John McCarthy Introduces LISP

John McCarthy at MIT introduced the programming language LISP (List Processing) in 1960. He published the language in his seminal paper in on recursive functions in programming. LISP would go on to be used in Symbolics graphics computer. Nearly twenty years later, Peter Beyls would use LISP to create some of his early computer-generated work. Harold Cohen would also use LISP in his work with AARON. LISP thus significantly influenced digital art by introducing a programming environment conducive to creative expression and generative processes. LISP’s unique symbolic manipulation capabilities enabled artists to more easily represent artistic concepts as code. Along with John Backus’s FORTRAN (1957) and John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz’s BASIC (1964), LISP was one of the most significant early digital software developments in programmed art.