Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 6: Personal Computer Era (1980s)
1980
Video Art: The Electronic Man at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

This exhibit stands out as a key moment in the transition from video art to video game art. Copper Giloth bridged the gap between the rapidly rising popularity of video games and video art. Her piece, From Video Games to Video Art was an interactive installation that used Thomas DeFanti’s ZGRASS.
Giloth herself explains: “Using a joystick and buttons the user to could create a simple image and then using that image and its 7 simple symmetries create more complex drawings. Additional software and hardware designed by T. DeFanti and D. Harris. 10 plotter drawings were included in the exhibition. Hardware: Datamax Zgrass UV-1 machine with a custom interface.”
Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.
Sources
People
Copper Giloth, D. Harris, Tom DeFanti
Movements
video art, Video Game Art
Filed under
- Ideas
- Interactive Art, symmetry, video art, Video Game Art, video games
- Technologies
- Datamax, joystick, plotter, Plotter Art, Zgrass
- People
- Copper Giloth, D. Harris, Tom DeFanti
- Works
- From Video Games to Video Art
- Exhibitions
- Video Art: The Electronic Man
- Organisations
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Places
- Chicago
Related moments
Echoes across time
- 1968 · Computer Graphic Exhibition at Brno House of Arts
- 1964 · 23-Ecke by Georg Nees
- 1968 · Notable computer artworks
Le Random editorials
- Copper Giloth on Video Games to Video Art, Peter Bauman, September 22, 2025
Le Random podcast
- Timeline Ch 6—Personal Computer Era (1980s) with Mark Wilson, Copper Giloth, Dan Sandin, David Em, William Latham, Stephen Todd, Darcy Gerbarg & Geoff Davis — listen with transcript on Le Random (08 Feb 2024, 85 min). Featuring Copper Giloth. Chapter 6’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify