Leslie Mezei Gives the First Lecture on Computer Art

Canadian Leslie Mezei, computer art pioneer and scholar, played a hugely important and influential role in the development of computer graphics. The lecture was held, according to Grant Taylor, “at the fourth meeting of the Computing and Data Processing Society of Canada.” Taylor continues, describing how Mezei spoke about “the possibility for formulating general laws of aesthetics that could aid in artistic design,” influeced by George David Birkhoff’s 1933 Aesthetic Measure. His interdisciplinary accomplishments cannot be overstated. In his own words: “In 1965 I became an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. I taught the first Artificial Intelligence course in Canada in 1967, and in the same year, established the Computer Graphics Group, which became the Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP). [I had] an annual Bibliography from March 1967, and a regular column in ArtsCanada from April 1968 for two years. I started producing my own computer art in 1967, exploring geometric, mathematical and random transformations, and early representational images, using my SPARTA language, and animations with ARTA. They have been included in many exhibitions and published in many catalogues, articles and books.”