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| A decade of technology, new art forms, and neon leg warmers… |
The 1980s was a decade of questionable
fashion, global change and technical innovation, all of which greatly
influenced the way art was created. Art became less traditional as technology
advanced and artists began experimenting with new materials, tools, and
techniques, all while venturing on to the path of creating entirely new art
movements that would become symbolic of a decade that would also give us the
Rubik’s Cube and neon leg warmers.
This time, we explore how the
1980s changed the way we produced, purchased, viewed, and even thought about
art. We also explore how the technological advances of the 80s influenced the
art world and how the decade inspired a legion of young artists. We also take a look at the brand new art
movements that began at the very same time that Hill Street Blues, Dallas, and
Miami Vice were showing on TV in the days before we had reruns and inferior remakes.
Whether you are anchored in
the traditional practice of creating art using a brush and canvas or you are a
digital artist pushing and pulling pixels, the 1980s had been a pivotal moment
for the art world, even if those of us who lived through the decade hadn’t
realised it at the time.
If you create art in the 21st
Century, it’s fair to say that how you create, view and sell your work today
owes a great deal to the disruption that technology and creativity was
responsible for during that neon decade of mass consumerism, consumption, and a
thirst to find out what was next. So, we’re heading back to the 1980s to find
out what exactly went on.
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| That Was The Eighties By Mark Taylor |
I was born in 1969, not long
after the moon landing. My recollection of the 1970s is a rose tinted history
of reading the Disneyland Annual, the hot summer of 1976, a picnic on the
school sports field to celebrate the Queens Jubilee in 1977, and the Atari VCS
and for me, that was the beginning of my lifelong affiliation to all things
tech, and quite bizarrely, my lifelong addiction to creating art.
By the 1980s, affordable home
computers were widely available and even if those computers were mostly being
used by the kids to play early video games, the inadvertent and almost subtle exposure
to art that by proxy of the ephemera that came with them would provide, couldn’t
be ignored. As a child, I had no idea just how much the art that accompanied
the marketing materials was influencing me to set out on a creative career path.
The Atari VCS, an early (but
not the earliest) video game console, was strangely one of the inspirations
that pointed me towards a career in the arts. The artwork adorning the boxes
that held the game cartridges was incredibly powerful, but more than that, these
images perfectly summed up the power of illustration and its ability to say the
same thing in any language without using words. It was an almost perfect
demonstration of how art could be effectively used in marketing campaigns to
tell the back story quickly and form a deep connection with the buyer.
At the time, I hadn’t quite
pieced together how or why the style of the art used in the packaging could
carry so much influence when it came to selecting new games. It was bold,
colourful, and full of imagination, but more than that, there was a consistency
in the packaging and the design. As a child, it just looked very cool. As a
professional artist reflecting on the period, it was a masterclass in design.
When you made the pilgrimage
to the video games store you would be met with a display of titles that would
spark any youngsters imagination. It wasn’t until many years later that I
recognised the design and style choices used for the boxes had been an act of savvy
marketing that felt very different to anything that had come before.
Looking back now, we can see
that the original Atari 2600 game boxes had been a masterclass in creating brand
recognition. Atari’s logo, sometimes called the Fuji logo is still an iconic
image today and instantly recognisable, even to those who didn’t grow up through
the Atari generation.
Created by George Opperman,
Atari’s very first full time graphic designer, the logo was designed to
represent the letter A, created in a way that represented two players competing
on the video game, Pong. The advertising executives who designed the marketing
campaigns understood that focussing on building strong brand identity should be
front and centre of their design choices and so they masterfully crafted
designs that felt almost futuristic, yet today remain timeless.
The boxes used a recognisable
font called “Harry” and artwork which told the story of the game
inside. This made them visually appealing and helped to create a consistent
look for the Atari 2600 brand, the same principles were followed throughout the
marketing campaigns of a number of their subsequent products. As a result, the
boxes almost begged you to collect them all. People didn’t play video games, they
played Atari, and that was the confirmation the designers and marketers needed
to confirm Atari’s dominant position as number one.
This consistency of design
also made it feel like everyone who bought into Atari was part of something
bigger. It created a sense of community among gamers who knew that they were
all sharing the same experience, and the visual appeal of the packaging meant
that the products lent themselves to being collectible even though millions of
units had been sold. The downside, the 80s was a decade of consumerism and it
was disposable. Collectible or not, these boxes would usually end up in the trash,
leaving the games to gather dust on the shelves inadvertently leading to
everyone who owned a game console to blow the dust of the cartridges when they
didn’t work.
