By Graham K. Rogers

The 1960s particularly were a time of irreverence, with old barriers crumbling. In the UK at least, the Empire was disbanded and values changed: politically, musically and on television. David Frost and a number of others cut their teeth on a short-lived but influential Saturday night program, "That Was the Week That Was" (TWTWTW) Several performers from this, like Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, went on to become stars in their own right. Those two played in a famous TWTWTW sketch on one's position in society. The third performer in that sketch was John Cleese whose own career was influential and included "Monty Python's Flying Circus".

The invisible, American member of Monty Python was a talented movie-maker whose own credits as well as the Monty Python movies include Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, Brazil and many others. His talent at the time of the TV program was revealed by the scores of animations made from photographs and other sources. The Wikipedia entry on this reads:

Gilliam's animations mix his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cutouts from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era.

These linking sequences were shockingly, refreshingly, irreverent with some excellent little rude bits. I have always wanted to do this myself (along with hundreds of other as yet-unfulfilled dreams). There is of course, now, an app for it (although it will not create such illustrations that Gilliam was a master of).

Art Jam Paintings Free

The app installed on both the iPhone and the iPad. While it is quite possible to use the app on the iPhone, the larger screen of the iPad is far better suited to the possibilities revealed here.

The library lists the two works that are included with the free app, whether on the iPhone or the iPad, and a list of others that may be downloaded. These include Da Vinci's The Last Supper, Rockwell's Santa with Elves and Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.

At the top of the list are the two images included with the free version of the app. Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Van Gogh's Starry Night. I have seen the originals of both of these: the former in Chicago, the Van Gogh at MOMA in New York and they are magnificent works of Art. The idea of playing about with these -- rearranging the artefacts -- was daunting.

I couldn't wait to get started.

Tapping on the list item, brings up the image full screen after a few seconds. There are some instructions on the Seurat telling users to drag and pinch. Most of the figures, trees, animals, and even the toy boats in the lake can be moved, resized, rotated so that, Gilliam-like, we may rebuild and reshape the work. With the nature of the two works included, the transformation is far more effective with the Seurat than with Starry Night, but a lot of moving about can be accomplished. With a work like Da Vinci's Last Supper -- often a butt of satire -- I would expect more could be accomplished.

When the image is displayed a small V icon is shown to the top left. Tapping this brings up a camera icon marked Screenshot and Exit, which takes us to an information on the work just debased. The screenshots have an ArtJam watermark included. If we use the iPad's inbuilt screenshot feature, the V is included. Exports from the iPad were 1024 x 768. When exported as a full-size 8-bit TIFF image, each was 14.2" x 10.7" with a file size of 2.4MB.

Each of the in-app purchases is priced at $2.99, but a fair amount of work must have gone into the download to prepare it for the app and its processes. I passed on these for the time being, but just under 100 baht is not a lot to pay to allow a child or student (or yourself) the fun of playing about with such major works.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.