Personal computing may have begun in the 1980s but the history of computer art started much earlier during a period when only a few visionaries sensed the impact computers were going to have on our lives.
The Slovakia-based Translab has a good online archive of early computer art from names that aren’t widely known but were important for their early work with computers. These works date from the third quarter of the 20th C. and reveal a parallel history of electronic experimentation that doesn’t have much relation to commonly known art history.
For further reading on the topic, Wikipedia’s page on the topic is very helpful. One fact in particular jumped out at me, namely that most of the creators of early computer art were engineers and scientists — and not “artists” — who had access to university computing facilities.
According to the Translab page, the two major centers of computer art during this early period were The Murray Hill lab, Bell Laboratories, New Jersey, US (now AT&T), and Technische Universitat Stuttgart, Germany (Max Bense).
According to Wikipedia:
The first two exhibitions of computer art were held in 1965 – Computer-Generated Pictures, April 1965, at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York, and Generative Computergrafik, February 1965, at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. The Stuttgart exhibit featured work by Georg Nees; the New York exhibit featured work by Bela Julesz and A. Michael Noll. Note the names of these expositions, not mentioning the word ‘art,’ because these ‘generated pictures’ were not yet seen as such.

A. Michael Noll, “Four Computer-Generated Random Patterns Based on the Composition Criteria Of Mondrian’s Composition With Lines” (1964) (click to enlarge)
I don’t know much about the Stuttgart space mentioned above but I can say that I’m not surprised that the Howard Wise Gallery was the venue for the one of the earliest computer art shows. During its short existence in New York (1960–71), the Wise Gallery was home to many firsts in electronic and digital art. Owner Howard Wise’s New York Times obituary mentions he was, “an art patron and a former dealer who gave important early support to the technology in art movement in the United States” and that his gallery exhibited “the first survey in the United States of contemporary kinetic art” and three years later he showed “the first comprehensive survey in this country of kinetic light art.” As if that wasn’t enough, Wise also organized the first exhibition of video art in 1969, TV as a Creative Medium, and “two years later he founded Electronic Arts Intermix, a nonprofit organization that distributes artists’ videotapes and provides editing and post-production facilities for independent videomakers … which became a model for other arts support groups in New York and elsewhere.”
While some of these early computer art projects look more like experiments than finished projects, I would love to see a comprehensive exhibition of this period that could give us a critical assessment of the success and/or failure of these projects.
Hat tip @DesignObserver via @kirstenbutler
If you like this, you might also be interested in a display that’s on at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, until 25 April. It’s called Digital Pioneers, and it’s in the Museum’s Prints and Drawings Galleries (88A and 90). There’s also a book with the same title. The V&A now has an extensive collection of early computer-generated art, including works by Mark Wilson, Michael Noll and many others.
See http://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibs/Digital%20Pioneers/index.html and http://www.vam.ac.uk/computerart
Sorry, I should just say that the Digital Pioneers display now closes on 21st April, not the 25th as previously stated.
Thanks for providing this. I’ll write a follow-up post.
Not a big deal, but The Howard Wise Gallery was in operation in New York from 1960-1970. Previously, Howard Wise ran his gallery in Ohio and then closed the gallery in order to start up Electronic Arts Intermix. http://www.eai.org/eai/webPage.htm?id=28
Hi Corinna, According to the NY Times it closed in 1971. I was aware of the space in Cleveland but from what I read the exhibitions there were more conventional. And yes, I mentioned Electronic Artist. Thanks for commenting.
This makes me think of fractals when they were still considered something that artists might pursue. They seem very cheesy to our eyes now, but there was a time when they were on the cutting edge of computing and seemed to hold immense promise for computer art. (Some digital artists still incorporate fractal-related formulae into their work, but avoid the stereotyped “psychedelic” Mandelbrot set imagery.)
Fractals also started as the domain of scientists, but with a lot of artist interest. A semi-relation of mine is a mathematician who co-published one of the early fractal books (just as they first taught computers to generate them and, even bigger when processors were so slow, taught computers to print them) with an art professor. It sounds like it was a really exciting collaboration for both sides.
Aaaand- are you familiar with the Art & Technology program of the late 1960s? That’s not 100% relevant, but seems like it might be of interest to you.
Hello from Germany.
The question about early computer art is a little tricky.
From what day on is a work with a computer called computer art?
The days of the old analog computers or the days of the digital computers?
I know about an artist a writer, which started computer art with an analog computer in 1956. His work was exhibited at real shows in Wien, Munich, Zurich, London UK before 1960. In 1960, his work was exhibited in Basel. Maybe, some day I write more about it.
kem
Hey guys,
I am writing my senior thesis on Michael Noll, Charles Csuri, Ken Knowlton, among others, and it seems you all have some background and know where to find info on all this. I’m finding it actually remarkably difficult to find books/articles etc. that specifically discuss early computer art. Any suggestions? Thanks
Alex J