Cybernethisms: Aldo Giorgini’s Computer Art Legacy

By Esteban García Bravo

Working extensively as both artist and scientist, Aldo Giorgini (1934-1994) was one of the first computer artists to combine software writing with early printing technologies. His innovative process involved producing pen-plotted drawings that were embellished by painting, drawing, photography, and screen printing. This biography is the first to uncover the remarkable work and life of an underappreciated artist, providing insights into the innovative methods and computerized techniques he used to weave creations that seamlessly combined technological sophistication with artistic sensibility.Buried manuscripts, documentation, and art taken directly from Giorgini's former studio in Indiana have been used to tell the story of this digital pioneer. The book explores the artist's life as a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University as well as providing a catalog of his artistic contributions. Placing his work in the context of the wider development of computer art, the book also presents a valuable contribution to the history of the field. Giorgini's papers have been recently transferred to Purdue University's Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center, where they will be preserved and made accessible for future researchers of digital media art history. While complete in itself, this book also plays an important role in contextualizing and providing an access point for that collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612493749

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I still remember my first time using a computer. The year was 1988. I was in first grade, and as I watched my brother plug a beige-colored keyboard into our television, my excitement grew for my first opportunity to experience the Commodore VIC-20, an amazing visual playground. The programs were stored in the form of a cassette tape and loaded into the computer by typing commands from the keyboard. One of the features I especially loved was the ability to create color pictures in the 22-by-23 pixel grid of VIC-20’s screen.

I was artistically inclined from a very early age. My school also had lots of VIC-20s, and our computing class taught us a language called LOGO. In LOGO, the user typed a list of commands to depict shapes on the screen. We would have assignments in which we had to draw various images, such as an ice cream cone or a hexagon. Simple commands—such as RT 90, for rotating the line 90 degrees, or functions like REPEAT—were my first exposure to the elements of programming.

As time passed, I witnessed fast development of graphics. As I matured, so did the technology, including computer games, interactive CD-ROMs, scanners, and the Internet. Gradually, images became more colorful and realistic; the new computer interfaces started looking like desktops or artist’s studios with tools for painting digital canvases.

I came to Purdue University from Colombia in 2005 to study for an MFA in electronic and time-based media. It was a unique experience to experiment with all that technology had to offer to the fine arts; we had classes on robotics, interfaces, programming languages, and digital imaging.

I became familiar with the work of Aldo Giorgini within my first months in Indiana. I was introduced to Massimiliano, Giorgini’s son, at a party at my brother’s apartment. During our first conversation, Massimiliano told me all about his father’s pioneering work in computer art. I learned that much of his father’s original artwork and papers were still in Lafayette. Massimiliano and his wife, Kelly, lived at the Giorgini residence, where Giorgini’s studio remained, nearly untouched since his death in 1994. I was a computer artist myself and was very excited to learn that my new place of residence had its own computer art history—to my surprise, a history that had not yet been written.

When I got home, I did a quick image search on Aldo Giorgini. The piece called I Ain’t a Spiral (Figure 1) was on my screen within minutes. The work was mysterious on many levels. Formally, the composition showed an algorithmic design of black and white ripples that drew me to an optical effect that was both dazzling and pleasant. Aside from the visual aspects, however, the date of the image called my attention—1974 seemed like an early date for a computer-based work.

Figure 1. I Ain’t a Spiral, 1973. Acrylic paint on Mylar, 36 × 36 in.

It was those mysteries within his work that compelled and inspired me to do this research and to understand Giorgini’s developments in computer art. When I made my first visit to Giorgini’s former studio in the basement of the house on Berkley Road, I could almost believe that Giorgini was still alive. The amount of files, folders, and artwork lying around were reminiscent of an artist working on a big project. After that, I visited the Giorgini residence more and more regularly, and I became familiar with Giorgini’s intricate methods. In an archaeological way, documents, paintings, and computer codes resurfaced, as I scavenged through every container and cabinet of his studio. Every time I found a new image hiding inside an envelope or a cardboard box, I became increasingly intrigued with his process. This book is the result of an exhaustive four-year inspection of Giorgini’s studio, the place where he produced his computer art. I was able to create a narrative, my interpretation of who Aldo Giorgini was; however, though my investigation was thorough, it would be impossible to recreate a true representation of Giorgini’s persona. For this reason, the final section of this book is devoted to a selection of Giorgini’s unpublished manuscripts. These documents reveal his unique philosophy toward art and computers.

