,” said Gross.

Hebert’s most iconic contribution to KITP is likely Ulysses — otherwise known as the sand machine — a concept he had been working on since 1998. The installation consists of a mahogany base, constructed by local furniture builder Victor DiNovi, and a hidden programmable device conceived by Hebert and designed and built by UC Santa Barbara engineer David Bothman.

“I just loved it,” Gross recalled. “It’s beautiful, extremely clever, and extremely original. You never grow tired of watching it.”

Hebert has also drawn inspiration from his relationship with the institute and the scientists therein. “It has been quite important for me, and for the development of my work, to be artist in residence at KITP,” he said. “It has been subtle, but it has been permanent.”

Hebert has attended a number of programs, conferences, and talks that KITP hosts. He fondly recalls one about granular materials and aggregates, which gave him an opportunity to talk to physicists about sand movement, like that in Ulysses.

“The conversations with the physicists influenced me, certainly, there is no doubt,” he said. “Each of these contacts was provoking thoughts, and this resulted in new work being created.”

Somewhat atypical of Hebert’s work, “Stringlets and Zigzags” (2018) is composed of colored shapes and squiggles, techniques that became available when he switched from plotters to inkjet printing in 2003.

Photo Credit: JEAN-PIERRE HEBERT

The Heberts’ relationship with UC Santa Barbara extends beyond Jean-Pierre’s position at KITP. All of their children earned their degrees at the university. Their eldest, François, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the College of Creative Studies and continued on to receive his doctorate at Cornell. He currently researches black holes as a Caltech postdoc working with the LIGO group.

Their daughter Marie studied violin at the UCSB, and is now a professional violinist, both teaching and performing. Daughters Anne and Claire Alice followed in their brother’s footsteps, also earning physics degrees at the College of Creative Studies. They are now pursuing their doctorates at Harvard and Stanford.

Of all of his accomplishments, Hebert is most proud of his initial genius in choosing to explore a new type of art. “I’ve done this drawing and that drawing, but they are all drawings, not ideas,” he said. “It was the idea of using the computational power of a computer to make a drawing that started everything.”

And his relationship with KITP seems to have left its mark. “It’s difficult to quantify,” he said, “but I think looking at the portfolio shows very loudly how this happened.”