My latest creation in a group exhibit at the Washington Pavilion

 

 

This exhibit is on display in the Visual Arts Center’s Gallery A from July 28, 2006, through October 1, 2006.

The pieces in this exhibit are also featured in an online, virtual gallery.

The computer punch card is an outmoded technology for recording digital information. Punch cards were once commonplace in an era when computers with vacuum tubes filled vast rooms in corporate office buildings. Keypunch operators punched holes into punch cards. Information was represented by the presence or absence of holes. Punch cards were tabulated and the data processed. Processing punch cards was meticulous and time-consuming work, but it was the cutting-edge technology of its time.

The punch card concept had originated with the Jacquard looms of the early 19th century. Jacquard looms were programmed using punch cards to weave complex patterns. Herman Hollerith used punch cards with mechanical tabulating machines for counting the 1890 U.S. Census. Hollerith founded one of the three companies that eventually merged to form the computer giant IBM. The standard punch card dimensions of 7 3/8” x 3 ¼” are identical in size to American currency prior to 1930. One corner of a punch card is cut to insure that it inserts correctly into machines. Mountains of paper punch cards were produced, punched, processed and eventually stored in boxes.

By the late 1960s, many people viewed the computer punch card as a cultural icon symbolic of contemporary high technology. Some people feared the punch card as a harbinger of a threatening new world order where human beings would become nameless numbers and individualism would be suppressed. Others saw the punch card and the incipient computer technology as the dawning of an age of scientific progress. By the mid1970s, the punch card was largely replaced by far more efficient information storage technologies. The punch card is now all but obsolete, though it still played a pivotal roll in the 2000 Presidential Election with its famous “hanging chad” controversy.

The computer punch cards in this exhibition were manufactured thirty-five years ago and belonged to the Visual Arts Center’s curator, Howard DaLee Spencer. They originally came from the computer center at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana. The cards were never punched and were stored in their original box.

The staff of the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science mailed punch cards to a wide selection of artists and cultural figures across the country and around the world. They were instructed to create artworks using the punch cards and to return their artistic creations to the Visual Arts Center in a business reply envelope that accompanied each punch card. The artists agreed to donate their artworks to the Visual Arts Center. The artworks will become part of the Visual Arts Center’s Education Collection. The artists were otherwise free to write, paint, draw, cut, print, or do whatever they wished with the punch cards, in direct contradiction to the dire admonition famously printed on many computer punch cards —“Do not fold, bend, spindle or mutilate.”

This computer punch card mailing exhibition is unique. Mailing art exhibitions have been popular for many years. Artists have used punch cards to create works of art. Yet, as far as we can determine, no one has previously organized a mailing exhibition featuring artworks made with computer punch cards. The concept has intrigued many artists and has stimulated them to create some remarkable works of art. The Muse truly took hold! And to think that it was all inspired by something as simple as a computer punch card!

The Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Science wishes to express its deepest gratitude to the highly inventive artists who have participated in this special exhibition. This computer punch card show would not have been possible without the generosity and creative genius of the artists. We sincerely appreciate their willingness to become a part of this landmark exhibit.