Here we cover the rise of computing and the first artworks made with analog electronic equipment, including the pioneering oscilloscope work of Mary Ellen Bute and Ben Laposky. We also cover the rise of cybernetic, conceptual and kinetic art, three profoundly influential developments in the rise of digital generative art.
From Le Random’s Generative Art Timeline. Original moment texts by Peter Bauman.
Drawing with electronic signals
Ben Laposky’s Oscillons and Mary Ellen Bute’s Abstronic show why electronic art cannot be reduced to digital computation. Both used oscilloscope imagery, translating electronic signals into visual form. Laposky photographed patterns; Bute brought electronically generated images into experimental animation. Their work makes the analog equipment of this decade a productive starting point for the later history of computer graphics.
Ben Laposky produces the first graphics generated by electronic machines, a critical step on the way to the digitization of generative art with proto-computer art. Using an oscilloscope in 1950, Ben F. Laposky originated the concept of graphics generated by electronic machines, creating his now legendary oscillons. These “electrical compositions” are regarded as among the first electronic graphics. Image is copyrighted by Ben Laposky…
Mary Ellen Bute observing an image on the oscilloscope screen whose knobs and switches she used to “draw with a beam of light” for Abstronic (1952). Mary Ellen Bute / Ted Nemeth. Collection of Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.
Pioneering work of abstract electronic animation Using an oscilloscope, Bute was the creator of some of the earliest electronically generated images. In 1952, she created the landmark experimental film Abstronic, (a portmanteau of the words “abstract” and “electronic”). Her abstract animations anticipated the upcoming aesthetic language of computer art by incorporating Lissajous curves and geometric abstraction. Bute was captivated by the proposition of drawing…
Ellsworth Kelly’s chance-arranged color grids and Vera Molnár’s machine imaginaire place procedural decisions in the artist’s studio. Molnár imagined a machine that would systematically explore combinations before she gained access to a computer. Beside these works, Jean Tinguely’s drawing machine makes delegated mark-making physical and visible. Together they offer several ways to think about systems, choice and the artist’s hand.
Rob Corder. “Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance, 1951. Oil on wood (1923-2015) SFMOMA.” Flickr. flickr.com
Composed during his time in France, this part of a series of chance-arranged spectrum collages marked the shift of Kelly’s work towards chance methodologies as well as work on a grid. Inspired by Dadaism and Surrealism, this preeminent example of chance in art has strongly influenced later generations of generative artists as well as bearing conceptual and form resemblance to the color chart work…
Meaning the “imaginary computer,” Molnár’s “machine imaginaire” is the now famous concept that she developed to imagine a computer to expand her creative process. The hypothetical machine allowed her to systematically create works that included all the possible combinations of forms she wished. Now based in Paris, It would take nearly another decade, 1968, before Molnár would gain access to an actual computer.
Foreshadowing the plotter, the Swiss kinetic sculptor’s key piece in the history of chance in art, Méta-matic No. 8, was an animated sculpture made from found material. The piece was exhibited at the legendary The machine, as seen at the end of the mechanical age. link This piece itself was actually a drawing machine, constantly producing an abstract drawing on its own. Tinguely said:…
A landmark in the history of computer-generated text, Strachey’s love letter algorithm (or M.U.C.) created generative poems by combining words selected from a database via the random generator of the Ferranti Mark I. It anticipates the combinatorial procedures the computer artists of the ’60s, among them Noll, Nake and Nees, would arrive at independently. Besides its massive importance in the development of information theory…
This key development in the pre-history of computer-generated literature was an early use of a computer to generate text. Lutz’s “stochastic texts” were produced at Stuttgart when Max Bense was there developing Aesthetica. The texts were determined by a syntactical scheme, random generator and frequency criteria on a Z22. Lutz’s usage of stored words provided Bense with ideas for Aesthetica.
F. P. Brooks Jr., A. L. Hopkins Jr., P. G. Neumann and W. V. Wright, An Experiment in Musical Composition, 1957. Opening article page from an original IRE offprint. F. P. Brooks Jr., A. L. Hopkins Jr., P. G. Neumann and W. V. Wright. IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers EC-6, no. 3 (September 1957), pp. 175–182. Computer History Museum, IBM Stretch archive, 102632308. Image source.
Brooks, F. P., Jr., A. L. Hopkins, Jr., P. G. Neumann, and W. V. Wright. "An Experiment in Musical Composition." IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers EC-6, no. 3 (September 1957): 175-182.
The beginnings of AI as a research field
The 1955 Dartmouth proposal introduced the term artificial intelligence; the workshop followed in 1956. Frank Rosenblatt’s perceptron provides an early neural-network reference point. These are computing milestones in the chapter, distinct from its artistic works. Read them alongside the art to follow the different technical and creative questions developing in the same decade, or continue with the chapter discussion with Georg Bak.
Ray Solomonoff's own fanned copies of the Dartmouth documents, with the title page of “A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence” — the August 1955 typescript that coined the term — visible beneath Shannon's proposal and above Newell and Simon's plans. Ray Solomonoff's copies of the Dartmouth proposals, 1955–56. Ray Solomonoff Dartmouth papers, raysolomonoff.com.
John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence” in a proposal for a Dartmouth College study written with Marvin Minsky (Harvard University), Nathaniel Rochester (IBM) and Claude Shannon (Bell Telephone Laboratories). According to the proposal, “the study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that…
A U.S. Navy photograph of the Mark I Perceptron, the machine built to run Rosenblatt’s design, with an operator at its image sensor. The Mark I Perceptron, about 1960. U.S. Navy photograph (USN 710739), National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons.
Depending on how it goes with AI, the perceptron could end up being one of history's most important concepts, well, ever basically. Frank Rosenblatt's perceptron is essentially the first neural network and a monumental step in the story of deep learning AI art. The perceptron is also a bit of a tragic tale. A decade later, deep learning AI's anti-hero Marvin Minsky published Perceptrons,…
This guide connects selected entries from Le Random’s archive of 1,147 moments. Dates follow the individual records. The excerpts, source references and image credits come from those records; follow a moment to read its full account and related interviews.
The archive includes historical precursors and surrounding developments as well as generative artworks. Inclusion does not mean that every object or event was described as “generative art” in its own time.
