The Favorites

Recently somebody asked me about my favorite work of computer art and I found it impossible to choose just one single work!

While trying to write a list, I realized that my absolute favorite is computer art as a whole, it is like one body of work to me, created not by one artist, but by many, with different approaches towards the computer in art, created in different techniques, but all with the main characteristic of computer art: co-produced with »thinking machines« at the dawn of a world-changing technical revolution.

Still, here is my favorites list, which is not a ranking:

#1 Kurd Alsleben/Cord Passow: 5.1960, 1960/around 1980*

In 1960 artist Kurd Alsleben and Cord Passow, a physicist, at DESY in Hamburg, worked on computer art experiments, using the newly arrived analog computer EAI 231R and its XY-writer at the research institute. Over a decade later, the artist selected one of their motifs, 5.1960, as motif for a limited edition of print multiples (above, on the very left).

#2 Herbert W. Franke: Oszillogramm, around 1958/1970

This is an oscillogram work by Herbert W. Franke, a serigraph on paper, printed 1970 after a photograph taken around 1958.

Franke was a kind of uber-computer artist who also worked as a pioneer on the theoretical side of art to secure a well-deserved space for Computer Art / Generative Art within art history.
Computer Art owes him an incredible lot!

He generated computer artworks from the beginnings of this art movement in the 1950s through all phases of its technical developments towards digital art and on to post-digital art as long as he lived.

#3 Georg Nees: Raumstruktur, 1968/1970*

This is one of Georg Nees’s works that conveys a more subtle message about the significance of computer technology by making it tangible:

The translated title of this serigraph is »spatial structure.« Printed on reflective silver foil, it mirrors the spectators and the environment. The printed structure seems to float in the middle of the real and the virtual space created by the reflection.

The serigraph was printed 1970 after a machine drawing made in 1968, the graphics program was developed between 1965 and 1968.

#4 Frieder Nake: Walk-Through-Raster Vancouver Version (Art Ex Machina), 1972*

Walk-Through-Raster (above, on the very right) is one of Frieder Nake´s iconic early series of works. Based on a program written in 1966, Frieder Nake generated the Walk-Through-Raster Vancouver Version in Vancouver, Canada, as contribution to the Art Ex Machina portfolio curated in Montreal in 1972. (Check out the earlier Machine exhibit.)

Although the screen-printing process offered further artistic possibilities regarding color and areas of color, Nake opted for a pure reproduction of the original machine-generated line drawing with colored ink, thereby underscoring the character of the machine-made work.

# 5  The Cybernetic Serendipity Collector´s Set, 1968*

Published on the occasion of the first major exhibition of Computer Art – curated by Jasia Reichardt – the set of lithographs is iconic in the history of Computer Art (or simply art, if you will):

Seven graphics by different computer artists, all pioneers of the first years:
Charles Csuri and James Shaffer (Ohio State University),
the Computer Technique Group of Japan (contributed two),
Maughan S. Mason,
William Fetter of Boeing Computer Graphics,
Kerry Strand,
and Donald K. Robbins.

For more info check out the earlier Serendipity! exhibit

# 6 Otto Beckmann/Alfred Graßl (ars intermedia): untitled, 1968*

This work (below, left) is an untitled print multiple work by Otto Beckmann/Alfred Graßl of ars intermedia, the Austrian experimental art group founded by Otto Beckmann in 1966. The earliest computer-generated works by ars intermedia date back to 1968.

At the end of the 1960s Otto Beckmann, a trained artist, worked with an analog computer at the Technical University of Vienna supported by scientist Alfred Graßl. The ars intermedia team generated computer images by experimenting with randomness.
Among the early results were mirage-like images resembling buildings and cityscapes in a Fata Morgana, like in this untitled work.

Taking photos from the oscilloscope, Otto Beckmann continued to produce works in different kinds of art forms, like, in this case, prints on aluminum plates, which became characteristic for the artist in his body of work. These works were almost all non-edition works. Otto Beckmann created his aluminum wall objects as individual works or as small series with variations in a manual process.

#7 Otto Beckmann/Oskar Beckmann: Elektronische Computergrafik Imaginäre Architektur "Venezia morta", 1970*

Twice on my list: Otto Beckmann – this time in team with his son Oskar Beckmann. (image above, right)
Counting another ars intermedia work to my favorites list happens for a special reason: now, in this work, a true art computer was involved!

From 1970 on Beckmann worked with his own studio computer, a hybrid built by his son Oskar, named a.i./70 (a.i. : short for ars intermedia), that was updated to a.i./71, and all through 1979.
The »Ateliercomputer« was perfectly designed to reflect Beckmann´s individual artistic language in computer generated films, even sound, and images – this was an art system personalized for one artist, which makes »a.i.« a forerunner of today´s virtual machines designed for individual artists, like the machine-learning systems of most famous Refik Anadol.

The image (above, right) shows a manual offset-print on hand-made paper: Otto Beckmann/Oskar Beckmann: Elektronische Computergrafik / Imaginäre Architektur "Venezia morta", 1970
It is another typical example of Otto Beckmann´s mirage-style imagery resembling cityscapes and architectural utopias.

# 8 Manfred Mohr: Prog. 50, 1970*

This is an original, unique plot by Manfred Mohr, titled Prog. 50. (below, left)

Since the artist had started to work with the computer 1969 in Paris, Manfred Mohr has never stopped to do so, which makes him not only one of the pioneers of computer graphics, but also an outstanding constant in the history of digital art until today.

Some of his early algorithmic motifs, like those of program 50, appear like cryptic computer writings, like hieroglyph messages from a future civilization.
This message of a coming computer age was received in 1970, but, at least in the art world, understood by only a few.

# 9 Harold Cohen: untitled (Maze), 1971*

Harold Cohen, today widely known as the pioneering artist in AI Art, started to work with the computer at the end of the 1960s, after moving from UK to the US.
In 1971 he had developed a drawing system that was able to generate machine drawings from his Maze algorithm as a series of unique works.

The artist presented his system at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1972 in the show Three Behaviors for the Partitioning of Space.
This was a year before he started working on his AI-program AARON, and the Maze algorithm can indeed be seen as the fundament of his AI-work.

# 10 Vera Molnár: Microcosmos, 1978*

This work is a print multiple by Vera Molnár (Molnar), one of the most famous computer art pioneers: before Molnár started to work with the computer at the end of the 1960s, she was already a renowned concrete artist. Her fame sure contributed a lot to the visibility and recognition of computer art as such in the art world.

#11 Harold Cohen/AARON: untitled (Penny Plain Suite), around 1979/1980*

No 11 is where my favorites list stops – it marks the arrival of AI in Digital Art:

Harold Cohen started to work on his AI art system AARON in 1973. In the 1970s he explored the »internal aspects of human cognition,« and AARON became able to generate childlike drawings – the image shows a detail of a 1980 print after a machine drawing of this phase in the late 1970s. From 1980 on, Cohen programmed AARON to enter a new, more advanced artistic phase.

#0 Art Ex Machina*

As an addendum here is a favorite no 0:
The Art Ex Machina portfolio, published in 1972, is a kind of uber-favorite, reflecting the 1960s to the early 70s pioneer phase in Computer Art. It is a small collection in itself, with works by Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, Manuel Barbadillo, Manfred Mohr, Hiroshi Kawano, and Ken Knowlton.
The serigraphs of this portfolio are masterly printed (by hand!) and breathtaking in their colors.

Check out the earlier virtual exhibit: Machine Art