Brian Gaines is a designer, writer, and the Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a graduate of Clemson University’s interdisciplinary Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) PhD program. His research interests reside at the nexus of visual rhetoric, surveillance studies, détournement, and hauntology. His work has appeared in Textshop Experiments, Sweetland DRC, and Parlor Press, among others.

* * *

In Digital Art Aesthetic Creation: Birth of a Medium Paul Crowther, Professor of Philosophy at Alma Mater Europaea – Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis in Slovenia, asks the question of whether computers can truly create art. Crowther affirms that this is indeed the case, with computers being able to generate aesthetic effects based upon the two-fold argument of advancements in computational technology and Postmodernism’s naturalization of technological advances as something we “both live in and use” (1) Published simultaneously with a companion work – Geneses of Postmodern Art: Technology as Iconology, Crowther guides the reader along two distinct paths Where Geneses argues that “that digital art is a highly distinctive Postmodern art form” (Crowther 1), Digital Art concerns itself primarily as “a dedicated study of the specific historical and philosophical circumstances of digital art’s emergence in the Postmodern era” (1).  Crowther, noting that he is addressing “Postmodern Art from a shared methodological position” (1), a Methodological Prologue is found in both volumes that provides introductory material to establish a concise baseline of Postmodernism, beginning with Lyotard, for the reader.

Within the introduction, which places emphasis on the possibility of digital art as cultural practices that form pluralistic styles contra a singular, overarching style, Crowther succinctly disabuses us to the conceptual shifts of the 1950s and 1960s (6). It is within these shifts, predicated upon “the ramifications of technological creativity and mass production,” as well as alluding to the contributions of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, the reader is introduced to the concept of the contingency thesis, which holds that “artistic creation no longer requires that the artist physically makes his or her artwork” (6). Given the freedom afforded to the artist by the contingency thesis, whether through found materials, Conceptual work, or the appropriation of mass-produced objects or technological advances in computation, Crowther makes a compelling case for software as a medium. The pluralism that digital art offers, Crowther argues, “explores ‘deconstructive’ Postmodern questions about how computer-derived strategies both differ from, and overlap with, other modes of art in the post-industrial era” (7). Citing the advent of digital systems in computing in the 1960s, Walter Benjamin’s notions of the technological impact upon the cultural as economic life, and the computational as the main tool within the infrastructure of a post-industrial society, Crowther makes the connection between artistic production and the computer as a medium within what he terms the techno-habitat (7). Given the prolific careers of artists such as the 2014 Prix Ars Electronica recipient Ryoji Ikeda, the Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) router portraiture of Mike Lyon, and the throng of outsider and so-called “low brow” artists whose chosen medium resides within the polychrestia of computation as a medium, Digital Art, Aesthetic Creation and its accompanying volume provide a much-needed art historical and technological account of Postmodernism and the rise of the digital as a viable artistic medium.  Over six chapters, Crowther provides a solid base for this art historical and technological narrative.

Crowther begins Chapter One by introducing the reader to the notion of a shift from Modernity to Post-Modernity through the analog computer drawing machines of Desmond Paul Henry. Through the subsequent output of this machine and the scheduled feature in Time-Life Magazine in November 1963 (20), a growing public interest in technological advances in the arts was becoming established. This is especially interesting, as Henry was neither a professional artist nor a computer engineer. Crowther notes that while the analog machine that produced Henry’s drawings were neither digital nor programmable, the innovations in the structure and applications of machine technology contains an intimate link to Modernity (21). Citing disparate Modernist movements, including Futurism and Bauhaus, he traces the cultural practices that privilege the role of machines within cultural practices.

That Henry developed his drawing machine from the remnants of a World-War Two-era Sperry Bombsight analog computer is telling: Crowther draws serious comparisons between the Modernist regard for the machinic with Henry’s own pleasure in watching the mechanisms of the computer for many years prior to connecting a 24-volt D.C servomotor to set the drawing apparatus in motion (22). Through hand embellishments with felt tip markers and India Ink, Crowther contends that Henry’s work, through active contingency, can be viewed as a logical corollary of Duchamp’s assisted readymades by making the connection that the bombsight analog computer is a found object that Henry helps develop its own “aesthetic possibilities” (30). Through the collaborative efforts of human and machine Crowther guides the reader through the transformation of his concept of machine-being into an “enduring aesthetic” (35).

In Chapter Two, the reader is introduced to the evolution from analog machine art production, such as that developed by Henry and also by John Whitney, to a more fully realized use of digital machines in art production. While Whitney was initially working along similar avenues as Henry –using surplus military machines– he eventually was able to generate imagery via digital means through GRAF and Fortran programming languages on an IBM mainframe, with which he was able to generate three-dimensional imagery (36), which was subsequently shown in the Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition of 1968. Crowther then turns the readers’ attention to A. Michael Noll and the digital work he was conducting at Bell Laboratories.

Through a detailed analysis of Noll’s Patterns project – which took place in 1962 – Crowther outlines for the reader the progression of digitally drawn lines from the flat and static to those that depict three dimensionality and action, which he describes as being a pivotal in digital art. While Noll chose not to emphasize the aesthetic qualities of his patterns, according to Crowther this information-based aesthetic was crucial to the “Stuttgart School” and the first dedicated exhibition of digital art: Generative Computergrafik in 1965 (41). It is here that the reader is introduced to who Crowther identifies as the first theorist of digital art: the philosopher Max Bense (42).

