(🚨)A 30 seconds summary of computer and generative art pioneer Michael Noll, a quick thread:🧵🖖👇
Michael Noll, born in 1939, was an engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the first computer artwork (1963). This world's first computer art creation was called "Gaussian-Quadratic."
Did you know that Michael Noll started computer art by accident? He serendipitously identified the artistic potential of an abstract linear design while looking at a colleague microfilm plotter.
Michael Noll joined Frieder Nake and Georg Nees to organize the first computer art exhibition in Europe in 1965 at Technische Hochschule Stuttgart in Germany.
It took Michael Noll multiple attempts to copyright his artwork called "Gaussian-Quadratic." The Copyright Office at the Library of Congress refused his request numerous times because "randomness wasn't acceptable."
Michael Noll might have been the first researcher to build a hardware haptic device to be used in what would be known today as the Metaverse. In 1971 he filled a patent for a "Tactile Man-Machine Communications System."
In 1966 he published results inspired by the "Turing test" where he asked 100 people to differentiate between a drawing from Mondrian and a drawing made by a computer. Only 28% identified the computer-generated picture, and 59% preferred it compared to the hand-drawn version.
Do you want to learn more about the history of computer and generative arts?
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Here is a quick intro about the first computer art ever produced:
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