Ruth Leavitt (editor and contributor) — Artist and Computer — edited anthology

1976

Artists: Ruth Leavitt (editor and contributor) · Year: 1976 · Medium: Edited anthology — first-person statements from 35 computer artists of the first generation · Substrate: Published book, 121 pages, illustrated with reproductions of the contributors' works · Place: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA · Institution: Harmony Books (publisher); Leavitt's own practice independent Ruth Leavitt's Artist and Computer (Harmony Books, 1976) is an edited anthology of first-person statements from thirty-five computer artists of the first generation, collected by Leavitt — herself a practicing computer artist — at a moment when the field's practitioners were scattered and under-documented. Contributors include Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnár, Frieder Nake, Herbert Franke, Lillian Schwartz, Colette and Charles Bangert, Joan Truckenbrod, Aldo Giorgini, and dozens more. Each artist provides a short statement about their practice accompanied by reproductions of their work. The book is, simply, indispensable. Many of the artists represented had not published statements about their own work anywhere else; Leavitt's anthology preserves voices that would otherwise be fragmentary. The book remains in use as a primary-source reference for any serious scholarly work on the first-generation period, and copies are held by major university libraries worldwide. Leavitt's own practice as a computer artist — plotter work from the mid-1970s through the 1980s — is less documented than her editorial contribution. She had been working at the University of Minnesota's computing center when she began producing plotter drawings and when she conceived the Artist and Computer project. Her editorial taste — catholic, inclusive, non-dogmatic about which of the first-generation approaches were canonical — gave the anthology its value. The book is the quiet editorial foundation on which much subsequent first-generation scholarship rests. Lore Leavitt sourced contributions through personal correspondence with each artist, often relying on introductions from mutual colleagues. The anthology's 1976 publication date places it contemporaneously with the first generation's own mature production; the book is not a retrospective but a document of the living scene. Leavitt's own plotter works from the 1970s are held at the University of Minnesota and in private collections; the exact scope of her practice is less documented than her editorial work. Sources • Leavitt, Ruth (ed.) — Artist and Computer (Harmony Books / Crown Publishers, 1976) • University of Minnesota — Leavitt archive (partial) • Taylor, Grant D. — When the Machine Made Art (Bloomsbury, 2014)