In the beginning, there was the analogue. An alternative history of the beginnings of computer art

2024

Margit Rosen examines overlooked experiments with analogue and hybrid computers, distinguishing them from oscilloscope imagery and reconsidering the technologies, participants, and public presentations that shaped early computer art.

Author / editor: Margit Rosen
Publisher: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Format: Digital journal article (PDF)
Pages: 10
Language: English
Edition: Artnodes, no. 34, July 2024

Published in Artnodes in July 2024, this illustrated essay broadens computer-art history beyond digital machines. Rosen distinguishes electronic signal generators connected to oscilloscopes from analogue computers used for calculation and simulation, showing why similar-looking images do not necessarily imply the same technical process.

For Ben Laposky, she reproduces an Electronic Abstractions image from Scripta Mathematica (1952) and cites his November 1968 letter explaining that the Oscillons did not involve computer programming or circuitry. She also examines changes in Herbert W. Franke’s terminology for his apparatus.

The essay brings together less familiar experiments by Herbert W. Ziebolz, Kurd Alsleben and Cord Passow, Inge Borchardt, Maughan S. Mason, and others. Its broader contribution is to recover analogue computing as a setting for artistic experimentation and immediate interaction with a machine’s visual output.

The reproduction of Laposky’s 1952 publication appears on page 3, figure 1. This entry documents the digital journal article.

Original publication and DOI.

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Margit Rosen, Artnodes, no. 34, July 2024, pp. 1–10.

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