scan-lines, phosphor glow, bleeding colors, and general analog feel

October 6, 2024 2:15 PM

Whilst searching for something else entirely I stumbled across these images and was struck by just how beautiful they are. The September 1984 issue of BYTE magazine features cover artwork by Barbara Nessim [...] They were drawn during a residency at Time Life in NYC, simply because that was the easiest way Barbara could gain access to a colour computer with suitable capabilities: a Norpak IPS-2 Videotex (NAPLPS/Telidon) system. This offered 6 drawing modes (arc, rectangle, circle, line, dot and polygon) and 12 colours, of which half where shades of grey, plus black and white. And at a resolution of 256x200. [...] My first thought was “such cool pixel art!” but a little bit more reading shows that they are actually vector illustrations. NAPLPS is an early graphics format which could represent both text and vector graphics with all coordinates and other properties - such as size, fill pattern, density - encoded as ASCII for easy transmission. It was designed to display information on TVs, and also used for display on terminals, in BBS software, and on the Prodigy online service. [...] Doing pure illustration using a system meant for creating pages of information is exactly the type of software subversion I love to discover!

MeFi's Own gingerbeardman shares a deep dive blog post exploring the pioneering digital art of Barbara Nessim

Barbara Nessim: Digital Art Pioneer

The blog post provides a plethora of further reading; some highlights:

From Pencils to Pixels: Artist Barbara Nessim Explores the New Tool: "Published at a time when there was great unease about the arrival of computers in the world of graphics. This is a fantastic piece that goes into how the works were created, even down to which tools or shapes were used to draw particular aspects of a drawing and how they were layered, and mostly shows Barbara’s love for the arc tool!"

49 pages on Videotex and NAPLPS graphics from the amazing Telidon Art Project

Face to Face (1984): "a video made to document her work on the last night of her residency at Time Life, featuring the images loading and displaying in real-time."

BGC Craft, Art & Design Oral History Project (2014): "A great, long interview by Emily Banas. Barbara talks about her use of the IPS-2, Apple Macintosh, and Commodore Amiga."

Barbara Nessim: From There to Here (2014): "Barbara talks about her work as a pioneer in using computer technology to make art. Featuring work done on a Japanese NEC PC-100 and Commodore Amiga."

The Lost Art of Canada's Doomed Pre-Internet Web: "Before GIFs and net art, there was Telidon. Telidon was a protocol invented in Canada in the late 1970s that let people dial in to central servers over the phone lines to view computer graphics on their TV sets. Telidon was mainly meant for online shopping and banking, but it wasn’t all business. Artists in Toronto obtained one of the desk-sized computers used to create Telidon graphics and formed a thriving community around it before Telidon disappeared in the mid 80s. We catch up with the original Telidon artists and find out what it was like to be a true pioneer in the world of art made with machines."

Sighs & Whispers: Episode 21: "Essential listening. An interview by Laura McLaws Helms. Includes Barbara describing how she operated the IPS-2 using a combination of keyboard commands and pen input."

posted by Rhaomi (11 comments total)

Rhaomi -- thanks for posting -- great stuff here...
posted by UhOhChongo! at 4:26 PM on October 6

So cool to find out the technical source for what I’ve always thought of as the “Prodigy aesthetic”. I still remember how those illustrations used to render progressively on load - strangely compelling.
posted by q*ben at 4:59 PM on October 6 [3 favorites]

(Who remembers Mad Maze)
posted by q*ben at 5:06 PM on October 6 [4 favorites]

Yes! This is an excellent post Rhaomi.
posted by JHarris at 5:21 PM on October 6

Since they are vector art, my first thought was to wonder if the files still exist, and whether they could be converted into a modern format, and what they might look like without all the scan lines and pixels. I get that this subverts the intent of the artist; those things, plus the process of photographing the monitor, and preparing the photo for print are all part of the original intended look. But on the other hand, the choice of vector art means the ability to display at different resolutions.
posted by surlyben at 7:01 PM on October 6

i well remember those days & that computer art.
posted by graywyvern at 7:13 PM on October 6 [1 favorite]

Great post, this is wonderful!
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:53 PM on October 6

gingerbeardman also wrote another blogpost about computer art pieces that Nessim made in Japan in 1986; it's remarkable how much more advanced the technology got in just two years
posted by Kattullus at 2:55 AM on October 7

NAPLPS. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:50 AM on October 7

@Kattullus it was an exciting time to be a computer nerd, that's for certain.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:52 AM on October 7 [2 favorites]

Those are great. They reminded me, more in the pioneering spirit in a digital art medium, of David Hockney's iPhone works or Jorge Colombo's iPhone-made New Yorker cover
posted by the sobsister at 7:10 AM on October 7 [1 favorite]