Visions of Mind
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Abstract/Summary/Introduction:
Computer art is unfolding on the basis of scientific and engineering achievements of pioneering personalities, whose vision suggested that it should be possible to wrest something other than calculation speed and numeric precision from those crude and clumsy computers; something that could be turned into meaningful images. They set out to build dedicated machines to interpret an intuitive stroke with a pen or a snapshot taken through the lens of a camera. They designed displays that show more colors and change images faster than the human eye can distinguish. They devised software to generate pictures that appear just like photographs of reality. All of this has been accomplished within the short timespan of two or three decades. The history of computer graphics reads like a tremendous technical success story.
References:
- Alan M. Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in: Douglas R. Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett (eds.) The Mind’s I. Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Bantam Books, New York 1982, pp. 53-67.
- Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors. Five Masters of the Avant Garde. Duchamp, Tinguely, Cage, Rauschenberg, Cunningham, Penguin Books, New York 1976, pp 9-68.
- Douglas R. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Vintage Books, New York 1980.