January 1963 cover of Computers and Automation shows some of the earliest computer art
Merzmensch · x · 2026-11-11
A look back at the January 1963 cover of Computers and Automation — Efraim Arazi's "A Portrait by a Computer as a Young Artist," an early landmark of computer art.
- The cover was made by digitizing light shining through holes in a metal plate and re-plotting intensity/position on an oscilloscope: "the brush is an electron beam; the canvas, an oscilloscope."
- Arazi already envisioned freeing the computer from 2D and monochrome limits, driving an automatic milling machine to make 3D sculpture, and color synthesis via three filters.
- Whether Arazi coined "computer art" is disputed — Michael Noll used the term a year earlier; the author also cites a satirical 1956 poem-writing machine story, showing machine-vs-creator debates long predate LLMs.
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