Lecture 3

Anne talked about the history of computing and media art. She started off talking about the search for a philosophical language (this was long before the actual computer or machine – it was a theory for a global common language.) If people could construct a logical language they could communicate with machines. Then came binary which was the medium for the logical language [this should be “Boolean”, not binary]. Binary is accredited to Leibniz but was around much earlier in eastern cultures. Computing started with calculators. Babbage’s machine [the “analytical engine”] was a precursor to the computer and could answer any mathematical question asked it via punch cards. She then talked about,

• Ada King (Countess of Lovelace)who is arguably the first programmer,
• Alan Turning, who is to computing what Jimmy Hendrix was to Rock music, came up with the first simple computer as a thought exercise and started off artificial intelligence.
• Konrad Zuse, engineer of computers, came up with the idea of a computing space eg the internet.
• Norbert Wiener- cybernetics communication between machines and people and machine and machines. He was also the first human machine interaction designer.
• PDP1: the computer on which the first computer game ran.
• Ivan Sutherland: first CAD program. I found this section particularly interesting. The user interface was remarkable and I wonder if going back to drawing on the screen like a tablet is a better way of using the programs cutting out OOS etc. it is also a closer interaction than the mouse breaking down the more of the barrier between computer and person.
• Steve Wozniak –apple I
• Zoetrope: first animation
• Phantasmagoria: pre-cinema projection technique
• Laszlo Moholy-Nagy- electronic artist
• Thomas Wilfred –kinetic art
• John Cage