Giorgini worked extensively developing algorithms for graphics, but he also theorized about the meanings of a then new computer-aided art practice. The year 1973 marked Giorgini’s deliberate decision to start making art with computers. In that year, he titled his first computer art series Cybernethisms, a word that inspired the title of this book. The word is derived from cybernetics, a term coined by Norman Wiener in 1948, which describes the scientific study of control and communication with machines.¹ In its origins, the interchangeable terms cybernetic art and computer art were used by pioneering artists to describe their process. The translated use of the term, arte cibernético, also was common among computer artists in Spanish-speaking countries, such as Manuel Barbadillo or José María Yturralde, who started their computer-based practice in the spring of 1968 at the Centro de Cálculo at the University of Madrid.² Giorgini was aware of both associations of cybernetics: first, for the use of computer code and logic as a form of communication with the machine; and second, because of its association with an international art movement. In the chapter Computer Art in Context, I focus on providing a historic background to contextualize Giorgini within a larger group of artists from his generation.

Although Giorgini’s art is known among a select group of computer artists and theorists, his contribution has been relatively unknown, possibly because of his premature death in 1994. However, Giorgini’s ideas have resonated in the minds of influential individuals such as the computational theorist Raymond Kurzweil. In The Age of Intelligent Machines, a seminal book in the realm of cybernetics and artificial intelligence, Kurzweil references Giorgini’s art an example of how some forms may only be possible to create through computational methods.³ Giorgini’s work also was appealing to a community of computer artists who recall his compositions as striking⁴ or just better, as Charles Csuri mentioned in personal correspondence:

Aldo Giorgini is an important artist in the early history of computer art, in fact, a better artist than many who have received more media attention. […] But the reason I like his work better has little to do with the code or the procedures. It’s the aspect which transcends the code and makes it art which cannot be described in logical terms.⁵

Like Giorgini, many early computer artists also were outside the scope of historians until recently. Margit Rosen, a researcher in the history of computer art, explains that many of the earliest prints were forgotten behind closets until a recent historian’s renewed interest on this era.⁶ As part of an ongoing discussion, this book will bring to the table questions on whether early computer artifacts should be preserved or not, due to the disembodied nature of code-based art practices. What constitutes the artwork in pieces that are mediated by a computer? This long-standing question (that is inherent to the medium) contrasts with the historical value of some of the resulting artifacts produced by computers during the past fifty or even sixty years.

Lately the topic of preservation of digital and pre-digital⁷ art has inspired new books, research, and forums. Some artists, curators, collectors, and archivists have discussed strategies of preservation of digital memory extensively. Frieder Nake, one of the first artists in the world who exhibited computer art, recently explained on an Internet message board⁸ that most of the early works of computer art were based entirely on a paper medium, but simply because of the specific nature of the computing technologies that were available at that time. Various institutions recently have focused on developing mechanisms to catalog and preserve early computer art; two of the most known are the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Charles A. Csuri Project at the Ohio State University.

Inspired by these two initiatives, I sought to pursue a similar project on a much smaller scale. Broadly speaking, my task consisted of both unveiling and understanding Giorgini. I approached the subject with a practical framework in mind, focusing on the study of the physical outputs and artifacts that resulted from his process. I soon realized the importance of these materials and contacted the Purdue University Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center for help in the task of preserving these resources. In the section titled Future of the Collection, I elaborate on the process of research, documentation, and preservation for this particular case study.

Giorgini’s untouched studio provided a window through time that