Studies in Perception I (Knowlton and Harmon, 1966)

Studies in Perception I is a large picture of a reclining nude made in 1966 at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey by Ken Knowlton (1931–2022) and Leon Harmon (1922–1983). Seen close up, it is a grid of tiny symbols for electronic parts. From a distance, the symbols merge into a photograph of the dancer Deborah Hay.^1, 2, 3

How the picture was made

A photograph was scanned with a camera, and the analogue voltages from the scan were converted into binary numbers. Each number then chose a typographic symbol by its density, as in halftone printing: a part of the picture that should look light got a symbol with little ink, a dark part a symbol with much ink.² The symbols were, in Knowlton's words, "small electronic symbols for transistors, resistors and such".¹

The diagram above shows the principle with a scale and a test picture of JAEV's own. Making grey from black marks on white is also what dithering does.

A prank, then a press photo

Knowlton later called the picture a "sophomoric prank". While Ed David, their manager two levels up, was away, Harmon proposed covering a whole wall of his office with it. The picture was 12 feet wide, and more visitors than expected could make out what it showed. After one day it was moved to David's basement, and the public relations department told them not to associate the name of Bell Labs with it.¹

Then it was shown at a press conference on art and technology in Robert Rauschenberg's loft, and on 11 October 1967 it was printed at the top of the first page of the second section of The New York Times. After that, Knowlton writes, Bell Labs' advice changed: show it, but say that it was made at Bell Telephone Laboratories.¹

As art

Of the title Knowlton writes: "Sometimes it is excused by a more dignified title, like Studies in Perception I." The picture was submitted to the Museum of Modern Art's "Machine Show", The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, and to the Brooklyn Museum. Each time one of the two had to be named the artist; by the toss of a coin, "Leon became the artist and I remained a technologist".^1, 2 In 1968 the catalogue of Cybernetic Serendipity in London printed "Computer-generated pictures" by Harmon and Knowlton.⁴

The work exists in several versions and sizes, and is dated 1966 or 1967. The SIGGRAPH archive lists a 1966 print of 60 × 144 inches; the screen prints at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Thoma Foundation are dated 1967.^5, 6, 7 The picture began, Knowlton wrote, his "fascination with large pictures made of small things", and he made mosaic portraits for decades afterwards.¹ A mosaic, in his statement for SIGGRAPH, should make the viewer ask: "Why do I see what I think I see?"⁵ The first exhibitions of computer pictures, in 1965, are in JAEV's Generative Art.