Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies This series is our home for innovative research in the fields of art and visual studies. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into visual culture and art practice, theory, and research. The Evolution of the Image Political Action and rhe Digital Self Edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska Artistic Visions of the Anthropocene North Edited by Gry Hedin and Ann-Sofie N. Greinaud Contemporary Artists Working Outside the City Creative Retreat Sarah Lowndes Design and Visual Culture from the Bauhaus to Contemporary Art Optical Deconstructions Edit Toth Changing Representations of Nature and the City The 1960s-1970s and Their Legacies Edited by Gabriel Gee and Alison Vogelaar The Artist-Philosopher and New Philosophy George Smith Geneses of Postmodern Art Technology As Iconology Paid Crowther For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge- Advances-in-Art-and-Visual-Srudies/book-series/RAVS Digital Art, Aesthetic Creation The Birth of a Medium Paul Crowther Routledge Taylor & Francis Group First published 2019 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 0X14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an in forma business ©2019 Taylor &. Francis The right of Paul Crowther to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Crowther, Paul, author. Title: Digital art, aesthetic creation : the birth of a medium / Paul Crowther. Description: New York : Routledge, 2019.1 Series: Routledge advances in art and visual studies I Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018018278 (print) 1 LCCN 2018020272 (ebook) I ISBN 9780429467943 (ebook) I ISBN 9780429S86157 (adobe) I ISBN 9780429886140 (epub) I ISBN 9780429886133 (mobi) I ISBN 978113S605763 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Computer art. Classification: LCC N7433.8 (ebook) I LCC N7433.8 .C76 2019 (print) 1 DDC 776-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018278 ISBN: 97S-1 -138-60576-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46794-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear MIX Paper from FSC rtipont.ble tourcei Printed in the United Kingdom FSCC013965 by Henry Ling Limited Contents List of Plates vi List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix A Methodological Prologue 1 Introduction: The Possibility of Digital Art 6 1 Machine-Being: Desmond Paul Henry’s Computer Art 20 2 The Emergence of Digital Art 36 3 Digital Plasticity and Its Objects 64 4 Echoes of Nature, Enhanced Realities: The Rise of Digital Figuration 96 5 Computer-Assisted Hybrids 130 6 Interactivities 146 Bibliography 171 Index 176 Plates Unless otherwise stated, rhe plates and figures have been provided by the artists themselves or by their estates. The images are captioned according to the artists’ specifications and (unless stated otherwise) are copyrighted to the artists or to their estates. 1 Desmond Paul Henry, 1962 no. 656 2 Desmond Paul Henry, 1962 no. 670 3 Desmond Paul Henry, 1963 no. 258 4 Manfred Mohr, P-701~B 5 Manfred Mohr, P-703__C 6 David Em, Transjovian Pipeline 7 William Latham, Mutation X Raytraced 8 Gerhard Mantz, Seltenes Gluck (Rare Luck) 9 Charles Csuri, Root of Evil (aka Ritual) 10 Harold Cohen, Mother and Daughter 11 Harold Cohen, 0305-08 12 Gerhard Mantz, Einleitende Begriiflung (Introductory Address of Welcome) 13 Gerhard Mantz, Latente Toleranz (Latent Tolerance) 14 Chris Finley, Goo Goo Potv Wow 15 Char Davies, Vertical Tree from Osmose 16 Vuk Cosic, ASCII Unreal Figures 1.1 Georg Nees, Plastik 1 13 1.2 Erwin Red!, Corner Study II 14 1.1 Desmond Paul Henry, 1961 no. 600 23 1.2 Desmond Paul Henry, 1962 no. 634 26 1.3 Desmond Paul Henry, 1963 no. 220 27 1.4 Desmond Paul Henry, 1964 no. 354 28 1.5 Desmond Paul Henry, 1965 no. 096 29 2.1 A. Michael Noll, Pattern 1 37 2.2 A. Michael Noll, Pattern 4 38 2.3 A. Michael Noll, Pattern 7 39 2.4 Georg Nees, 23-Ecke (Polygon of 23 vertices} 43 2.5 Georg Nees, Schotter 45 2.6 Georg Nees, Corridor 46 2.7 Frieder Nake, 13/9/65 Nr. 5 47 2.8 Frieder Nake, Walk-Through-Raster series 2.1-4 48 2.9 Frieder Nake, 13/9/65 Nr. 2 49 2.10 Manfred Mohr, P-049-R ‘a formal language* 52 2.11 Manfred Mohr, P-71, ‘serielie zeichenreihung' 53 2.12 Manfred Mohr, P-59 ‘n + 3Hz’ 53 2.13 Manfred Mohr, P-080a 54 2.14 Manfred Mohr, P-306-0 56 2.15 Manfred Mohr, P-411-B 57 3.1 Edward Zajec, The