As an artist, I’m not sure I
have ever found a better way to understand the importance of telling a story in
your work than through studying period specific video game ephemera and box
art, especially from the 80s and early 90s.
Art played a pivotal role in
early video games marketing, with game boxes often including physical items
such as maps, user manuals, and in some cases, even full length books which
would provide you with the back story to the game.
Again, it was another
marketing masterstroke for the time, it meant that something that was primarily a mix of a plastic case and a digital file on
a silicon chip, also came with something that was tactile, even useful, to the
extent that the ephemera included in the package was often what made the
product more desirable than the game it contained. I lost count of the number
of games I collected on the premise that the included feelies represented way
better value than anything else on the shelf.
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| Time To Go Home by Mark Taylor |
Most of the artwork produced
for marketing at the time would have been airbrushed or even sketched by hand, digital
mediums had yet to fully evolve and we were nowhere close to being able to
create anything that we would take for granted today. 80s art had quite a
distinctive look, not only were creative processes different from today,
printing processes were very different too.
In the 1980s, colour printing
was much more expensive than it is today, it was more difficult to print
complex designs with multiple colours, although the likes of Mattel and Hasbro
would use more expensive bright and colourful packaging to appeal to children.
Using fewer colours made the printing process simpler and much less expensive,
but there was also an upside to using a limited colour palette, it lent itself
to creating strong brand identity, a design choice that is still used today.
From advertisements for the
local supermarket to product packaging, everything had historically been
created by the hands of traditional artists who had far fewer tools than we do
today, which kind of proves that it is possible to create art with almost
anything. Paints and pigments were also less advanced during the 80s than they
are today, yet the designs created during the eighties across all sorts of
packaging still remain iconic to this day.
It really is a testament to
the skills of the many artists who would become involved across a very young
industry, especially when you consider the limitations they were working with.
There was no internet to influence an artists creativity so everything felt
arguably more original than it does today, and also arguably, it was maybe a
time when artists still had to think deeply about creating something unique.
Today, creating art has become
comparatively easier, we have the tools but we’re often blinkered by some level
of digital influence. Be it following a trend that attracts likes and followers
or remaining in the comfort zone of a safe demographic, and I think that really
does take a lot of the creative uniqueness away from the art world.
When we look back at the
technology, computer, and video games industries, there was no clear path for
traditional artists to play a role, at least initially. Most artists at the
time would have been working in other creative areas or would have already have
become established artists, often working on project after project anonymously
and then falling into the industry almost by accident rather than seeking the
industry out as a vocation that they could anchor their creative skills within.
Artists such as Oliver Frey, Cliff Spohn, Steve Hendrickson, and Susan
Jaekel had been amongst the early pioneers in creating marketing materials and
artwork for the industry, each of these already had a remarkable talent and a
level of artistic provenance. The industry attracted relatively new artists
too, some would join the industry perhaps accidently, some through helping out
a friend of a friend, it was an industry that was simply too young to realise
that it needed artists, yet artists would become pivotal in the marketing
efforts that would eventually make the video game industry financially more
valuable than Hollywood.
Many of those original artists
who had worked on the ephemera and marketing materials used throughout the
industry have long since established cult followings for their work especially
amongst video game and popular culture collectors. Much of their work today is
highly regarded and sought after within the industry and by collectors. Today,
their artistic styles are often replicated, but I often get the sense that
those original artists are not celebrated anywhere near enough.
It is only relatively recently
that some of their work is finally being seen as collectible, not just for it’s
artistic style but also for what the work represented during the 1980s, and it’s
becoming increasingly more challenging to find any of their original works,
some of which probably won’t have even made it to the 90s. The eighties was,
amongst other things, a disposable decade.
What ephemera hadn’t been
thrown away during the 80s was extremely affordable up until around 2013, around
2010 it was literally being given away. Since then there has been a steady
increase in value, and it remains just about affordable to collect right now,
but values are escalating and it might not be quite so affordable for much
longer because of a recent new focus on retro and preservation amongst
collectors. Of course that collector bubble could burst, but the sweet spot for
collectible years at the moment seems to be any ephemera created between 1977
and 1986, especially when it comes to VHS video cassette tapes.
