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A. Michael Noll, who made some of the first computer art at Bell Labs in 1962, explains why he never sold any of his work
A. Michael Noll made his first computer art at Bell Labs in the summer of 1962, and exhibited it publicly it in New York in 1965 at the Howard Wise Gallery (along with random dot patterns by Bela Julesz), in the first exhibition of its kind in America. He stopped around 1965, having made the examples he set out to make, and turned to other research. He never sold any of the work. What exists is held in museums he gave it to.
He is, in short, the pioneer who refused the market, which makes him the most useful person to ask about it. The interviews already on the record tell the origin story well, and I had no wish to repeat it. I wanted the part they leave alone: where the work resides, what it is worth, who should own it, and what survives.
This exchange began when Noll wrote to correct an earlier essay of mine. The corrections were just, and getting them right is the point of what follows.
For you, where does the work actually reside, in the pattern itself or in the sheet that carries it?
I felt it was the pattern — not the physical medium for computer art. The image. My Mondrian experiment compared images — patterns — not physical works. Yes, I realize the significance of the thickness of the physical paint in a van Gogh. I drooled over the one in the Norton Simon Museum — a print from the gift shop did not capture it. Hmm. Would some sort of 3D “print” capture it?
