MA2 Various Unusual Events – 6 art pieces, challenging the conventions of computer art, which was mostly visual only, as explored in the previous MA1 release.
Geoff Davis, ZX Spectrum 48k – 1984
6 CONCEPTS
This curated release complimented the generative algorythmic animations on MA1. Computer art had a history by the 1980s, although most of the practitioners had decamped to proper jobs in the graphics industry or academica. These programs parodied some of the concerns, and even invented whole new genres, like Pixel Art.
The data cassette tape inner card said: “A self-explanatory menu controls the following UNUSUAL EVENTS”.
Geoff Davis: Various Unusual Events was a compilation of 5 challenging concept pieces, and 1 generative art piece (Piano Bar).
AGIT-PROP CARTOON
Feminist Agit-prop was represented by Money Work System animation derived from the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, who later shot Andy Warhol. Although diagngnosed a schizophrenic, and jailed for murder, she was only inside for two years, and continued to stalk Warhol after release. An interesting sympathetic perspective on Solanas comes from Warhol ‘superstar’ Ultraviolet in her excellent authobiography “Famous For 15 Minutes” (Ultraviolet was around the art scene a lot longer, previously with Dali et al). Solanas’s main complaint about Warhol was exploitation and copyright theft. Sound familiar?
“Solanas, a radical feminist known for her SCUM Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men), attempted to assassinate Warhol in 1968. This act, while shocking, became a focal point for feminist discourse and debate. Ti-Grace Atkinson and other feminists, including Flo Kennedy, defended Solanas, viewing her as a symbol of female rage and a voice for marginalized women. While Atkinson’s defense of Solanas is significant, it was the broader context of the debate surrounding Solanas and the subsequent actions of feminists like Atkinson (who founded The Feminists) that led to the term “radical feminism” emerging as a label for those who advocated for more revolutionary change.” Google Search April 2025
The Money Work System is Universal Basic Income, and again is in the news with upcoming AI related job losses (or changes). See Images here
PIXEL ART – MINIMAL
Pixel art appeared in Minimal, the program drew a single pixel onscreen slowly, acting as an antidote to SIGGRAPH and obsessions with speed and realism. This was the first time the individual PIXEL had been addressed as an art event in itself. 8-bit “pixelated” art was state of the art at the time, and the genre of “pixel art” appeared in the 1990s as a nostalgic or naive style. Also first example of deliberatley slow art.
MINIMAL – PIXEL ART / SLOW ART
MINIMAL: First ‘Pixel Art’, as no one else was addressing the humble pixel at the time, pixelated art was ‘state of the art’ until it became a retro art genre later.
“There is no well known tradition of pixel art that differentiated between the deliberate placement of pixels or the aestheticization of individual pixels in contrast to other forms of digital painting or digital art. For this reason, one could argue that pixel art was not a recognized medium or artform in the 1970s.” Wikipedia.
After drawing one pixel, the program waits. Takes over 2 years to run.
The pause is 65536 (longest pause allowed) divided by the frame rate (about 50.8 Hz)is 21.5 minutes. There are 256 x 176 pixels for a screen, so 45,056 pixel stages. Time is 45,056 x 21.5 minutes = 673 days, nearly 2 years (1.87 years).
First ever Pixel Art, as no one else was addressing the humble pixel. It doesn’t all have to be game imagery or maths-based patterns.
Also first Slow Art – 2 years to finish pixelating the screen – “the initial slow food movement, and Carlo Petrini’s protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant in the Piazza di Spagna, Rome, in 1986” – this was two years earlier.
This was before Paintbox programs appeared, or contemporaneous. For micro computers: DEGAS Elite (1986) Atari ST; Deluxe Paint (1985), Deluxe Paint 2 (1986) Commodore Amiga, and others.
FIGURATIVE > ABSTRACT
THE STUDIO (Random Walking): An artist, or anyone, someone working from home, paces their cell never able to escape. Makes even more sense now with social isolation by internet. Figurative Abstract Animation. Has sound on collision with the ‘walls’ (a beep, quite loud). Showed the Menus, then Blue walking at 5 seconds, Red at 40s, Green at 1m 16s.
