Leon Harmon (American, 1922–1982) Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I), 1966
computer processed photo printed on paper
95.9 × 43.2 × 107.3 cm
Collection of Bre Pettis
PION.2025.017
Description
Studies in Perception I — also known as Computer Nude — is one of the foundational images of computer art, made in 1966 by Leon Harmon and Ken Knowlton at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Max Mathews' photograph of choreographer Deborah Hay was scanned and the brightness of each region replaced with small typographic and electronic symbols — processed on an IBM 7094 and output through a Stromberg-Carlson SC-4020 microfilm recorder — so the nude resolves only at a distance. The original was a unique five-foot-tall, twelve-foot-wide mural the two pasted up on a colleague's office wall as a prank. It went public at an Experiments in Art and Technology press conference at Robert Rauschenberg's loft and ran in the New York Times on October 11, 1967, then hung in MoMA's The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (1968–69). Prints exist in several forms — 1967 screenprints, small period photo-prints from the microfilm, and a 1997 laser edition; this print's 17 × 37.75 inch format matches none of the documented ones exactly, so which printing it is remains to be pinned down.
Sources: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1488652/ · http://www.kenknowlton.com/pages/04portrait.htm
