William J. Kolomyjec — Plotter works on the CDC 6500

1976

Artists: William J. Kolomyjec · Year: 1976 · Medium: Algorithmic plotter drawings on paper · Substrate: CDC 6500 mainframe, FORTRAN, offline Calcomp 936 drum plotter · Place: East Lansing, Michigan · Institution: Michigan State University — MFA, 1975 (first presentation of computer graphics as fine art at MSU) William J. Kolomyjec — "Dr. Bill" to the next-generation NFT-era practitioners who would later rediscover him — is one of the under-canonised first-generation American computer artists. His Michigan State University period, roughly 1973 through 1980, produced the body of plotter drawings that the field associates with his name: Banana-Cone, Birds, Bird Curves, Creature Tunnel, Random Concentric Squares, Organic Illusion, Kolomyjec's Moiré, Homage to Maurits C. Escher, Escher in the Round, Boxes, Geese, Scorpion Spin. The work was made on the Michigan State CDC 6500 mainframe, hand-coded in FORTRAN, and output on an offline Calcomp 936 drum plotter — the same Calcomp hardware that produced most of the canonical first-generation American plotter work. Kolomyjec's aesthetic is the Stuttgart-adjacent register translated into American midwest sensibility: rigorously geometric and systematic, but with a humor and a willingness toward representational subject matter (the birds, the geese, the Escher homages) that distinguishes his work from the more astringent productions of Nake or Nees. His 1975 MFA exhibition at Michigan State was the first time computer graphics had been presented as fine art at the university, and a foundational moment in the institutional legitimation of computer art inside American art-school programs. His work appears in both of the two contemporaneous canon-forming books of the period: Franke's Computergraphik – Computerkunst (1971, in the supplementary 1985 second edition expansions) and Ruth Leavitt's Artist and Computer (1976), where his chapter reproduces ten works alongside an artist statement arguing that "the digital computer and peripheral graphic equipment comprise my medium… as complete and valid as any traditional aesthetic media," and that the computer artist has a responsibility to write their own programs rather than rely on technicians. Kolomyjec is one of the bridges between the first-generation plotter circle and what would come after. He met Franke at an Art and Technology conference in Waterloo, Ontario, in July 1977, and the two travelled together back to Michigan for several days of conversation; he would later organise the 1979–1980 survey exhibition Art In, Art Out at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, bringing Franke, Vera Molnár, and Ken Knowlton into a single American room. After Michigan State he taught engineering graphics at Ohio State University, established the Electronic Media program at Northern Illinois University, worked at Pixar as a RenderMan Evangelist, and — in retirement — returned to generative art full-time, releasing his 1970s plotter archive as NFTs and Bitcoin Ordinals and building the ongoing Generative Art Vending Machine project. The geographic explanation for his under-recognition is the obvious one. Stuttgart, Paris, Bell Labs, and ZKM had institutional infrastructures that produced retrospective attention; East Lansing, Columbus, and DeKalb did not. The midwest American computer-art chapter has yet to receive the institutional treatment it warrants, and Kolomyjec is the archive entry through which much of that chapter becomes visible. Lore Kolomyjec calls himself, with knowing humour, the Generative Art OG. He preserved his own archive carefully across a forty-year hiatus from full-time art practice — through the Pixar years, the Northern Illinois faculty years, the Anderson Consulting / Accenture years — and has since the early 2020s reintroduced the 1970s plotter drawings as on-chain editions, often paired with newly produced generative companion pieces. He is, in 2026, an active presence in the generative-art community, frequently in dialogue with both his first-generation contemporaries and the artists Art Blocks and fxhash have surfaced. His friendship with Herbert W. Franke, formed at the July 1977 Waterloo conference, lasted until Franke's death; Kolomyjec contributed a tribute to the art meets science Foundation memorial site. Sources • Leavitt, Ruth (ed.) — Artist and Computer (Harmony Books, 1976) — Kolomyjec chapter (sec. 15), with ten reproduced works and the artist's statement • Franke, Herbert W. — Computergraphik – Computerkunst (Bruckmann, 1971; Springer 2nd ed., 1985) — Kolomyjec reproductions • Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection — Kolomyjec holdings • Database of Digital Art (Compart Bremen) — Kolomyjec catalogue, entries including Geese • Kolomyjec, William J. — personal portfolio (drbillkolomyjec.com) • art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke — Kolomyjec tribute page (Generative Art Summit Berlin, 2024)