Peripheral Vision

This remarkable book tells the key story about the origins of contemporary algorithm culture. It shows how a single computer with special graphics peripherals was used by a number of pioneering artists in the early 1960s to create the first works of computer art. Essential reading for anybody who wants to understand our own time when algorithms are used for designing everything from architecture and special effects to analyzing every kind of data.

Lev Manovich, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, author of The Language of New Media

The SC-4020. Not a poetic name. Yet this device lay at the origins of digital art. In an eloquent and meticulous analysis of the making and deployment of the SC-4020, Zabet Patterson gives a brilliant account of how and why devices matter, especially those that don't fit into contemporary priorities or the linear map of progress. A major contribution to the history of technology, of institutions' roles in historical process, and to our understanding of the roads less traveled that still remain to be explored in digital culture.

Sean Cubitt, Professor of Film and Television, and Co-Head, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London

Computers are routinely used by artists these days. But do we know how the liaison was first forged? Adopting a materialist approach, this dense little book demonstrates how some of the earliest steps were taken by scientists, engineers, and would-be artists at Bell Labs, where they molded limited hardware into creative tools. And not only that: we also learn how the results were first taken out into galleries and exhibitions.

Erkki Huhtamo, Professor of Design | Media Arts, and Film, Television, and Digital Media, University of California, Los Angeles

Peripheral Vision tells the story of Bell Labs's famed engineering and arts collaborations in the 1960s. Whereas previous accounts tend to emphasize the mainframe computer as a singular, programmable device, Patterson set her sights on the peripheral machinery that made the experiments possible by making Bell Labs's Stromberg-Carlson 4020 plotter printer the main character in this riveting and timely narrative.

Hannah B Higgins, Professor, Department of Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago