Space Invaders, Asteroids and Pac Man Released

Sparking the first video game craze, the release of Space Invaders was followed by Asteroids (1979) and Pac-Man (1980). The released helped to popularize the arcade, which would have an enormous impact on not only digital aesthetics (to this day) but also how a generation of young artists would grow up viewing machines, digital art and computers. Gone were the years of the 1960s (less than 20 years prior) when computers were enigmatic with strong associations with the military, war, the powerful and questionable ethics. Very few people had ever seen one let alone knew how to interact one. In the course of eighteen years, the relationship between machine and human had changed profoundly. Children from Japan to the United States began growing up with computers in their homes. They began to interact with them and spend hours forming an intimate bond with the machine, having a profound impact on the history of any digital art.