Patron of the Arts
by William Rotsler
Part of this novel first appeared in
Mankind Publishing Co.
Copyright © 1974 by William Rotsler
ALBERT EINSTEIN
1
She stares out at you from her cube of near blackness, calm, quiet, breathing easily, just looking at you. She is naked to the hips, where a jeweled girdle encircles her, and she sits regally on a pile of luxurious pillows. Her long white hair cascades down over her apricot-colored shoulders and is made to shimmer slightly by some hidden light.
As you come closer to the life-size sensatron the vibrations get to you. The startling reality of the three- dimensional image cannot be overstated, for Michael Cilento’s portrait of one of history’s greatest society courtesans is a great work of art.
As you view the cube the image of Diana Snowdragon stops being quite so calm and in some subtle way becomes predatory, commanding, compelling. She is
Diana’s sensatron cube portrait is universally hailed as a masterpiece. The subject was delighted.
The artist was disgusted and told me that the ego of the subject prevented her from seeing the reality he had constructed. But it was this cube that gave Michael Benton Cilento the fame he wanted, needed, and hated. This was his first major sensatron cube and cubes were just then beginning to be used by artists, instead of scientists. It was becoming “fashionable” to be working in sensatrons then and everywhere there was shop talk of electron brushes, cilli nets, multilayer screens, broadcast areas, blankers, and junction symmetry. Sensatrons are the ultimate marriage of art and science. At least so far. The sciences are constantly supplying tools to the artists, whether it be fade-safe paint that will be bright a thousand years from now, or an electron brush to make meticulous changes in a scan pattern. Already the
But the sensatrons are the rage of the moment. Just as the shimmercloth fashions of the
shouting in your forebrain. In anticipation I have started one of my research labs on a blanker device to shut out the anticipated electronic noise.
The cubes can be so eerily lifelike that the rumors of them taking a piece of your soul persist. Perhaps they are right. Not only do the cameras capture the exterior, providing the basis from which the sensatron artist works, but the alpha and beta recorders, the EEG
machines, the subtle heartbeat repeaters, all record what is going on within. Many artists use a blending of many recordings taken over a period of sittings. Some use single specific moments or moods, each recorded and then projected by the differentiated sonic cones and alpha-beta projectors. Along with these projections the artist adds his own interpretation, creating an almost musical concerto of waves, working upon any human brain within the area of reception. It is still the prerogative of the artist to select, eliminate, diminish, or whatever he desires. Some sensatron portrait artists put in the emotional warts as well as the strengths, and others are flatterers. Some artists are experimenting with switched recordings, woman for man, animal for subject, pure abstracts substituting for reality. Every one that attempts it brings to it a new point of view.
All Mike Cilento wanted to do is project the truth as he saw it. Perhaps he did peel off a layer of soul. I have stood next to the living model of a sensatron portrait and found the cube much more interesting than the person, but only when the artist was greater than the subject. Mike’s
portrait
of
society’s
