“The brush is an electron beam; the canvas, an oscilloscope; the painter, an electronic computer.” This is how the journal Computers and Automation introduced its January 1963 cover: a black-and-red mountain range of a waveform created by junior MIT technician Ebram Arazi. This piece of “electronic surrealism,” as the editors described it, wasn’t just a departure from the magazine’s traditional covers (smartly dressed engineers grinning over desk-sized computer banks), it was also one of the earliest documented examples of computer art ever, and the editors were so taken with it, that in February of the same year, they introduced an annual competition. It was “the first of its kind,” writes art historian Grant D. Taylor in his book When the Machine Made Art, and the journal had a “crucial role in connecting the growing number of interested technologists and artists.”
A look back at the first computer art contests from the ‘60s: bullet ricochets and sine curve portraits
In any given issue, Computers and Automation devoted equal time to the latest methods of database storage and grand questions about the future of their "great instrument," but the Computer Art Contest was soon a regular event. A look back through old issues of the journal (available at Internet Archive) shows how the fledgling discipline of computer art rapidly evolved. At the time, computers were specialized tools, most commonly used by individuals working in research labs, academia, or the military — and this heritage shows. Both the first and second prizes for the inaugural 1963 competition went to designs generated at the same military lab.
One of these is a "Splatter Pattern" printed at the United States Army Ballistic Research Laboratories (BRL) — the institute responsible for creating a number of revolutionary devices including the world's first electric general-purpose computer, ENIAC. Although the Computers and Automation editorial announcing "Splatter Pattern" as the winner of its first competition is light on details, the name of the piece suggests its origins in ballistic calculations. Another design from the BRL that won the magazine's competition the following year "shows trajectories of a ricocheting projectile (ranges vs. altitude)." The US military, it seems, didn't just have a hand in kickstarting the computer industry — they also helped shape its early artistic instincts.
The ricocheting projectile design by an anonymous programmer featured on the cover of the August 1964 issue of Computers and Automation (Internet Archive)
Although many computer designs featured in Computers and Automation's contests focus on abstract and repeating geometric shapes (presumably due to the technical limitations and intended use of software at the time), there is a sense of expanding purpose as computers are turned to new tasks. An issue from February 1965 features a report on computer-designed space ships created by Boeing, and by the time we get to the sixth annual computer art contest there are portraits of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln alongside abstract designs of wreathes, whirlpools, and rings. By 1975, the computer art has even moved into the physical world, with the year's April issue featuring the sculptural work of Spanish artist Jose Luis Alexanco on its cover. Alexanco coded his own computer programs to morph and stretch humanoid figures and then modeled them in resin. It's not clear whether the physical sculpture featured on the cover was itself created by a computer or just the design, but the object looks strangely similar to 3D-printed artwork created today.
Looking through past competitions offers more than a few comparable instances of déjà vu, with programmer-artists grappling not only with similar methods of artistic creation (e.g. producing shapes and patterns by tweaking mathematical equations), but also similar critical concepts. An editorial note from 1967 declares that as outside galleries begin to exhibit computer art, "a turning point... has been reached" and computers will soon be used in a wide variety of artistic disciplines, from photography and painting, to sculpture and music. Computers and Automation editor Edmund Berkeley even wonders: "Will the human being be superseded?" Eventually, though, he concludes that this could never happen, as no matter how much art is created by computers, it is human beings that control them and make "the decision about what is beautiful." We wonder if he would have been so confident today.
