This week a guest blog entry by Elizabeth Whiteley

If you are planning to visit London very soon, consider viewing “Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computer.” The exhibit is at the V&A Museum until November 18. It’s a small and well selected show of pioneering work since 1968. That year there was an international show titled “Cybernetic Serendipity” at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Many of those artists are included in this exhibit.

One of the wall notes contains a description of the way images were produced in the early years of computer-generated art. Next to a work by George Nees it says “The plotter was operated by feeding punched tape into a computer that used the instruction to direct a pen across a drawing surface. As the computer had no screen, Nees would not have been able to fully anticipate the appearance of the resulting drawing.” Nowadays, we can preview an image pixel by pixel!

 Thanks for your contribution Elizabeth! Next week more New York art.

Susan Happersett