First Transmission

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Lillian Feldman Schwartz

1990

24 × 36 in 

Description

First Transmission is both a portrait of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven and a historic artifact of a milestone in the technological mediation of art-making. The portrait was the first artwork to be drawn and transmitted across a digital network in real-time, years before the launch of the World Wide Web in 1993. Lillian Schwartz drew the portrait using an early graphics tablet, a light pen, and illustration software before sending the file across a telephone data link to an exhibition at the Williams Gallery in Princeton, New Jersey, using an external dial-up modem. The image was then laser printed at the exhibition site. Just as Beethoven composed through a sensitivity to vibrations after losing his hearing, Schwartz’s portrait is decoded through networks and protocols—a telematic analogue to composing with the help of unseen forces.