Untitled
1972
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1972
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Dominant colour
Untitled is a 1972 by Manfred Linder, depicting Music, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This drawing from 1972 looks like a wild mashup of art and math. Manfred Linder didn’t sketch by hand—he wrote FORTRAN code, fed it into a 1970s computer, then let a plotter drag a pen across paper. The cool part? The machine turned his math into squiggly lines that somehow sound like music. Curious how a computer can draw? Look up Manfred Linder next.
A plotter drawing in black ink on translucent computer paper, this 1972 work by Manfred Linder consists of slim vertical columns with angled lower edges, created using the FORTRAN programming language on a Siemens 4004/G computer and a Calcomp plotter 565. The artist, who studied mathematics at the University of Cologne and worked at its computer centre, submitted the piece to the Computer Arts Society's INTERACT exhibition and conference in Edinburgh the following year.
Read the full account in the museum source.
This German artist spent years drawing nothing but empty chairs in pencil. Not fancy chairs—just the wood and metal of ordinary seating, over and over, until the lines started to hum. If you’ve ever stared at a quiet…
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