Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 1: Pre-Modern Era (Pre-1850)
285 BCE
Library of Alexandria Established
Library of Alexandria is established around the mission of “holding in one place all of the knowledge ever accumulated by man,” the world’s “memory bank”; the Ptolemic dynasty grows the library by decreeing that any book brought into the city be immediately copied by scribes, and taking measures to preclude rivals from collecting books. -Sasha Stiles
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Movements
Computer Text, Generative Poetry
Filed under
- Ideas
- collecting, Computer Text, Generative Poetry, knowledge systems, literature, memory, preservation
- People
- Sasha Stiles
- Organisations
- Library of Alexandria, Ptolemaic dynasty
- Places
- Alexandria
Echoes across time
- 1984 · The Policeman’s Beard is Half-Constructed Published
- 1997 · Documenta Done by the net art pioneer Vuk Ćosić
- 2006 · 16 Études sur les origines de Blum by Vera Molnár
Le Random editorials
- Sasha Stiles and Martha Joseph on Language as Technology, Peter Bauman, September 10, 2025
- Sasha Stiles on Writing Poets, Peter Bauman, January 25, 2024
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 1—Pre-Modern Era with Marius Watz — listen with transcript on Le Random (06 Jul 2023, 46 min). Chapter 1’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify