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Artist and Computer

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Imagine a museum gallery. There, hanging side by side are a Rembrandt and a Fortran. Fortran? A new artist? No, a computer language. Possible? Not really.

No computer will ever take the place of an artist. But many artists are discovering computers as a new means of self-expression. Some use computers as a medium to create finished pieces of art, while others explore new art forms, using the computer as an idea machine.

With more than 160 illustrations, this volume introduces 35 computer artists, each of whom has written a chapter describing their use of a computer to make artistic vision a reality.

121 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

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Ruth Leavitt

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Author 10 books27 followers
May 1, 2019

The value of the computer for artists lies not in its ability to mimic what man can do, but in providing a means for man to accomplish artistic endeavors which ordinarily would lie beyond his technical scope.


This is a fascinating collection of essays by artists from the seventies, just before the onset of the home computer. Most of the artists in this book are in academia, because that’s where the computers were. They wouldn’t have been in the book if they weren’t involved with computers. It contains everything from oscilloscope art and ASCII art to what we would consider more likely uses of computer in art today, that of bending and altering reality or of using the computer’s ability to repeat and to deform shapes and to calculate an illusory three-dimensionality.

Much of the fascination comes from the now-primitive nature of what was then cutting-edge. When Laurence Press talks about creating ASCII art in “Computers and Serial Imagery”, he writes that “Scanning and digitizing an image in this manner takes about ten minutes”. The “manner” in which he’s scanning is to 256 by 256 7-bit greyscale pixels.

In many cases, the artist works with a programmer; in most cases, the artist must have some knowledge of programming in order to better manage the process, which itself brings interesting insights. Duane M. Palyka writes that “Good structure in a program can bring as much esthetic satisfaction as good structure in a painting.”

Manfred Mohr writes, echoing Norbert Wiener,


We do not have to ask: what can the computer do?, but reverse the question by asking ourselves: what do we want to do? and then consider whether the help of a machine could be useful for our purpose.


Others did not want that much control. Christopher William Tyler writes about randomness, which he sees as providing insight into human creativity.


This brings us to a new definition of computer art—art produced by the computer which is essentially out of the control of its operator.


This is a magazine-sized book, and filled with wonderful, mostly black-and-white, examples of the art under discussion.


The artist now goes to an art supply store to purchase a given set of tools, whereas the computer artist can create the tools he will use. This is remarkable and allows for unlimited possibilities in the art to be created.
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