It’s often cited by key
industry insiders who had been involved with the industry at the time, that
most of what was produced in the early 80s was thrown away when the next new
thing came along. For todays collectors, thankfully a lot of what was produced
had been produced in high volumes, so it’s not always especially rare whenever
you do come across items from the 80s, but what still exists usually ends up in
private collections which reduces the overall supply.
Back in the 80s, as a society,
we had no real concept of preservation, neither did we have the technology that
makes preservation quite as easy as it is today. Even those who had been pivotal in building
technology empires during the early part of the decade have since admitted they
had thought that this new wave of technology would be just a passing phase, and
there was no compelling reason to save or preserve things. Attitudes were very
different, this was as much the golden age of making a fast buck as it was the
golden age of technology.
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| Riding in the Rain by Mark Taylor |
Many of those original artists
who had suddenly found themselves in this very new and unfamiliar tech-industry
brought something fresh to what for a while had been a very narrow niche. They
also introduced art to an audience who perhaps wouldn’t have considered
themselves as being previously appreciative of art, but there was just
something very different about box art and the ephemera that accompanied many
of the products.
It wasn’t just games, even the instructions for the
latest kitchen appliance would have had hand-drawn illustrations, but the
stories that were being told through the art that accompanied video games appealed
to the younger generation and had massive appeal to inquisitive young minds who
had mostly enjoyed the wave of B movie sci-fi during the 70s.
The art had to convey a story,
it had to appeal to a specific demographic, yet a lot of the marketing strategies
from these new industries were having to be made up on the fly as the industry
expanded. I think there was some element of the industry being taken by
surprise at its rapid growth.
The illustrations and art that
would appear on marketing materials at the time appealed to young people for a
variety of reasons. It was colourful, vibrant, dynamic, exciting, aspirational,
and then it would be placed front and centre in a social setting. If you need
art to appeal to the TikTok generations of today, that’s still kind of the recipe
for success that you need to follow.
Despite a lack of experience
across the industry in marketing this entirely new technology, the successful
manufacturers and publishers very soon came to understand that art can connect
with people on a deep level, just as it has with traditional art forms for
centuries. They embraced this principle, creating vibrant and dynamic art that
appealed and resonated with those they wanted to reach.
There were no huge, or even accessible
data-sets that could be mined to figure out who would be more likely to buy into
any of this stuff, neither was there any sense of just how big the technology
monster would become, and even above this,
there were simply no rule books that set out how to do any of this which
led to even more innovation and a lot of what we take for granted today has
roots back to these almost experimental marketing campaigns.
Retailers and manufacturers
only began to introduce what we would know today as loyalty schemes, in the
early 90s. Prior to this, loyalty schemes had mostly been about rewarding
buyers with something like Green Sheild Stamps, collect enough stamps and trade
them in for a gift, and some retailers would hand out more stamps then others
which meant that buyers would be more likely to shop at one store over another.
By the early 90s, the schemes
and developed into mass data gathering tools that would allow retailers to
identify not just shopping habits, but also people and they began to realise that
by piecing together this data they could better understand what else connected
a person to a product.
The technologists, the
programmers, the scientists, the manufacturers, the publishers, and let’s not
forget the artists, whatever product they were working on at the time, were
unknowingly the pioneers of the modern technology industry that we know today
but they were also pioneering a lot of what we see today beyond the world of
technology. They were writing the book on how to connect a product with a
person, they were learning how to influence before the world had an influencer
around every corner, they were creating something that modern day marketing
campaigns owe a great deal to.
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| The Retro Hoarder by Mark Taylor |
It was, as Bob Ross would say,
an happy little accident that the industry grew into what it has become
today. In the 1960s and 1970s, unless
you had been using mainframe computers in school or tended to live your life in
a lab, the very idea that computers could actually be useful in the home would
have been a completely alien concept. But by the 1980s, things had changed,
technology had advanced and it was miniaturised to the point that it was
finally affordable enough to be brought out of the lab and into the front room.
The next problem to overcome
would be to figure out how and who these boxes of silicone would be sold to.
Some of the early manufacturers would bundle a recipe program that would allow
you to maintain a small database of cookery ingredients, others would appeal to
time-poor executives and bundle rudimentary accounting programs into the box,
and the savvier ones, well, they realised that they could appeal to children by
bundling in brightly coloured game boxes that promised hours of interactive
fun. They literally threw everything at
the wall and surprisingly, everything stuck.
