Bloomsbury When the Machine Made Art: The Troubled History of Computer Art (International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics)

Considering how culturally indispensable digital technology is today, it is ironic that computer-generated art was attacked when it burst onto the scene in the early 1960s. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and hostile response. When the Machine Made Art examines the cultural and critical response to computer art, or what we refer to today as digital art. Tracing the heated debates between art and science, the societal anxiety over nascent computer technology, and the myths and philosophies surrounding digital computation, Taylor is able to identify the destabilizing forces that shape and eventually fragment the computer art movement. Review How astonishing that the pioneers of computer, digital, algorithmic, programming, and mash-up art are largely unknown at the very moment when the computer, or more specifically its handheld, lap bound, or otherwise omnipresent progeny are transforming virtually every aspect of existence! I read this, fascinated by the continued relevance of the artists (and their disputes) and delighted to know that finally, with this publication, there exists a portrait of an evolving movement that has worked assiduously at the boundaries of the art world for fifty years. -- Hannah B Higgins, Professor of Art History, University of Illinois Chicago, USA Although computer-generated art was largely ignored by the art establishment in the 1960s and 70s, it's now viewed in a very different light. Grant Taylor's book provides an excellent - and much needed -overview of the beginnings of digital art and design. -- Douglas Dodds, Senior Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum, UK By questioning the reasons for which art critics, artists and curators rejected computer-generated artefacts during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Grant Taylor makes a significant contribution to the historiography of 20th century culture. -- Margit Rosen, Researcher and Curator, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany About the Author Grant D. Taylor is Associate Professor of Art History at Lebanon Valley College, Pennsylvania, USA. He most recent article, "The Soulless Usurper: The Reception and Criticism of Early Computer-Generated Art", is published in Mainframe Experimentalism, edited by Douglas Kahn and Hannah Higgins.