Computers and the Visual Arts: A Retrospective View

Notes

Catalog of the SIGGRAPH '82 Art Show, July 1982. The single page is footed “(Reprinted from the catalog of the SIGGRAPH '82 Art Show, July 1982.)” No page number is printed. The supplied citation is confirmed.. Self-archived by the author at http://noll.uscannenberg.org/Art%20Papers/Retrospective%20View.pdf — Noll posts his own papers on his site at noll.uscannenberg.org, which is where this copy comes from. Hosting here is with his agreement, given to Bre Pettis directly on 6 October 2026. A single-page essay in three columns with ten footnotes. A biographical note records that Noll helped pioneer computer-assisted art at Bell Labs in the 1960s, exhibited in the first American and international expositions of computer graphics, and was then planning videotex services for AT&T. He opens by quoting his own 1967 IEEE Spectrum standfirst about the computer as an intellectual and active creative partner, concedes that fifteen years on the promised new art forms have not evolved, and says this might support Jack Burnham's verdict of a panacea that failed - which he judges premature. He recalls the conductor Hermann Scherchen telling him fifteen years earlier that computer music's effects could then be duplicated with a few audio oscillators in his Gravesano studio. Electronic and computer music has since advanced greatly, but it was pop and rock, not serious classical music, that exploited it, and the musicians who did were not the pioneers. He draws three lessons: pioneers are often not the ultimate exploiters, the uses are ones they did not envisage, and exploitation takes far longer than expected. The same has happened in the visual arts, where success has come in graphics and graphic design - corporate slides, integrated-circuit masks, television, advertising, textiles and wallpaper - not in the classical visual arts. His complaints about the art are that many images mimic other media, are cold and sterile and devoid of human expression, that randomness plus geometric structure gives designs that are interesting and little more, that the emphasis falls on how a work was made rather than what was made, and that the interactive potential goes unused. He weighs three explanations: Burnham's claim of a dissimilarity between art and technology as systems of human semiosis; something in the computer suiting geometric design but not stimuli from reality and nature; or, as he believes, that it is far too soon to judge, since photography took decades to become a medium and video was only then arriving. He withdraws the citizen-artist he once parroted from Allon Schoener and comes full circle to his 1967 optimism: it will happen; the question is when. Points of record: Opens and closes on his own 1967 IEEE Spectrum paragraph about the computer as an intellectual and active creative partner, concluding the promise is unrealised but that judgement is premature; Argues that the pioneers of a technology are usually not its ultimate exploiters, citing computer music's adoption by pop and rock rather than by serious classical music; Says the computer's success in visual work has come in graphics and graphic design - corporate slides, integrated-circuit masks, television, advertising, textiles and wallpaper - not in the classical visual arts; Complains that too much computer art emphasises how it was made rather than what was made, as if the medium had become the art; Withdraws his earlier endorsement of Allon Schoener's citizen-artist, arguing the artist's trained aesthetic sensibilities remain unique; Summarises his own 1960s Bell Labs work as computer choreography, computer-generated stereoscopic movies (a form of kinetic sculpture) and random patterns made on a computer-controlled microfilm plotter; States that he became disillusioned and retired from computer art after making the four-dimensional perspective-projection main title for a network television special. Illustrated: None. The single page carries no illustrations; the only display element is the 1967 quotation set as a pull quote.. People named: A. Michael Noll - author; formerly a research scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, and at the time of writing planning videotex and other telecommunications services for AT&T, Hermann Scherchen - conductor, quoted from a conversation about computer music and his studio at Gravesano, Max Mathews - named as a particularly laudable Bell Labs pioneer of computer music who created an environment giving musicians access to the technology, Ken Knowlton and Ed Zajac - Bell Labs colleagues investigating digital computers in animation for artistic and educational purposes, Jack Burnham - cited for “Art and Technology: The Panacea That Failed” and for art and technology as systems of human semiosis, Allon Schoener - cited for “2066 And All That”, Art in America (1966), source of the citizen-artist idea, Jasia Reichardt - editor of the Cybernetic Serendipity catalogue, London 1968, cited, C. Roads - cited for an interview with Max Mathews, Computer Music Journal (1980). Noted: The citation printed on the page agrees with the supplied one; no page number is printed. Footnote 3 cites “Computers And The Visual Arts” as Design and Planning Number 2, ed. Martin Krampen and Peter Seitz, Hastings House, New York, 1967, pp. 65-79 - a longer range than the pp. 65-71 given in the supplied citation for that item. The scan garbles some words: “Cybernetic Serendipity” appears partly as “&pity”, “criticize” as “cnticize”, and footnote 10 gives “Alton Schoener” where the body reads Allon Schoener. The network television special that prompted his retirement is not named here; the 1994 Leonardo memoir identifies it as “The Unexplained”, an Encyclopaedia Britannica special for NBC written by Arthur C. Clarke, colorcast 3 April 1970. Noll says he exhibited in “the first American and international expositions of computer graphics” without naming them.