Ruth Leavitt

Born 1944-03-08 in St. Paul, Minnesta, USA.

Ruth Leavitt’s introduction to computers was via her first husband Jay Allen Leavit. though her own background was in abstract expressionism.

She was a master-class student under Hans Hofmann, with whom she initially studied and practised abstract expressionism. Prompted by her husband who taught at the Computer Science Department at the University of Minnesota, she enlisted the help of computers at an early stage to generate images. “The change has been gradual and I feel I am combining both attitudes, abstract expressionism and constructivism in my work.”

At first, Leavitt worked with existing programmes, such as Sketchpad. In spite of these interactive resources and the traditional artistic means and similar methods handed down, she quickly became dissatisfied, as the free forms were locked into a raster grid. So she designed her own, so-called “stretching programme”, which could distort, swivel as well as deform lines and used it to generate
paintings and graphics such as the series Diamond Transmutation or Herringbone Variation.

The transition to using the computer involved, as for most of the pioneering artists, writing or commissioning programmes to realise a specific artistic intent. In her own case both variation and distortion were important tools in her computer art work, giving rise to a dynamic that encompassed both constructivist purity and more lyrical tensions.

In addition, at the end of the 1970s, Leavitt produced film animations using a variation of her programme. She always considered the computer to be an artist’s hand tool. although Computer Art was a milestone in the history of art, in so far as the computer embodied a new source of inspiration.

Ruth Leavitt was the editor of one of the earliest compilations on computer art, Artist and Computer.

“I became so inspired by the computer’s power to process information and its ability to control other equipment that exploring the possibilities of a tool with memory took precedence over the selection· of content. My art documented the way computers affect seeing, thinking, and constructing art and foretold of its impact on the culture at large.“

[Source: Ex Machina – Frühe Computergrafik bis 1979. ...]

Web site: http://www.atariarchives.org/artist/sec28.php
Cited in: Ex Machina - Frühe Computergrafik bis 1979. ..., A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Maga...

1969 Recieved a degree in painting at the University of Minnesota (master-class student under Hans Hofmann).
1970 onwards Worked on the Sketchpad software and created variations suitable for her work.
1976 Published the book Artist and Computer which introduced the most prominent artists in Computer Art with one statement each.
Late 1970s Produced film animations using a variation of her programme.
1982 – 83 Taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology (New York).
1983 – 87 Taught at the State University of New York in Buffalo.
1987 – 95 Taught at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County.
1996 – 99 Taught at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.

She lives and works as Ruth Leavitt Fallon in Baltimore (Maryland. USA).

 
Last change by hemant on 19th of January 2011