The even savvier one’s would
also bundle in education software that would appeal to the parents of the
children who really just wanted to play games, and some of those manufacturers would
also target schools to drive forward the concept that computing would be the
next big thing and they should be placing computer science on the curriculum.
That alone ensured that schools would be continuously buying the technology,
but the manufacturers had probably miscalculated that a schools typically low
level of funding wouldn’t always stretch to an upgrade down the line.
Given that there were no rule
books, no precedent, and no historic references that could be consulted,
collectively, maybe a little by accident, the technology industry had come up
with a genius marketing plan but the competition was growing and companies,
manufacturers, retailers and publishers knew that they would need to stand out.
It was big business, but the
cake wasn’t quite big enough to feed everyone. One of the more recent historic
studies determined that more than 500 companies had entered the same space during
the early 80s, all selling broadly similar things, indeed, some were selling
the same thing or an exact bootleg copy of it.
With an industry in it’s
infancy, a lack of consumer confidence in the quality of what was being sold,
the general lack of knowledge from the public as to how these technical things
worked and little to no concept of how
and why they could be useful, the market became flooded and many of the
original companies folded just as quickly as they had arrived.
Those who remained had to
think differently. They had to address the quality control issues and they had
to show people how the technology could make their lives better. They also had
to work on the marketing materials which for a while in the late 70s and very early
80s was often created with a typewriter and a few badly drawn sketches.
A cover and instructions for
some of the early video games and computer programs was often little more than a
photocopied piece of paper, typed out on a manual typewriter together with very
simple illustrations. The photocopy would be inserted into a polythene bag
alongside a floppy disk or cassette tape and that was essentially how early
software which had often been created by a single person writing code would be
sold. The issue here was that any retailer taking on stock had the problem that
no matter how they displayed the goods, everything looked the same.
Publishers quickly realised
that in order for their product to sell they would need to create packaging
that appealed to those who owned or who were thinking of buying a computer, and
so they began to work on ever-more elaborate designs.
The packaging had to quickly
tell a story, appeal to the target audience, and more importantly, it had to
look better than anything else on the same shelf. For some, better also meant
bigger and retailers were happy to display huge boxes containing all sorts of
ephemera and instructions. This is something that rarely happens today, everything
has to be an exact size, the smaller the better, so the artwork and
illustrations that are used in product packaging today have become massively
more critical to making the product stand out.
Today, retailers demand
uniform, industry standard sizing that means you can fit an exact number of
products onto a shelf and more if possible. Redundant shelf space from the big
box products as seen throughout the 80s and 90 is now viewed as lost profit and
logistics and supply chains work on volumetric controls because no one wants to
pay to ship air. Environmentally, we have moved on since the 80s and 90s, but
the principles of using art within packaging design which had been first used
throughout the 80s are still very much evident today.
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| Magnetic Memories by Mark Taylor |
The 80s was the time when the
cover really did sell the book and anything else. Buying decisions would be made
based solely on how excited you were from the art on the cover of a game, on
the side of an arcade cabinet, or on any other product packaging that needed to
convince the buyer to part with their cash.
With little information available
other than whatever had been written in physical magazines or by word of mouth,
and with no such thing as online reviews, the artwork used in the packaging and
marketing materials had to resonate with the target audience who would be
browsing a flooded market. Today, internet hype and a well financed marketing
campaign seem to be enough to make the case for a sale for most things, and as
I have always said, even the bad stuff sells with the right marketing strategy
and enough advertising budget behind it.
As we reflect more on the
1980s, we begin to realise how attitudes to art and design would begin to re-shape
the art world as we know it today. It inspired many who grew up during that
decade to appreciate art more deeply, even if that initial introduction had
been subconsciously made through something as simple as a video game box, or
the cover of the video you’re your parents
had rented from the local video store.
Many of the early technologies
that had emerged during the eighties such as computer graphics and video art,
are now essential tools for artists. The art world and technical innovations we
witnessed throughout the decade began to change the way artists approached
their creations, they no longer had to be confined by the edges of the canvas,
they could create a fully immersive environment and comparatively very quickly.
It was a complete step change to what had been widely available and done
before.
Aside from the technology,
entirely new art movements had been created throughout the decade and many of
them nodded to technology or the mass consumerism we were witnessing at the time.
Neo-Expressionism was a
reaction against the Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 1970s with Neo-Expressionist
artists returning to figurative painting and sculpture, often using bold colours
and expressive brushstrokes. Works created by Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer,
and Jean-Michel Basquiat are the standouts.
