In 1985, representatives of Commodore International approached Andy Warhol and asked him to test out the artistic chops of their new PC, the Amiga. The Amiga was a home computer with unparalleled graphic abilities compared to the black-and-white Macintoshes of the time. Warhol was so impressed with the computer and its Graphiccraft and ProPaint drawing software that he ended up using it to sketch Blondie’sDebbie Harry on stage during the Amiga launch event.
For almost 30 years, the only record of this early collision between art and technology was a two-minute video of the launch. But back in 2011, it got artist Cory Arcangel wondering. A sort of Andy Warhol of tech, and an Amiga enthusiast himself, Arcangel wanted to know if more of Warhol’s early bitmap experiments had survived.
Teaming up with the Carnegie Mellon Computer Club and the Andy Warhol Museum, Arcangel was able to dig up a collection of Amiga floppies that he remembered seeing (but not actually sifting through) at Warhol’s New York City studio in 1991. In those floppies, Arcangel found a treasure trove of Warhol’s early digital experiments, ranging from a crude take on the Campbell’s soup can to trippy self-portraits of Warhol posing for the Amiga’s rudimentary web cam to a three-eyed version of Botticelli’s Venus.
Read the full story at Fast Company Design.
