Noise Barrier

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Aaron Marcus

1974

Lithograph
22"x30"

Description

Noise Barrier, a serigraph print derived from a computer-generated image, is a notable example of the pioneering “computer-assisted” work of graphic designer and artist Aaron Marcus.

Marcus began working with computers in 1967 during his graduate studies in graphic design at Yale University; he taught himself to program Fortran at the Yale Computer Center. That summer he was hired as an intern researching computer graphics at Bell Labs in New Jersey, where he later became a full-time employee—the first graphic designer to hold such a role—and consultant. Computers and electronic media became important tools for his own creative practice, as a way of exploring the impact of new media on the development of visual and verbal communication.

The computer-generated image for Noise Barrier, with its scratchy, script-like white lines and red rectangular marks against a black background, was made in 1972 at Yale’s Graphic Design Department. The software was custom-written in Fortran and the hardware was a DEC PDP-10 computer, with a Mergenthaler Linofilm Phototypesetter used to output the image. The serigraph was published two years later by Pratt Graphic Center in New York in an edition of 100.

One of the prints was included, among other works by Marcus, in a 1982 exhibition of computer art at Lehigh University Art Galleries in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. “Today the introduction of electronic communication and computers has created strong forces to reshape letterforms,” he wrote in an accompanying statement.