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The following is a summary of Leiser’s (n.d.) description of three key computer art phases coupled with insights mainly drawn from the work of King (2002), the afore mentioned Victoria and Albert website, and the writings of Alvy Ray Smith III (1997), an American engineer and pioneer in computer graphics who co-founded the animation studio Pixar with Edwin Catmull and Steve Jobs in the 1970s:

Phase 1: 1956-1986 The Pioneers

During this period it was stated that: “Man is creating in our time new tools and methods at a rate unmatched in the past” (Davis, 1973, p. 16). Indeed many artists were working with mechanical devices and analogue computers in a way that can be seen as a precursor to the work of the early digital pioneers who followed. The pioneers of digital art were not all primarily artists, but their visual explorations were crucial to the emerging medium. The writing of the first aesthetically orientated computer programs, by engineers and artists was central to most of the work during this period. The start date of 1956 of this phase actually marks the beginnings of computer art experiments by a third early pioneer, the aforementioned Herbert Franke, and in some sense also the beginning of a movement. Franke, started generating works of art using computers in the 1950s, was intrigued by the possibilities of machine-supported graphical creation. He made an important scientific contribution to the understanding of the aesthetic mechanisms by concentrating on the aspects of information and reception theory that are relevant in the borderland of art and science. His pioneering electronic abstractions paralleled those of Laposky, leading however to his own distinct and varied computer art oeuvres (e.g., King, 2002).

Three particular features apply to this period:

First, early computer artists, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, used interactivity, arbitrariness, algorithmic expression, dimensionality, transformations, motion, heuristic techniques and other inventive aspects of computer production in their work. These features of computerised expression conveyed art ideas that were part of their time (e.g., Prince, 2003).

Second, the artwork was created during a time-frame spanning up to 26 years before the Apple II was introduced; 30 years before the first IBM PC; 32 years before the adaptation of TCP/IP protocol for ARPANET; at least 38 years before the development of HTML; 42 years before the first WWW graphical browser (Mosaic, 1993) and 44 years before the DVD emerged as an industry standard (e.g., Acevedo, 2003). Third, with respect to the United Kingdom, the first possibilities for students to study computer programming as a part of their courses in the fine art only occurred in the late 1960s (e.g., Brown, 2003). By the early 1970s many interdisciplinary programs had emerged, including the Slade School of Fine Art at the University College London, which received a bequest from alumni Eileen Gray for: “a Data General Nova 2 minicomputer system for their new Experimental and Computing Department” (Brown, p. 2).

Fourth, Prince (2003), an American art historian, who encourages new digital artists to engage with the history of computer art as a key to understanding relative contemporary research and art practice, explains:

Program or perish became the call of the digital avant-garde in the 80s, similar to the intellectual battles fought in the 19th century between artists who were Colorists versus the Classicists - Ingres verses Delacroix. (p. 1)

Phase 2: 1986 - 1994 The Paintbox Era

In this period art software became available, albeit slowly at first, attracting artists who could create works without programming. Thus, emphasis moved from computer programming to the use of the emerging principle software ‘paint’ programs, underpinned by affordable computers and devices such as the scanner and film recorder. Hence, the view that: "The future of computer graphics will address aesthetic, social, and cultural issues of computer-generated imagery, a major vehicle of communication in the 21st century” (International Society for the Electronic Arts, 1992, p. 1). King (2002) describes three historical landmarks of this period.

First, BBC TV broadcast a series Paintings with light which followed a group of celebrated modern painters who managed the Quantel Paintbox – a pioneering television graphics paint system. Second, Andy Warhol created works with the Commodore Amiga, including self-portraits and self-portraits of singer Deborah Harry. Third, 1986 was the year in which Adobe Photoshop was produced, but not yet released on the market. Current software such as Adobe Photoshop, Composer, and Corel Draw are noted as being the ‘heirs’ of the paint programs developed during this time (Smith, 1997). Although Photoshop was released for Macintosh (US)

in 1989, since this time Adobe earnestly sought to make their software products function identically, regardless of which operating system is used.

The end of the era is marked as being the year when WWW became available to artists on a global scale (e.g., King, 2002). The following is an image created during this phase by a notable early computer art practitioner, Paul Brown, now residing in Australia, who studied at the Slade School of Art, University of London from 1977 to 1979. His computer-generated drawings integrate individual elements that evolve or propagate in accordance with a set of simple rules.

Brown developed a tile-based image generating system. “Despite using relatively simple forms, it would have taken a long time to write a program to produce a work such as this” (V&A, n.d.).

Image removed due to copyright restrictions.

Figure 7: Paul Brown 1975 'Untitled computer assisted drawing' (V&A, n.d., Museum no. E.961-2008)

Phase 3: 1995 - 2006 - The Multimedia Era

The multimedia era is characterized by an increase in technology and Internet access allowing the digital media artist interactivity with many art forms. The widespread availability of computers and software allowed digital artists to create distinctive works of art. For instance, by combining and transforming the traditional modes of art practice such as drawing, painting, photography, animation and filmmaking. With the growing availability of technologies of interactivity and Internet access, there is both a democratisation of the medium and new interactive and online art forms (e.g., King, 2002). This phase encompasses artists from 1995 onwards who are defined in terms of new and emerging talent. Although during and beyond this period, the term 'computer art' is used with reference to computer-based art practices in

general, recent literature suggests that term should be understood as being separate from that of digital art. This implies a much freer use of technologies. Aspects such as connectivity or interactivity often play a key part in contemporary digital or new media art, but were less a part of the vocabulary of the early technology (e.g., Rush, 2005; Wands, 2006). The following is a table of early computer art practitioners as indentified from Leiser’s Digital Art Museum, and a search of individual artist’s web sites:

Table 4: Computer art practitioners’ timeline

Image removed due to copyright restrictions.