When the Machine Made Art INTERNATIONAL TEXTS IN CRITICAL MEDIA AESTHETICS VOLUME 7 Founding Editor Francisco J. Ricardo Series Editor Jörgen Schäfer Editorial Board Rita Raley John Cayley George Fifield Tony Richards Teri Rueb When the Machine Made Art The Troubled History of Computer Art GRANT D. TAYLOR International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Grant D. Taylor 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Grant D. When the machine made art : the troubled history of computer art / Grant D. Taylor. pages cm – (International texts in critical media aesthetics) Summary: “Examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, by identifying the destabilizing forces that affect, shape, and eventually fragment the computer art movement”– Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-62356-795-8 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-62356-884-9 (paperback) 1. Computer art. I. Title. N7433.8.T39 2014 776 – dc23 2013046891 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6795-8 PB: 978-1-6235-6884-9 ePub: 978-1-6235-6272-4 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6561-9 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To Victoria and Vivienne CONTENTS Acknowledgments viii Introduction: Unorthodox 1 1 Future crashes 25 2 Coded aesthetics 65 3 Virtual renaissance 103 4 Frontier exploration 157 5 Critical impact 201 Epilogue: Aftermath 249 Notes 268 Bibliography 305 Index 321 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The research that provided the backbone to this book was conducted at two institutions on two continents. While pursuing scholarship in Australia and doing the same in the United States often differed in significant ways, the generous support of my colleagues remained the same. At the University of Western Australia in Perth, scholars such as Clarissa Ball, Patrick Beale, Richard Read, Nicole Sully, and Ian McLean provided helpful suggestions and challenged my thinking at every moment. At Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, I received the same type of assistance—individuals with a critical focus willing to assist a colleague in completing a large research project. The members of the art and art history department—Karen Beall, Barbara McNulty, Dan Massad, and Michael Pittari—continually provided me with positive reinforcement. To Jeff Robbins, I owe special thanks. An ever-generous colleague, Jeff always gave sound professional and publishing advice. Other peers, including Marc Harris, Rebecca McCoy, Matthew Sayers, and Robert Valgenti, have provided various forms of aid: from language translations to best practices. Mike Green and the office of academic affairs also supported my endeavors with multiple research and travel grants. Becky Fullmer’s editorial work was instrumental in refining my manuscript. My LVC student assistants Diana Jo Hoffman and Lindsay Snowden were eager seekers of the most obscure and difficult reference materials. I would like to say Diana’s service dog Emmy helped, but the truth is she slept on my office floor while we toiled away. The librarian staff at the Bishop Library also deserve recognition for their remarkable attention to detail. Within the global field of digital arts, I have numerous people to thank. Many of these individuals I first met at the inaugural Media Art Histories Conference in Banff, Canada, in 2005, and since then they have provided me with much-needed guidance and vital Acknowledgments ix research leads. These individuals include Darko Fritz, Charlie Gere, Douglas Kahn, Frieder Nake, Margit Rosen, and Eddie Shanken. Paul Brown, Hannah Higgins, and Nick Lambert have also supported my research at salient moments. I thank Jörgen Schäfer, along with the editorial board of the International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics series, for bringing my narrative to light. Without the endorsement of Francisco Ricardo, founding editor of the series, this publication would not have been possible. I am grateful to the staff at Bloomsbury Publishing, especially my editors Katie Gallof and Laura Murray. I would also like to thank the Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press for allowing me to publish portions of my 2012 essay, “The Soulless Usurper: Reception and Criticism of Early Computer Art,” which was published in Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Digital Computing in the Experimental Arts (edited by Hannah Higgins and Douglas Kahn). I am particularly indebted to two individuals, Anne and Michael Spalter, who have provided unwavering support since the first moment I arrived in the United States. Anne has been an advocate of my research as far back as graduate school, and Michael introduced me to Hannah Higgins and Francisco Ricardo—individuals who opened up new scholarship paths for me. My correspondence with Laurens Schwartz became invaluable for both its counsel and its sense of friendship. One could say we formed a bond through layers of analogical expression. I am also appreciative of the countless artists who have invited me into their studios and homes. Viewing their artworks and searching their archives have provided continual sustenance for my intellect and imagination. Finally, I would like to thank my family in the United States and Australia, for without their emotional support and devotion a project of this magnitude would not have been possible. Introduction Unorthodox The term “computer art” is rarely used in today’s cultural discourse. To use the term is to impart a sense of nostalgia, to reminisce about a bygone era of pioneers and antiquated machines. For most, the term appears thoroughly unsuited if applied to contemporary forms of art. Art employing the latest digital technologies no longer relies on stand-alone computers, but is embedded in multiple devices, interacting globally with mobile and Web-based technologies. For this generation of art students, computer art is thoroughly passé, more a curious preform to the dynamic world of digital art. Students are seldom interested in the computer as a singular type of technology—a medium defined by a physical machine—but are absorbed in digital modalities across diverse social and geographical spaces. Young contemporary artists who employ digital technologies in their practice rarely make reference to computers. For example, Wade Guyton, an abstractionist who uses Microsoft Word and inkjet printers, does not call himself a computer artist. Moreover, New York Times critics, who admire his work, are little concerned about his extensive use of computers in the art-making process.1 This is a marked contrast from three decades ago when artists who utilized computers were labeled by critics—often pejoratively—as computer artists. For the present generation of artists, the computer, or more appropriately, the laptop, is one in an array of integrated, portable digital technologies that link their social and working life. With tablets and cell phones surpassing personal computers in Internet usage, and as slim digital devices resemble nothing like the 2 WHEN THE Machine MADE ART room-sized mainframes and bulky desktop computers of previous decades, it now appears that the computer artist is finally extinct. However, computer art is not yet that historical artifact, a fossil from which a new species of technologies can be said to have evolved. The term “computer art” can still be found in academia. The occasional conference, university graduate program, or college course still carries the term “computer art,” which means some educators have resisted current trends of replacing it with the up-to-date descriptors, such as “digital art” or “media art.”2 The Computer Arts Society, formed in 1968 in the UK, remains steadfast, believing that the term has a historical significance that others designations lack. There remain defenders of the term too. Dominic McIver Lopes, one of those rare aestheticians who still employ the term, favors its use and asks audiences to “set aside the negative associations that cling to the name,” those common misgivings that he says propel us toward preferring the term “digital art.”3 On the whole, however, “digital art” has become the term of choice, both in the art world and the academy. As influential theorist and curator Peter Weibel recently wrote, computer art is now “finally implemented as ‘digital art.’”4 While the term “computer art” appears redundant in the face of rapid technological change, there are other reasons for its absence from our current lexicon. The negative associations that “cling”— to use Lopes’ description—to computer art give us some clue to the deeper undercurrent of misgiving. As Douglas Kahn, a leading theorist of early digital music, rightly points out, when we speak of early computer art, it is often branded as “bad art.”5 For many artists of the period, the term both embodies a sense of rejection and reveals the essential contradiction in the art form itself. Pairing the noun “computer” with “art” has in effect built a label with an unending fission, a precarious reaction from joining two seemingly incompatible and oppositional worlds. This discomfort concerning the incongruous combination has in fact permeated all writing on the subject. For many of its detractors, computer art was simply a contradiction in terms; for even its most ardent exponents, the classifier was simply insufficient to describe the immense diversities within digital practice. In fact, ever since the birth of this neologism in 1963, to the decline of its use in the early 1990s, the oxymoronic overtones of the term “computer art” have troubled all who have used it.