Dream & Discover
Discover Harold Cohen, First Athletes, 1986
Harold Cohen is hailed as one of the founding fathers of computer art. In 1968, he moved to San Diego as a visiting professor of the University of California and encountered his first computer. In the early 1970s, he became a guest scholar in artificial intelligence at Stanford University and developed his drawing and painting computer program, AARON. Over the next four decades, Cohen produced a myriad of colourful abstract and figurative works using AI technology. Executed in 1986, First Athletes depicts a series of figures, many with their arms outstretched, balancing on balls. It has a strong sense of movement, combined with a fun cheerfulness and glorious bursts of colour. Cohen hand-coloured his drawings until the early 1990s when AARON had mastered both the human figure and colour.
