Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago in 1951. In 1974 he received his B.F.A. at the Southern Illinois University. Until 1978 he attended the Cornell and the Columbia University. The artist has been awarded several grants including the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Award. His works have been shown widely around Europe and the U.S.A.

Creators must place themselves above the level of the mechanical through the integration of art and technics — resist the quantifying of life in the interests of power, prestige and profit, resist the fashion of idealizing mechanical forces. The computer/robotic paintings symbolize a society that has freed itself from total rational utilitarianism through the symbolism of poetry in technology, and by linking the primordial horrors to the technology of today. They are in great measure a reaction against the organizational harness of the post-industrial society, the technocratic mind view. By detaching the signifier away from the signified, the subjective spectacle of ecstatic spirituality is simulated. Since spirituality cannot be signified (no signifying unit refers to spirituality which is a mode of being, of feeling), the images of authority in the technotronic society can be used against themselves, and thereby keep us from the curse of single vision ("new sleep"). Western culture's privileged reason has divided the world into the rational, calculating "objective"and the intuitive "subjective". A holistic culture would balance reason and intuition and challenge the dualism of science and art at the level of production. The potential impact of computer technology as an integrator of art and science is well known. Yet if we contrast the computer's compulsion for order with the primal retentions in the social unconscious, a dreamier, more subjective use of the computer revolution becomes obviously needed. Today everything is spread over, blown apart, simultaneously known, shared and forgotten. No media mysticism can relieve our bloated media millennium. Inner lives have become impoverished through the mechanization of the overdisciplined orbital society due to lack of spontaneity. The trend to an information-centered society threatens to collapse the categorical mind of fixed images into a mono-world of abstract overloaded imagery spread. This unconscious conspiracy of heady technological freedom promises to transform human-machine and human-human relationships for better or worse.

Technical Background

Technical information on computer/robotic-assisted acrylic on canvas paintings: Four consecutive processes are at work:

1. An electronic laser scans and digitizes 2D information.


2. Information is computerized.


3. Computer magnifies information to project imagery out into a larger distance for perceptual reading, thereby publicizing the inner workings (the inner space) of the work of art. This creates a long range painting for public consumption.


4. Robotic arms carry out the order of the computer, applying the acrylic pigment to canvas with computer precision.