Digital Art Museum
 
Ben LAPOSKY      
 

Oscillon Number Four 1950

   

Ben F. Laposky (USA) 1914 - 2000

Ben Laposky was a mathematician and artist from Cherokee, Iowa. When he died in 2000, the art world lost one of its earliest computer art innovators. In 1950, he created the first graphic images generated by an electronic (analog) machine.

His electronic oscilloscope imagery was produced by manipulated electronic beams displayed across the fluorescent face of an oscilloscope's cathode-ray tube and then recorded onto high-speed film. He called his oscillographic artworks 'oscillons' and 'electronic abstractions'. The mathematical curves that were created by this method were similar to the lissajous wave form.

Laposky website http://arttech.miningco.com/library/bltechart_laposky.htm

Laposky essay Oscillons: Electronic Abstractions from Ruth Leavitt's Artist and Computer

 

This is an archive of the Digital Art Museum for historical reference.
See dam.org for the current site.