Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 6: Personal Computer Era (1980s)
1981
Plan K International Festival voor Elektronische Muziek, Video en Computer Art in Brussels.
Arranged by Peter Beyls, this was one of the earliest electronic music festivals. The festival had its second edition in 1981 after debuting the previous year. It would be a full decade later, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, that electronic music festivals as we know them began appearing. The festival featured experimental computer animation in addition to music. The musicians involved included John Appleton, Morton Subotnick, Donald Buchla, John Chowning, Jean-Claude Risset and others.
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Donald Buchla, Jean-Claude Risset, John Appleton, John Chowning, Morton Subotnick, Peter Beyls
Movements
Computer Music, Electronic Music, Generative Music
Filed under
- Ideas
- Computer Music, Electronic Music, Generative Music
- Technologies
- Claude, computer animation, computer art
- People
- Donald Buchla, Jean-Claude Risset, John Appleton, John Chowning, Morton Subotnick, Peter Beyls
- Organisations
- Plan K International Festival
- Places
- Belgium, Brussels
Echoes across time
- 1960 · Music from Mathematics, the First Computer Music Issued on Record
- 1957 · Max Mathews Develops MUSIC I
- 1957 · An Experiment in Musical Composition is Published