Jasia Reichardt

I'll likely have more to say about this book over at Disquiet.com, when I get the time, but for the moment suffice to say that Jasia Reichardt's The Computer in Art, published forty years ago this year, is one of my favorites. Like many people's favorite books, it's quite tiny, which aids in its rereading. I've reread some long books three or four times (Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson comes to mind), but this one easily 10. It's ostensibly a snapshot of computer art of the 1950s and 1960s, and by computer art that generally means graphic art, but everything in this book lends itself to computer enabled music: discussions of authorship, of software lifecycles, of the nature of chance, of networked creativity. It's all here.

I re-read it slowly to commemorate its four decades of influence. Highly recommended.… (mer)