Computed Art. Beraeknad konst.

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Sture Johannesson Sten Kallin

1974

Book

13.5"x8.75"

Description

Computed Art/Beraeknad Konst, an art book published in 1974, documents the creative collaboration between the Swedish artist Sture Johannesson and Sten Kallin, a Swedish systems engineer who worked at IBM. Such collaborations across culture and industry were central to the early development of computer art.

The book presents the project “Intra Secus,” which began in 1969 when Johannesson—then known as a graphic artist and photographer—approached IBM, curious about the artistic possibilities of computing technology. He was connected with Kallin, who had similar interests. What was initially planned as a four-hour consultation became a multiyear project, which was itself the beginning of a collaboration between Johannesson and Kallin that lasted up to the 1990s.

Working on an IBM 1130 computer with a Calcomp plotter, the pair produced a series of mostly abstract images consisting of repeated mathematical lines and curves. The programming language, as indicated by the book cover, was Fortran.

Works from “Intra Secus” were featured in the Computer Visual Research section of the exhibition “Tendencies 5”_ _in Zagreb in 1973. At IBM Sweden, one of the images was gifted as a print along with the annual box of chocolates for employees at Christmas.