On arts, mathematics and computing
This text is the first piece of the code, shape and meaning series: a set of articles about computational art, creative coding, and new media.
Writing about the relationship between art and computing is not an easy task. Most efforts for using the computer to make art have begun on the 1960s and this happened in the midst of an effervescent and diverse artistic scene. People like Vera Molnár, Manfred Mohr, Georg Nees, Frieder Nake, and Lillian Schwartz, in the US and Europe, Hiroshi Kawano, in Japan, and Waldemar Cordeiro, in Brazil, are among the pioneers of the so-called “computer-art”. They started experimenting with computers and algorithms in a time when these machines were still very expensive and far from powerful. Still, motivated by the ever-increasing improvements in technologies associated with computer graphics, these and other artists saw the computer as an unexplored and possibly fruitful medium for artistic production. The collaboration between arts and technology became more evident and expressive and, during the second half of the 20st century, the computer reached the level of aesthetic relevance that it has today.
Framing computer art properly, though, might require a deeper discussion on how these motivations came up in the first place. In the beginning, explorers of the practice were mostly mathematicians, physicist, and engineers — the…
