The first inkling anyone had that computers might be more than giant calculators or glorified typewriters came in the 1960s, when A. Michael Noll programmed a computer at Bell Labs, the pioneering research institute outside New York, to generate patterns of lines he called “computer art.” His program produced dots distributed in a way prescribed by a mathematical equation called a Gaussian distribution, which generates bell-like curves. He then connected the dots from bottom to top in a random way, producing a continuous zigzag. The result reminded him of Picasso’s Ma Jolie, which he had seen many times at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He called his creation Gaussian Quadratic. He even held an exhibition, in 1965, at the Howard Wise Gallery on New York’s grand Upper West Side.

Meanwhile, over in Germany that same year, Georg Nees and Frieder Nake were also beginning to look into the artistic possibilities of computers. But all this work was programmed, and the computers of the day were vast and unwieldly. The so-called art consisted mainly of geometric patterns of lines and dots: intriguing, certainly, but modest. Many years would go by before computers and computer art became a force to be reckoned with—and before anyone dared to suggest that computers might be creative.