Roman Verostko (born 1929 USA) was one of the earliest artists experimenting with algorithmic art - work created using an algorithm or set of instructions written by the artist - and has been a key figure in its development. He was a member of the ‘The Algorists’, a term coined in 1995 to describe a set of artists, who, since the 1960s and 1970s, had been working with a shared interest in the use of bespoke software for generating art using the computer.

Verostko developed his own software to control a pen plotter, a mechanical device that holds a pen or brush and is linked to a computer that controls its movement. The glyphs on the right of this image were created using a computer code that attributed a glyph, or written symbol, to each letter of the alphabet. Translated, the text is a quotation from a Chinese classic text the Tao Te Ching, which reads ‘So it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to (the idea of) the other; that difficulty and ease produce the one the other - that height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other; that musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relation of one with another’ (Tao Te Ching, by Lao-tzu, translated by J. Legge, Sacred Books of the East, Vol 39, [1891] ). Both the drawing and the glyphs were drawn using the pen plotter.