Computer art

movement 1960s-present Germany United States

Computer art names art made with the help of computers and algorithmic procedures, from the first plotter drawings of the early 1960s to today's generative and AI-assisted practice. Pioneers like Frieder Nake, Georg Nees and Manfred Mohr in Germany, and A. Michael Noll in the United States, wrote programs that drove pen plotters through controlled chance, producing geometric drawings no hand would quite repeat; Vera Molnár made the machine a partner in variation and order. Harold Cohen's AARON program grew into an autonomous image-maker. Because the artwork is a set of instructions as much as an object, computer art raised enduring questions about authorship, randomness and the look of precision. Its aesthetics - grids, seriality, systematic color - flow into net art, generative design and digital fabrication.

A camper's morning? the skies are rendered from a terragen expert's atmospherics. Will get back to that later.
A camper's morning? the skies are rendered from a terragen expert's atmospherics. Will get back to that later.CC BY 2.0 (credit: R Singh) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Algorithmic procedures: the artwork as executed instruction
  • Plotter-drawn lines: precise, uniform, systematic
  • Serial variation, grids and controlled randomness
  • Geometric abstraction built on mathematical structure
  • The machine as collaborator; authorship shared with the program

Key figures

  • Frieder Nake (b. 1938) — One of the first artists to exhibit computer drawings, from 1965
  • Georg Nees (1926-2016) — Stuttgart pioneer of stochastic plotter graphics
  • Vera Molnár (1924-2023) — Pioneer of computer-aided geometric abstraction
  • Manfred Mohr (b. 1938) — Algorithmic geometry derived from the cube and hypercube
  • Harold Cohen (1928-2016) — Creator of the AARON drawing program

Example works

  • Schotter — Georg Nees (c. 1968)
  • AARON — Harold Cohen (from 1973)

Sources

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