Crowther then examines the work of Bense and the generative graphics pioneer Georg Nees, which led to the publication of six drawings in the journal rot (edition 19, February 1965) (42-43). The reader is then exposed to the work of Frieder Nake, who introduced the element of formalized reciprocity, in which the artist “could program different visual outcomes which are realized by the machine and fed back to the artist for a decision” (49).

While the aforementioned were primarily mathematicians cum artists, Crowther introduces the reader to the work of Manfred Mohr, an established artist who came to programming for his creative practice in the late 1960s and 1970s (50). Crowther stresses the importance of an established artist turning to the digital as a means of image making as a justification for knowing in advance the outcome rather than images achieved through “luck and chance” such as painting (50). Here the reader becomes aware of a formalized language that in turn is used to create formal aesthetic choices whose outcome can be derived through the execution of mathematical laws. As Crowther suggests, the broader effects of this type of work is the “evocation of organic material as the embodiment of complex mathematical relations” (52). The use of algorithmic image making, as outlined by Mohr, has implications in the generative image making practices we see today, from open source programming languages such as Processing and architecture, among others.

In Chapter Three, Crowther makes us aware of the achievement of plasticity and the rise of “distinctively digital spaces” (93). While this previously meant a reliance upon the three-dimensional illusionism of figuration (93), the modes of illusionism afforded by plasticity allowed for the digital to break free from a rigid, quadratic style of representation to forms that were becoming more recognizable and organic. According to Crowther these forms – such as those created by David Em, William Latham, and Gerhard Manz – presented the viewer with “a sense of objective unity and relations – ways in which new materials or organic things might cohere in alternative worlds of space occupying objects and states of affairs” (71, 75, 79, 83-84, 86, 95). In this chapter, the reader is invited to consider the digital art as an ontological object, something that may inhabit the same spaces as we do.

While the previous chapters were primarily concerned with semiotics and mathematic-based aesthetics whose main orientation was abstraction, in Chapter Four Crowther turns our attention towards the figurative in digital art. Specifically, the reader is introduced to Nancy Burson and a subset of digitization known as morphing (96-97).

Through Burson’s work, most notably Androgyny (6 men and 6 women) (1982) and Lion/Lamb (1983), the reader is presented with a truly visual sense of what Crowther states as “a key feature of Postmodern technology – namely its capacity to induce biological transformations with far-reaching outcomes for gender and genetics” (97). As Crowther previously mentioned in this book, the converging and overlapping associated with Postmodernity is well-documented in the examples form Burson.

Crowther then turns the reader’s attention to the work of Charles Cursi, who was involved in the early use of algorithms in the creation of digital art. As he traces Cursi’s evolution as a digital artist from the mid-1960s through the 1990s, one can see his early works embodying an Expressionist overtone to the fragmented human forms he depicts in his later work. It is in this later work that Crowther discusses the use of both scanning of a two-dimensional painting, then mapping it onto three-dimensional digital objects (104-105). Crowther is quick to point out that while the resulting imagery, titled Gossip, seems playful it, in fact, belies a sophisticated manipulation of imagery using digital methods.

In Chapter Five, Crowther explores the notion of computer-assisted artworks. As a converse to the aforementioned works created on plotters, Crowther here explores digital art as physical execution that involves “robotic or autographic painting or sculpture” (130).  In other cases, Crowther notes, the final physical work is a “Conceptual form of some kind, which the computer assists in delivering” (130).

Through an exploration of the work of Joseph Nechvatal, specifically The Informed Man, the idea of Crowther’s machine-being becomes clearer. Nechvatal, using the Scanmural technique, which in the case of this particular work involves robotic arms fitted with airbrush guns to execute the final piece (130). The Conceptual framework lies beyond the mere execution of the final painting, as Crowther notes that Nechvatal’s inquiries into the “ideological issues raised by art media,” and his own interests in philosophy and Benjamin’s theories about art and mass-production (130).

Crowther also uses The Informed Man as an object of inquiry to ponder what he calls the “aesthetic dislocation” between the relative compactness of computational hardware and the creation of an artwork that must be realized in a physical space (131). Exploring Nechvatal’s concept of the viractual – a theory that strives to see, understand, and create interfaces between the technological and the biological – a connection as to how art can give expression to the techno-habitat of Postmodernism can be seen (131-132).

Crowther concludes Digital Art with a chapter titled Interactivities, where he illustrates how interactive works of art, especially net-access works, could end up appealing to a small subset of elites, critics, and others for whom the idea of digital art amounts to “escapism or self-indulgence” and at the other end of the spectrum “agitprop” (168-169).

Digital Art, as a scholarly work, excels as a serious look into art history, computer science, and Postmodern philosophy. Particularly from an art historical perspective, Crowther has successfully curated an account that focuses on the advent of a mode of creation that realizes the pluralism of the Postmodern epoch. Moreover, Crowther is able to document this completely within the digital, eschewing the traditional, overly documented accounts of artists such as Warhol and LeWitt, two artists who desperately wanted to model their respective art practices on the machine versus those who created and continue to create art via machines. That many of the artists presented in this volume are not within the typical Art History canon is one of its greatest strengths. As a serious work on art, technology, and Postmodernism, Digital Art and its companion book are excellent resources.

Further Reading

Crowther, Paul. Digital Art, Aesthetic Creation: The Birth of a Medium. Routledge, 2018.

Ikeda, Ryoji. Supersymetry. Installation. 2014.

Lyotard, J.-F. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Manchester University Press, 1984.