HOW DO YOU DRAW a line with a computer? This task has not always been as simple as clicking a mouse or swiping your finger across a screen. When the artist Vera Molnar1 (1924–2023) decided to try her hand at computer graphics in the late 1960s, she did so decades before the wide availability of software like Paint, with its welcoming and accessible graphical user interface (GUI). She had to give the computer instructions in a language the machine would understand: alphanumeric code.
This two-part column focuses less on a specific show or event, but reflects on this idea of the avant-garde to observe its dramatically shifting application to art movements and practices. Part one focused on the nineteenth and twentieth century references. This second part continues last month’s history of the term avant-garde, to consider its application to media art.