Computer art

Description

Computer art is art in which computers play a role in the production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is bound to change over time since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible. Read more ↗

Key Artists

Desmond Paul Henry
British pioneer who modified WWII Sperry Bombsight analog computers into electromechanical drawing machines between 1960 and 1968, creating complex, precise curvilinear abstract artworks.
Vera Molnár
Hungarian-French pioneer and one of the first women digital artists who began using mainframe computers in 1968 to introduce controlled algorithmic randomness into concrete geometric abstraction.
Frieder Nake
German mathematician and pioneer of algorithmic computer graphics who participated in the seminal 1965 Stuttgart exhibition alongside Georg Nees, producing early plotter-generated algorithmic art.
A. Michael Noll
Bell Labs engineer and computer art pioneer who created some of the earliest digital stereoscopic 3D animations and digital patterns in 1962, including the famous 'Computer Composition With Lines'.
Manfred Mohr
German digital art pioneer who held the first solo exhibition of computer-generated artwork at a museum (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1971), systematically exploring hypercubes.
Herbert W. Franke
Austrian scientist and writer who created early analog oscilloscope art in the 1950s and published the groundbreaking book 'Computer Graphics - Computer Art' in 1971.
Charles Csuri
American artist dubbed the 'father of computer art and computer animation' by Smithsonian magazine, creating the landmark 1967 computer morphing animation 'Hummingbird'.

Famous Artworks

Picture Produced by Drawing Machine 1
Desmond Paul Henry · 1962
Reid Gallery, London / Victoria and Albert Museum - Electromechanical ink drawing on paper
Computer Composition With Lines
A. Michael Noll · 1964
Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill / Victoria and Albert Museum - Digital microfilm plotter print
Hommage à Paul Klee
Frieder Nake · 1965
Stuttgart / Victoria and Albert Museum - Algorithmic pen plotter drawing on paper
Hummingbird
Charles Csuri and James Shaffer · 1967
Museum of Modern Art, New York (Collection) - Computer-generated 16mm film animation (30,000 images)
Des Ordres
Vera Molnár · 1974
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris - Pen plotter ink drawing on paper
Cybernetic Serendipity (Exhibition at ICA London)
Jasia Reichardt (Curator), Nam June Paik, Frieder Nake, John Whitney, Desmond Paul Henry · 1968
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London - Landmark international exhibition

Fun Facts

The term 'computer art' was officially coined on the January 1963 cover of the magazine 'Computers and Automation' by editor Edmund Berkeley, who published a digital image by Efraim Arazi and launched the world's first annual Computer Art Contest later that year.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org
What is widely regarded as the first ever computer-generated human figurative artwork was created between 1956 and 1958 by anonymous military technicians on the radar screen of a Cold War SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) air defense mainframe, depicting a George Petty-inspired pin-up girl.
↗ Source: en.wikipedia.org

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