The Pictures Generation was a
lose-knit group of artists who emerged in New York City in the late 1970s and early
1980s. They were interested in appropriating images from popular culture and
using them in their work. Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Laurie Simmons, and
Barbara Kruger were amongst many artists who were influenced by a number of
factors, including the rise of mass media and consumerism, the development of
postmodern theory, and the work of earlier artists such as Marcel Duchamp and
Andy Warhol.
Street Art began to evolve as
a significant art movement in the 1980s too and it was perhaps one of the most
disruptive art movements to emerge. Using public spaces to create their work,
often a juxtaposition of graffiti, murals, and stencils, we witnessed the likes
of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Banksy quite literally turning what
would have once been seen as vandalism into highly prized works of art that are
now as sought after as the old masters.
Neo-Pop was a revival of Pop
Art that had been the standout movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Neo-Pop artists
used images from popular culture in their work, but they often did so in a more
ironic or subversive way than Pop artists had in the 50s and 60s. Jeff Koons,
Keith Haring, and Andy Warhol explored the relationship between high art and
low art, and they often used their work to comment on consumerism, celebrity
culture, and other aspects of contemporary society
Often characterised by its use
of bright colours, bold imagery, and mass-produced materials, Neo-Pop artists
often appropriated images from advertising, magazines, and television,
challenging the traditional notions of beauty and taste.
Young British Artists (YBAs)
was a group of artists who had emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s.
They were known for their provocative and often shocking work. Damien Hirst,
Tracey Emin, and Sarah Lucas have all become household names since.
Yet another that had been influenced
by mass media and consumerism, the YBAs’ style is often replicated today. But
the movement’s impact was rooted in its shock value. Attempts to recreate that
shock today generally miss the point. Mostly, these new movements had arisen
out of the popularity of the new technologies that had been rapidly evolving
during the early part of the decade.
By the end of the decade, the
technology had to have a significant impact on the art world. Both video art
and computer art became increasingly popular throughout the 80s and by 1989,
these explorations in the new media would be legitimised as valid art forms.
Artists such as Bill Viola and
Gary Hill used video to explore themes of identity, memory, and perception.
Artists such as Charles Baudelaire and Jenny Holzer used computers to create
new forms of art, such as digital prints and video installations, yet less than
a decade prior, art had been mostly talked about in a more traditional sense.
It had been a sculpture or canvas, the concept of it being completely created
with the aid of technology hadn’t even been contemplated as something that
would become mainstream so quickly.
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| The Joy of Sticks by Mark Taylor |
It wasn’t just the Berlin Wall
that came tumbling down in the 80s, and despite the developments in technology
and art movements other factors began to affect the markets. While there was a growing interest in feminist art, conceptual
art, and postmodernism, there were also some sticky moments that led to art buyers
losing significant amounts of money.
It wasn’t so much that there was
a legitimate art market crash, it was more akin to an art market correction,
something the industry witnesses periodically, but this time it was different. The 1980’s had seen a flood of incoming money
from Wall Street, the Japanese Yen was strong, and auction houses were
aggressive with their pricing to take advantage of the seemingly surplus
wealth.
19th and 20th
Century paintings had been attracting big money buyers, and the practice of
speculating on the next big thing and then flipping it on to the next buyer for
a healthy profit was very much the order of the day. The return on any
investment was often significantly better than even the banks or stocks had
been paying. The 80s was amongst everything else, one of the most money
obsessed decades ever seen and the young, upwardly mobile had speculated hard
and bet big.
If you were selling major
works that were on collectors wish lists in the early to mid 80s, there really were
no upper limits to the value of these works. The world was generating more
billionaires than millionaires and no one seriously thought that the bubble
would ever burst, but burst it did.
Wall Street traders thought
they were untouchable, or at least they did until the 19th of
October 1987, a Monday morning that would later be known as Black Monday. This
was the day when the financial walls of Wall Street would come tumbling down,
hard and fast.
Post-crash, the economy slowed
and showed little to no signs of a speedy recovery. About 20% of the
impressionist and modern works previously in demand had failed to sell through
the big auction houses, a turning point that would initially send a shiver
through the bones of art collectors around the world, but art is a long game
and serious collectors knew what the speculators didn’t.
At the start of the 80s, art
collectors had been largely outnumbered by speculators who had no real interest
in the work, their interest extended only to the monetary value of the work.
