NEWS: The Micro Arts Magazine 1984 first edition – online here now
Geoff Davis:
Mainly published to get the word out, as there was no web or smartphones back in 1984. Distributed by Arts Express to galleries etc., and some hand-delivered to other places like bookshops. It was also given away with the MA series data cassettes.
The articles covered art generation, music, had images of generated art and also paintbox images by an artist (‘Paintbox’or painting pixels and photo editing had just been invented). It was an alternative to the usual computer magazines which did not cover art, only graphic production, games, utilities, hardware.
Accidentally in the credits showed the mixed gender contributors on the project, me plus 5 men and 5 women (and Denise at the printers I guess). In 1984 this was not mentioned as a ‘thing’ unlike now. This gender parity in Micro Arts was and still is unusual in computer art.
Published very early paintbox art by Michèle Gauthier Carr-Brown (France) an artist (rather than a scientist, researcher etc.). Quantel Paintbox was the most famous (MTV etc.) but other systems were in use such as EASEL and Lumena. Michèle worked with Sonia Sheridan (USA) on some things for the Électra exhibition in Paris and also did her own experiments, which appeared in the Magazine, this was a few years prior to David Hockney using it in the BBC series Painting With Light.
For more see memoirs by the people in Micro Arts
Sonia Sheridan (USA): Exhibition Électra in 1983 at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris, France). See: Sonia Sheridan biography
The contents page had a spoof ‘Clive Sinclair’ editorial (by me) so that doesn’t count.
Incidentally the second edition was planned and started but didn’t get any advertising, and so never came out. All the Micro Arts articles and software had moved onto Prestel teletext by end 1985 so paper seemed very old-fashioned.
Harold Cohen (famous artist who created AARON, an “AI” computer version of his art) I asked to write an article for the second edition but declined, but he did tell me that “Art is all about marketing,” which was actually good advice. My correspondence is in the Harold Cohen Trust’s archives.
Get the new Micro Arts ebook – universal link
Editorial: this is a the Micro Arts Magazine editorial, by ‘Clive Sinclair’, a spoof piece based on a typical inspirational text:
Have you ever thought about computing and the people who are part of it as special? Here’s why, in a guest editorial…
“Few people have ever considered the therapeutic qualities of Computing and yet from all that I can see – and I have been looking for twenty years as you all know – there is definite evidence that something about Computing wipes out the general miseries of humanity.
I have known, first and last at least two dozen Computer Scientists, at least fifty Computer Programmers and uncounted hundreds of Computer buffs.
If there is one thing that unites them, Computer Scientists, Programmers, buffs (and me) it is a quality of enthusiasm undimmed by age. They love to laugh, they love to be excited, they love to be interested. The world is not a dull place for them. It may be strange, it may be tantalising, it may be frustrating, but it is never dull.
How else can it possibly be for anyone who loves Computing? Is Computing a means of escape? Nuts! Is atomic warfare, space travel, robots, and – in general – man facing the scientific future escape? Of course not. It is the computer personality who dares to face life as it is with its dangers and risks. It is the Computer personality who dares to face change without feeling the sense of loss that goes with the departure from the womb – whatever may happen, the world is not a dull place for them.
This is healthy. There may have been a time in history when it was fine for the individual to be adjusted to his or her way of life; but this is no longer the time. This is a time when it is fine for an individual not to be adjusted to a way of life, because the way of life changes every year. He must be adjusted to change and it takes a healthy (in the modern sense) man or woman to so that.
Computer personalities, by their very interest in Computing, adjust themselves to change. And if someone feels the world to be frightening and harrowing because it doesn’t stay the same, I recommend a diet of Computers and the company of Computer Programmers.
It may take some getting used to at first; some acknowledgement of the fact that what seems a mild insanity at times can be and essential sanity, but in the end he’ll love it all; Computers and Computer People. As I do.”
This makes even more sense now than it did then. Computing is the focus of capitalism with frantic but essential upgrading, industry disruptions, social effects, perhaps caused by the silicon reality of Moore’s Law. Will it ever end?
Page scans
