goodMorning Machine Art Monday!
▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░
what does it mean to make a ‘machine’ as #Art?
in our #AI Era folks are vry excited abt #vibecoding their own apps by asking machines (AI) to code their software. AI-machines making Art-machines remind me of the late 1990s && early 2000s. i was teaching connections between #DigitalArt, early Video Art of the 1970s, and Conceptual Art of the 1960s: “The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” — Sol LeWitt (1967)
ive always felt that the Sandin Image Processor is a perfect synthesis of software-as-art/machine-artware because i consider the machine itself to be an artwork. in 1973 Dan Sandin said it is a “general-purpose patch programmable analog computer optimized for processing video information, sound or any other signal” Dan’s goodFriend Phil Morton was the first person to ‘copy’ the Image Processor by building his own, w Dan’s help
Phil created a concept for this called COPY-IT-RIGHT!
Sandin && Morton worked together from 1971–1973 to build the first copy && collaboratively draft the hardware plans for Sandin’s original invention. once finished, they released their open sourced hardware plans in a document called The Distribution Religion. being professors, they also taught their students how to build the machine
30+ years later, i discovered all of this. i moved quickly to preserve && protect the machine. i activated it by teaching it, reintegrating the Sandin Image Processor into the curriculum of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. i taught students to ~ conceptually copy ~ the machine, telling them, in Morton’s words: “it’s okay to copy! Believe in the process of copying as much as you can; with all your heart is a good place to start” inspiring them w these ideas that continue today
now we have many more machines dreaming, Dream Machines as Ted Nelson might say, powerful copies, or rather instantiations, of cyberpsychedelic technologies, expressive && often abstract conceptualMachines for personal && artistic transformation, that connect us across multiple Media Art Hystories like beautiful realtime signalFlows processed through the Sandin Image Processor itself!
▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░ ░▒▓ ▓▒░
goodMorning Machine Art Monday! — jonCates (2025.04.15)
<COPY-IT-RIGHT!>