When Wall Street crashed, those who had placed their wealth in the game simply
to make a fast buck found themselves mostly burnt.
The fallout from this is that
the art world suddenly had fewer speculators, art prices once again began
reversing back to near normal values that were somewhere closer to being
realistic, and the art market began to heal from the frantic trading that had
been happening for a number of years. Thankfully, for serious collectors, the
market would begin to go through a process and period of correction, although
the journey to that correction had left behind many casualties.
The art market depression
continued between 1988 and it would be 1992 before any new shoots would emerge
that would indicate it’s eventual recovery, the global nature of the art market
would see the industry recover more quickly than other industries, such is the
resilience of the art world.
There was then a period of gradually
increasing values placed on artwork between 1993 and 1995, but by 1996, the
market was once again buoyant and artworks began reaching record highs. A stark
contrast from the historic lows of the previous years since 87.
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| Connected by Mark Taylor |
The eighties, for some of us
at least, seems like it was only five minutes ago, but it wasn’t. I’m regularly
reminded that the technology I bought back then and still use today is mostly
functioning with the assistance of thoughts and prayers and a constant supply
of old electronic components which are becoming more difficult to source.
But, even today it’s difficult
not to see the influence and impact that the 80s had on modern day life,
especially when you look at technology, and the crash and subsequent market
correction between 1987 and 1996, serving as a reminder that art, like any
other commodity that can be traded, is as susceptible and volatile as any other
investment.
The value of art might have
been more volatile during the late 80s, but that didn’t stop artists from
pushing the creativity needle forward. It was technologies turn once again to
disrupt the norm. It was during this period that creative communities would
begin to look for new ways to engage with their audiences. While the internet
did not exist in its current form at the time, early online communities were
formed on bulletin boards that could be accessed using a personal computer, a
telephone, and a device called an acoustic coupler.
This was essentially a
precursor to the internet and it allowed people to communicate and share
information with each other in a way that had never been possible outside of
the military and academia before. Now, when I say share information, the
information was often the latest text adventure game for a home computer such
as the Commodore 64, but this rudimentary online access allowed real-life
communities to incubate and share their thoughts and their work.
Almost any information you
find on the internet today could be found somewhere in the world of bulletin
boards throughout the 80s and early 90s, you just had to know where to look,
and if you didn’t know where to look, you would quickly hear of online
communities through word of mouth and user groups.
Out of these communities,
various scenes would begin to take a foothold, often with groups collaborating
on projects from around the world. Art and creativity had stepped into the next
phase, despite the turbulent years in between.
Some of these communities were
interested in the convergence of technology and art so they would create technical
demos that would demonstrate their skills and create content that would appeal
to broader audiences. These demo’s would frequently feature home brewed art and
music created digitally by these usually small community groups.
Most, if not nearly all of
these demo’s can still be viewed and seen today either through emulation or on
YouTube. Second Reality, a demo created in around 1993 was celebrated at the
time for bringing digital and video art to life with its ground-breaking
technical effects, the likes of which were incredibly difficult to achieve when
it first came out. Many of these demo groups had names, in the case of Second
Reality, the group was called Demoparty who had entered Second Reality into an
early PC demo competition.
The effects within that demo
hadn’t been seen before, certainly not in a manner that presented such a
seamless visual experience, and certainly not using a computer to generate the
effects. With its bouncing polyhedron, Moiré patterns, demonic like rotating
head, plasma effects, and more, and a soundtrack that would later used in
commercial recordings, the demo scene had arrived and visual arts would once
again deliver a change in the way we produce, create and think about art.
The demo scene at the time was
ground-breaking in geek culture but it was also quite niche in that access was
restricted to those who had an interest in technology and the means to access
it. Yet, the scene had a significant impact on, and influenced the art world as
we know it today in a number of ways. It pioneered the use of these new
technologies despite those technologies being limited, the scene was as much
about pushing creative and computational boundaries beyond what people had
previously thought was possible.
The scene also inspired a new
generation of artists, many of whom would go on to achieve major success in the
art world for their creative and immersive projects that challenged traditional
notions of what art could be. Other demo artists never really left the scene
and continued creating demo’s on what are now vintage systems and others began
creating demo’s on systems that were much more current.
