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.

This is one of a series of prints that Cohen created for a one-man show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1977-8. At the time, his Aaron computer program was only able to produce monochrome line-drawings. However, the V&A also holds a hand-coloured drawing of the same image, dated 1982 (E.327-2009). According to the artist, the image created in 1977 was subsequently hand-coloured, then signed and dated by him in 1982.

In the exhibition, Cohen also exhibited his "turtle", a computer-controlled drawing device that moved around on top of a large sheet of paper. The "turtle" was popular with museum visitors, but Cohen decided to retire it soon afterwards.