notes.husk.org/likes images.

rcaied:

We had a guided tour of the V&A’s amazing computer art collection on 6 Feb 2014, as research for our Exploded Screen elective, thanks to curators Douglas Dodds and Melanie Lenz.

Here is one of Ben Laposky’s ‘Oscillons,’ created with an oscilloscope in the 1950s.

Early computer art was generally printed out using printers or plotters, or photographed from the screen. The first exhibitions were in New York and Stuttgart in 1965. ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’ was at the ICA in 1968.

In Stuttgart, Max Bense was one of the first to theorise this area, as ‘information aesthetics.’ A. Michael Noll tried to codify what artists such as Mondrian did. Vera Molnar’s ‘machine imaginaire’ was a process, a way of working. Jean-Pierre Hebert called himself an ‘algorist.’

We saw also the work of Ken Nolton, Stan van der Beek, Barbara Nessim, William Latham, father/son team of Paul & Daniel Brown, early inkjet prints of Mark Wilson (above). And D.P. Henry, who made using a bomb sight computer from a Lancaster bomber. William Fetter worked on the ergonomics of the airplane cockpit, then invented a version of computer graphics. Herbert Frank used Braille machines to make art. Manfred Mohr is still active, living in New York.

British painter Harold Cohen lives in California. He invented the Aaron programming language, and theorised some early notions of AI. He printed pieces like the one above on a plotter then hand-painted them, signing them, ‘Aaron.’

Malcolm Hughes of the Slade called his work, using cellular automata, ‘systems art,’ printing them on translucent paper with a plotter.

Early computer art was patented, not copyrighted.

The museum also collects contemporary computer art as well, owning for example one if Thompson & Craighead’s Google tea towels. The Casey Reas piece hanging in the Sackler Centre is an only copy, designed for a specific screen size. Reas, one of the brains behind Processing, actually first wrote the code for this piece in pseudo-code - human language - and this piece came with a book. 

More photos here.