Many of the artists who stuck
around are still developing demos today, continuing to push old technologies
beyond anything they were originally designed to do. A number of these demo
artists continue to do great things and frequently come up with creative
projects that have never been thought of, let alone done before, yet very few
of them are widely known outside of the demo scene which is a monumental shame,
and more so, because their work often inspires others to create similar works
which others then get the recognition for.
Thankfully, even if you don’t
have an easily accessible way to watch and listen to some of these demos, most
of them end up on services such as YouTube where they can be viewed. The files
are usually made freely available for those who continue to use old
technologies, and there are emulators for these systems which can be loaded on
to a home computer or even a Raspberry Pi. There’s no excuse not to take a
look, and especially if you are into art that provokes conversation and
thinking, or you’re into just plain old weird. Some of these demos can be a
little out there, which is really the point of art, it doesn’t have to be all petals
and landscapes, weird is really good too! These demos really should be
celebrated and I think that they are worthy of opening up a new conversation
around what art is, and should be.
 |
| The Retro Junk Drawer by Mark Taylor |
For art, and technology, the
80’s wasn’t just a bold decade of neon colours and excess, it was
transformative in so many ways. There’s little doubt that the art world changed
as a result of many of the artists who throughout the 80s would create work
that really pushed the boundaries of anything that came before.
Artists throughout the 80s
weren’t afraid of going there in terms of subjects that would have once been
avoided, and then they embraced the technology, even though that technology, by
today’s standards, was limited.
It was a challenging decade
because everyone was kind of just making it up as they went along. There were
no rule books, maybe some heavy text from a university lab, but remember this
was also pre-internet and there was no such thing as a Dummies guide. The world
was much smaller and to some extent, I think that was in part something that
led artists to find their own inner creative souls, there was no point of
reference that was easily accessible which could easily influence an artists
hand.
There were other innovations
and inventions that helped to define the 80s, many have been and gone but even
those that are no longer used today had been pivotal in defining how we use
technology today, and as artists, how we create our work.
- Compact discs: CDs were first
introduced in 1982, and they quickly became the dominant format for music
distribution. CDs offered superior sound quality to vinyl records and
cassette tapes, and they were also more durable and portable. Beyond
music, CDs were used to store significant amounts of data, but more
importantly, it would store this data at a much lower cost than had ever
been possible before. Your first
hooky copy of Photoshop probably came on CD, and your first copy of
Encarta or Encyclopaedia Britannica certainly would have.
- Mobile phones: The first mobile phone
was invented in 1973, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that mobile phones
became widely available. In 1983, Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X,
which was the first handheld mobile phone. Mobile phones became increasingly
popular throughout the decade, and by the end of the 80s, there were over
10 million mobile phone subscribers worldwide. Today, we use them to live
out our lives, run our businesses, tether them to a card payment device so
we can sell our art, and allegedly, influencers on social media use them
to feel good about themselves and be the best version of you (them, you
know what I mean), which is a thing we definitely didn’t have in the 80s.
- Video games: The video game industry
exploded in the 1980s, with the release of popular consoles such as the
Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis, but the concept of
home computing and it’s accessibility to businesses built the real
foundations for the platforms and systems we see and use today.
Video games became a popular form of
entertainment for people of all ages, but they also helped to promote and
gently introduce new technologies such
as computer graphics and artificial intelligence, and to some extent, the
creation of interactive environments and massively improved in-game art has in
itself become an art form.
Without
those early pioneers creating video games, the development of Ai would
certainly have stalled. These systems provided a new platform for AI research and
development and early video games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man used simple
AI algorithms to control the non-player characters (NPCs). As video games
became more complex, so too did the AI algorithms used to control the NPCs.
You
also have the video games industry to thank (or blame) for providing the
original funding for Ai research. In the 1980s, the video game industry was one
of the fastest-growing industries in the world which led to a significant
increase in investment in AI research, both from within the video game industry
and from outside sources.
- World Wide Web: The World Wide Web
was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 who had created the system of
interlinked hypertext documents that are accessed via the Internet. This
had a major influence on the art market becoming more accessible to more
people, it democratized art and pretty much sealed the fate of many of the
pre-internet-era gatekeepers to the art market.
 |
| Up, Down, Left, Left, Right, by Mark Taylor |
Notable
Events that changed the Art World…
- The Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York City held a major exhibition of Neo-Expressionism in 1981. - The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles (MOCA) opened its doors in 1986. - The first Venice Biennale to feature video
art was held in 1986. - The AIDS epidemic had a significant impact
on the art world during the 1980s. A number of artists sadly died from
AIDS, and many others created work that addressed the epidemic. - The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to
increased cultural exchange between East and West Germany.