Cube: Theme and Variations 65 3.2 Edward Zajec, tvc 78478 67 3.3 Edward Zajec, tvc 38839 68 3.4 Duane M. Palyka, CMU 1 71 3.5 Duane M. Palyka, Patterned Bubbles 72 3.6 David Em, Caligari 75 3.7 David Em, Mar 78 3.8 David Em, Guadelope 79 3.9 David Em, QED 80 3.10 William Latham, Twister 1 83 3.11 William Latham, Tube Horn with Egg 84 3.12 William Latham, Mutation Y 1 Raytraced 86 3.13 William Latham, Breeding Forms on the Infinite Plane 89 3.14 Gerhard Mantz, Lokale Revolte (Local Revolt) 93 viii Figures 4.1 Nancy Burson, Androgyny (6 men and 6 women) 98 4.2 Charles Csuri and James Shaffer, Sine Curve Man 101 4.3 Charles Csuri, Gossip 105 4.4 Charles Csuri, Where Do We Look) (aka Believers) 107 4.5 Harold Cohen, Drawing 110 4.6 Harold Cohen, Drawing 111 4.7 Harold Cohen, Drawing 113 4.8 Gerhard Mantz, Heimtiickische Hoffnung (Treacherous Hope) 119 4.9 Gerhard Mantz, Land ohne Heimat (Land without Home) 120 4.10 Gerhard Mantz, Die Macht des Schicksals (The Power of Fate) 121 4.11 Gerhard Mantz, Southport Avenue 122 4.12 Kenneth Feingold, If/Then 126 5.1 Joseph Nechvatal, Informed Man 131 5.2 Joseph Nechvatal, the birth Of the viractual 133 5.3 Robert Mallary, Quad II 137 5.4 Robert Lazzarini, payphone 139 5.5 Jean-Pierre Hebert, Ulysses 141 6.1 Jim Campbell, Interactive Hallucination 148 6.2 Jeffrey Shaw, The Legible City 152 6.3 Maurice Benayoun, The Tunnel Under the Atlantic 154 6.4 David Rokeby, The Giver of Hames 157 6.5 Char Davies, Immersant performing in the immersive virtual environment Osmose 158 6.6 Olia Lialtna, My boyfriend came back from the war 162 6.7 Victoria Vesna, Bodies INCorporated 165 Acknowledgments Thanks are due to Manfred Mohr, A. Michael Noll, Duane Palyka, Edward Zajec, David Em, William Latham, Gerhard Mantz, Chuck Csuri, Harold Cohen, Tom Machnik, Chris Finley, Joseph Nechvatal, Ken Feingold, Frieder Nake, Jean-Pierre Hebert, Vuk Cosic, Victoria Vesna, and Char Davies for their advice to the author during the writing of this book. U. M M A Methodological Prologue Routledge publish this volume simultaneously with a companion work - Geneses of Postmodern Art: Technology As Iconology. In the companion work, it is argued that digital art is a highly distinctive Postmodern art form, and a number of examples of it are discussed. The present book takes this further. It is a dedicated study of the specific historical and philosophical circumstances of digital art’s emergence in the Postmodern era. Both books address Postmodern art from a shared methodological position, and thence some of the following introductory material is found in both works. J.-F. Lyotard famously defined Postmodernism as an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives.’1 He also held that forms of knowledge in the Postmodern era are based on competition between different ‘language games’ (in the Wittgensteinian sense) where each of the various categories of utterance can be defined in terms of rules speci­ fying their properties and the uses to which they can be put - in exactly the same way as the game of chess is defined by a set of rules determining the properties of each of the pieces, in other words, the proper way to move them.2 However, Lyotard also suggests that The classical dividing lines between the various fields of science are ... called into question - disciplines disappear, overlappings occur at the borders between sciences, and from these new territories are born. The speculative hierarchy of learning gives way to an immanent and, as it were, ‘flat’ network of areas of inquiry, the respective frontiers of which are in constant flux.3 In this passage Lyotard is indicating - without naming it - another key epistemologi­ cal feature of Postmodernism - deconstruction, where traditional boundaries between forms of knowledge break down and are reconfigured in new hybrid modes. This is why so much ‘Theory’ in the Postmodern era has emphasized difference, het­ erogeneity, flux, rhizomatic thinking, territories, nomadism and the like (deriving its inspirations, usually quite dogmatically, from figures such as Derrida, Foucault, and - more emphatically - Deleuze and Guattari). A correlated view is that systematic ‘foundational’ knowledge is at odds with the intrinsic heterogeneity of discursive practices. It merely reflects the hierarchical interests of white male, middle-class, imperialistic, heterosexist patriarchy.