DADA – WORD GENERATOR
Generates neologisms, which can be strung together as phonetic poetry (an old Dada trick, used by the group Talking Heads on ‘I Zimbra’) used as cues for words, etc.
CARRY ON COMPUTING – ‘MATH ART’ DATA VISUALISATION
Early Math Art. Animated layers of BASIC code and random computer glitch with beeps. This is now called ‘data visualisation’ and is used to create a Matrix-movie style of ‘data’ moving or scrolling about.
GENERATIVE ART
This graphic method used scrolling, like a typewriter, piano player, Jaquard loom. Was put in this set as an example of ‘art’.
It could be a mobile graphic ‘score’ for keyboard music, or any other type of activity. Colour controllable. Released by Expanded Art as a Pioneer Grail with Music
REVIEWS
MA2 was reviewed in Sinclair User 1984 thus:
The alternative society is still throbbing at Micro Arts, the magazine Gremlin discovered in January. The high priests of pretension have now released Micro Arts 2, Various Unusual Events, a selection of programs on cassette. The events include Minimal, which fills up the screen with dots very, very slowly, and Dada, which makes up words at random.
Pride of place goes to The Money Work System based on The Scum Manifesto by Valerie Solanas. Gremlin regards this as essential viewing for all neo-patriarchal non-feeling fascists, i.e. men, especially ones who cannot win at Hampstead. Buy the program, and learn why only “very young or very sick women” will endure male company without being “coerced or bribed”.
https://sinclairuser.com/035/gremlin.htm
The only visual work similar to the MA1 “abstracts” was Piano Bar.
VARIOUS UNUSUAL EVENTS
Minimal
Slow Art – 2 years to finish. An early example of environmental or slow (long term) art. Also a joke about fast paced computer graphics. Pixel Art did not exist until the 1990s, as a retro art scene. This was original pixel art. One at a time.
Above: one pixel to bottom left.
Studio (Random Walking)
By adding walking feet to the generation of the screen art, the whole concept of generative art piece is transformed. It looks ‘as if’ the shoe shapes are creating the art.
Dada # 0
In June 1916 Hugo Ball, founder of Dada, performed a set of sound poems on stage at the Cabaret Voltaire club in Zurich. This program created random works from letter, to be recited as sound art.
The Money-Work System (SCUM Manifesto)
Animation of SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas (1967). She was a (later) diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who shot Andy Warhol, critic Mario Amaya and tried to shoot manager Fred Hughes. The previous year Solanas submitted a manuscript to Warhol, but he suspected police entrapment as the script was so extreme. He mentioned this in an interview, and then lost the manuscript, triggering Solanas’s homicidal rage. This is covered best in POPism by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett.
Solanas agitated for a money-free women-only system to solve the world’s ills. A universal benefit system with electronic money was explored in one of my fictions, a novella ‘Death in the Bubble World’ (1997). This invented an electronic currency, please visit the site ‘Easy Money Units’.
The MA2 version was an animation, a sort of primitive graphic novel, with a sad faced male as anti-hero.
The original was an adult version. The frames have been edited.
Carry On Computing
Math art? Code as art? This was a program that displayed chunks of code on the screen, for no educational reason. Just computer code art, after Stan Brakhage.
The Piano Bar
A scrolling colour generator. This has visual parallels with Anni Albers (Bauhaus) woven creations, and the loom inspired origin of computer technology (Jacquard’s Loom). Both used repetitions with small variations.
MA2 Various Unusual Events – Piano Bar
Micro Arts Group Geoff Davis MA2 Various Unusual Events The Piano Bar red generative computer art
Above: Piano Bar scrolling art – see below for more information
Loop of 2 and 6
The two visual pieces could be run in a loop for ambient visuals.
Above: Inner cassette Micro Arts MA2 – Geoff Davis: Various Unusual Events