Desmond Paul Henry

British · 1921–2004

Desmond Paul Henry (1921–2004) lectured on medieval philosophy at Manchester by day and, at home, turned war surplus into art: three drawing machines (1960, 1963, 1967) built from the analogue computers of WWII bombsights, spinning out curvilinear traceries no hand could repeat and no program controlled — the machines couldn't be programmed at all. L. S. Lowry judged him a winner of Salford's 1961 competition and visited his house to see the machine; the Reid Gallery gave him "Ideographs" in 1962, among the first solo shows of machine art anywhere, and Drawing Machine 2 performed interactively at Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968. He kept building — a fourth machine in 1984, a pendulum-based fifth in 2002 — and explored cameraless photography in between. The V&A holds his machine drawings; his daughter runs the estate.

Artist's website (desmondhenry.com) ↗Read more on Wikipedia ↗

1 physical work

Works in the collection

1963 Drawing

1963

In the library

Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Margit Rosen, Media Karlsruhe · 2024

Do Computers Ruminate? On the Impossibility of "Thinking-Feeling" in AI Art

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein · 2023

Desmond Paul Henry: Manchester Pioneer of Computer Art Exhibition catalogue for the Henry exhibition at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (07/02/2011-07/05/2011) Editors: Elaine O’Hanrahan, Claire O’Hanrahan

· 2015