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The 1950's used mechanical devices and analogue computers to create art. The photos were all black and white until in later years they used filters to produce colour photos.
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Ben Laposky used an oscilloscope to manipulate electronic waves which then appeared on a small fluorescent screen. An oscilloscope is a device to display wave shape of an electric signal. The waves are constantly moving so it took decades of using long exposure photography to see the final product.
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Ben Laposky's first colour photo.
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Bell Labs was a research facility run by Nokia that used a microfilm printer which was able to expose letters/shapes onto 35mm film. They worked and researched with lasers, radio astronomy, programming languages, operating systems and much more. They were the ones to start making the photos move.
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Computer access was still very limited and extremely expensive. Labs, universities and large corporations where the only ones who could afford the computers so computer scientists and mathematicians were the ones to use them. They would program the computers themselves which created more freedom when creating art by putting random variables into the computer so it could make its own decision. The main focus was geometric shapes and structure and they could only shaded by crosshatching.
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Photos were still mainly black and white but Frieder Nake did a colour photo using complex algorithmic instructions.
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Ken Knowlton who was apart of Bell Labs, created a program called BEFLIX and it was for bitmap film making.
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Leon Harmon, Edward Zajec and Ken Knowltons of Bell Labs started creating a landscape of a nude women to put up as a prank in one of their colleagues offices using small electronic symbols.
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A plotter printer is a mechanical device that holds a pen or brush that is guided by the program in the printer. Impact printers were also used and they work like typewriters.
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The University of London established the "Experimental and Computing Department" to integrate the use of computers. They were one of the few institutions to do this.
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In the 70's artists who came from a fine arts background started to teach themselves to program.
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Paul Brown studied at the Slade School of Art and created a tile-based image generating system called "Untitled Computer Assisted Drawing"
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Computers started being used in businesses and personal life more. Computer graphics and special effects began to be used in films as well as video games. This is when video/computer gaming started up.
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Computer graphics and special effects were used in this film.
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The first inkjet printer was developed to print colour and demonstrated a clear computer aesthetic.
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Computers are a more normal part of art now. Illustrator and Photoshop were used to explore digital motifs. Artists would use a digital projector to plan out their next moves.
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Artist's like James Faure Walker blend his computer art and regular art together.
