This paper discusses the process of recognition of early computer art not as iconic but as a purely intellectual or conceptual form as it took place during a debate on the pages of PAGE , initiated by Frieder Nake’s “Statement for PAGE ” and his seminal text “There Should Be No Computer Art.”

Art critic Jerry Saltz is regarded as a pioneer of online art criticism by the mainstream press, yet the Internet has been used as a platform for art discussion for over 30 years. There have been studies of independent print-based arts publishing, online art production and electronic literature, but there have been no histories of online art criticism. In this article, the author provides an account of the first wave of online art criticism (1980–1995) to document this history and prepare the way for thorough evaluations of the changing form of art criticism after the Internet.

This essay explores the relationship between pictures and the lighting conditions in which they were originally viewed. The theoretical interrelationship between brightness, illumination and depiction is explored in a case study of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper mural at the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Advanced rendering software allows for the reconstruction of the refectory as it stood when Leonardo painted The Last Supper and demonstrates the complex interaction between light and space in the mural. This analysis illustrates how digital humanities might bridge traditional art-historical methods and forensic visualization.

Computation existed long before the computer—and there were artists, seduced by the beauty of mathematics, who integrated computation into their creative endeavors. With the advent of the digital machine, the relation between aesthetic artifacts and computation was redefined. This article deals with images produced between 1965 and 1970. The generation of images associated with mathematical formulae raised questions regarding art’s condition and the nature of creativity. These are addressed from the perspective of aesthetic experiments. Through dedicated experiments involving computers in Eastern Europe, particularly in (communist) Romania, artists strove for artistic freedom.

The pioneer of computer art Georg Nees passed away on 3 January 2016, at the age of 89. He was the first to exhibit computer-generated drawings, in Stuttgart in February 1965. Influenced by Max Bense’s information aesthetics (a rational aesthetics of the object based on Shannon’s information theory), Nees completed his PhD thesis in 1968 (in German). Its title, Generative Computergraphik , is an expression of the new movement of generative art and design. Trained as a mathematician, Nees participated in many early, but also recent, displays of computer art. After retiring from his research position at Siemens in Erlangen, he again concentrated on computer-generated art and researched issues of digital coloring but also wrote several novels expressing his philosophy of a nonreligious, human-made culture.

The author discusses his works of concrete photography contributed to the Peter C. Ruppert Collection, Concrete Art in Europe after 1945 , in the Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg. He discusses Concrete Photography as a form of nonrepresentational photography in which the medium itself moves away from its classical role of representing the external world to take on a strict self-referential role, in between both traditional light-images and images of the digital world.

In this short biography, Edmond Couchot tells how, after having attempted a plastic-art synthesis between gestural painting and lumino-kineticism, he became interested in cybernetics and visual arts and the participation of the spectator in aesthetic perception. Then we learn how, in the early 1980s, he took part in the creation of a new degree course in art and technology of the image at the University of Paris-VIII.

This paper describes the series of three electronic drawing machines Desmond Paul Henry constructed during the 1960s from World War II analogue bombsight computers and which, by virtue of their inspiration, idiosyncratic modus operandi and analogue-derived effects, earn Henry a place as a British computer art pioneer. The abstract graphic results of these now-defunct drawing machines are presented as precursors to digital images.

Holograms reached popular consciousness during the 1960s and have since left audiences alternately fascinated, bemused or inspired. Their impact was conditioned by earlier cultural associations and successive reimaginings by wider publics. Attaining peak public visibility during the 1980s, holograms have been found more in our pockets (as identity documents) and in our minds (as video-gaming fantasies and “faux hologram” performers) than in front of our eyes. The most enduring, popular interpretations of the word “hologram” evoke the traditional allure of magic and galvanize hopeful technological dreams. This article explores the mutating cultural uses of the term “hologram” as markers of magic, modernity and optimism.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. government has embraced the rhetoric of the peaceful use of the atom. Following the government’s lead, architect-designer-philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller espoused similar ideas. Like U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and other “atoms for peace” enthusiasts, Fuller thought that the revolution then occurring in architecture was an outgrowth of the peaceful atom. And, like Johnson, Fuller believed that technology based on the atom did not just favor Americans but could be applied for the benefit of all humanity. Fuller thought atomic technology could help extend humankind’s knowledge base and thus be applied to develop better architecture. This article explains how Fuller, like politicians of the time, believed that the potential for fearful products of destruction—of war and its weaponry—could be applied for peacetime applications, particularly when designing his geodesic dome, including his Expo ’67 pavilion.

The author explores the pioneering ideas and experiments that the Russian musician and artist Mikhail Matyushin (1861–1934) contributed to the theory and practice of synthetic art. Special emphasis is placed on light art, light music and Matyushin's reflections on analogies between visual and performance art and on synesthesia. The article adduces some new facts, taken mainly from Russian sources not readily accessible to Western researchers. Although Matyushin did not make a significant contribution to the cause of actual lightmusical synthesis, he did make interesting forecasts in this area, which still have value for the modern reader.

David Hockney has recently hypothesized that some early Renaissance painters employed optical devices such as concave mirrors to project images of a scene or part of a scene onto their supports, which they then traced or painted over. As one of many examples, he has claimed that Hans Memling (ca. 1440–1494) built an optical projector to create his Flower Still Life, specifically when rendering its carpet. The author's perspective analysis on the image of this carpet shows that, while there is a “break” in perspective consistent with refocusing or tipping of an optical projector, there are also other larger, more significant perspective deviations that are inconsistent with the use of a projector. After presenting a simple sensitivity analysis of these results and rebutting anticipated objections, the author concludes by rejecting the claim that optical projections were used in the creation of this still life.