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Drawing
Cohen, Harold, born 1928 - Enlarge image
Drawing
- Place of origin:
USA, USA (made)
- Date:
1987 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Cohen, Harold, born 1928 (artist)
- Materials and Techniques:
Computer-generated drawing on paper
- Credit Line:
Given by Harold Cohen
- Museum number:
E.337:2-2009
- Gallery location:
Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C, case CAGE
Cohen trained as a painter and represented Britain at the 1966 Venice Biennale. In 1968 he became a visiting professor at the University of California at San Diego, where he was introduced to computer programming. In 1971 Cohen took up a post as visiting scholar in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. While at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, he began developing a computer program called Aaron, in which he sought to codify the act of drawing. In its early years Aaron could only produce monochrome line drawings. By the late 1980s Cohen's Aaron program was using a repertoire of real-world shapes to produce detailed line drawings such as this one. The image includes a number of human figures in outline, plus Cohen's highly distinctive plant foliage. It is evident that the pen used to create this drawing (in a pen plotter) ran out of ink whilst drawing and this is most likely why Cohen began the drawing again on the other side of the paper. This was a common occurrence for artists using pen plotters.