It wasn’t just the 80s…
I’m writing this as if the
1980s had been pivotal in completely shaping the lives we live today, and to
some extent, certainly when it comes to technology and art, the 80s did play a
significant role in shaping the way we live now. But other decades had a
similar role to play in shaping the 1980s.
The concept of much of what
came out of the 1980s had been played out for decades previously, digital art
had been created as far back as 1952, Oscillon 40, created by American
mathematician Ben Laposky is considered the first truly digital artwork,
although I suspect it wasn’t his first attempt. Laposky used an oscilloscope to
manipulate electronic signals and photograph them in the shape of waves.
Another early example of
digital art is Hommage à Paul Klee 13/9/65 Nr. 2, created by German artist
Frieder Nake in 1965. Nake used a computer algorithm to generate a series of
abstract drawings, a very early pre-cursor to modern day Ai.
These early works of digital
art were created using a variety of different techniques, but they all shared
one common feature: they were created using computers. This made them
fundamentally different from traditional art forms, such as painting and
sculpture but it wouldn’t be until the 1980s that some of the new artforms
would be legitimised as valid artworks, today these works for some collectors
are as sought after as an original Old Master is to a traditional collector of
fine art.
 |
| 20 GOTO 10 RUN by Mark Taylor |
Computers became accessible
and affordable which made it possible for more people to experiment with these
new media technologies, As the interest grew around computing, new software
tools were created, not always specifically to create art, but to encourage
people to buy into the concept of how computers could be used for things that
had only ever been confined to laboratory environments and universities.
The emergence of digital art
exhibitions and dedicated galleries had been established in the 1980s,
introducing the new media artforms to a much wider audience than ever before.
Those who had been creating technical demos would also contribute to raising
the profile and awareness of computers and technology being used in art.
At the same time, a growing
number of established and well-respected art critics and curators developed an
interest in the works being produced at the time. This was even more evident
with the establishment of the SIGGRAPH Art Show which took place in 1986. This
was the first major exhibition of digital art.
The 1993 publication of the
book “Art in the Electronic Age” by Frank Popper was one of the first
major studies of digital art. By the mid-90s, the technical advances had really
begun to disrupt the traditional art markets allowing traditional artists who
would never contemplate using a digital medium, to at least make digital copies
of their work. This would be a key moment in the supply of lower cost prints,
but it also contributed significantly to the preservation of traditional art.
 |
| Open the Windows by Mark Taylor |
The other disruptor was of
course the internet. The bulletin board user groups had mostly, by the mid-90s,
transitioned to online communities on the world wide web which by this time
could be accessed by steadily increasing internet connection speeds. This would
be a significant piece of the jigsaw that saw one of the biggest changes in the
way art was not only consumed, but the way art would be purchased too.
Non-represented artists looked
initially towards online auction sites such as eBay to make their works
available to a wider audience until the concept of print on demand was
introduced by Café Press in 1999. Café Press had been one of the early pioneers
to allow artists to upload scans, files, or copies of their work where online
customers would order the work either as a traditional canvas or poster print
and soon after, on a number of other products.
This service paved the way for
other print on demand services to join the online space, Red Bubble, Tee Public, Fine Art America,
Zazzle, Society 6, had all been amongst the early adopters of online based
printing services, and it was this disruption which finally tipped more
traditional bricks and mortar galleries to go online.
Some of the most prestigious
physical art galleries would even partner with the original print on demand
services to offer prints of their gallery represented works which encouraged a
global audience to embrace the online purchase of art, it was suddenly easier
for artists to find a global audience than a local one.
 |
| Pastel Valley by Mark Taylor |
The 1980s, was without any
shadow of doubt, pivotal in the development of so many things that we take for
granted today. Yet, there’s a real risk that much of what should be properly
attributed to the decade becomes lost in history. As I said earlier, much of
what had been created at the time was forgotten almost as quickly as it arrived
as new iterations came along and that’s especially true when it comes to work
from artists who really did set the standards for what we do today with
technology.
So little of what really went
on during the 80s was properly documented, it definitely wasn’t preserved for
future generations with anything like the thought we give to preservation today.
Partly, that’s because the technology for preservation was difficult and it was
often a challenging and manual process that attitudes and people didn’t feel
compelled to do.
A lot of digital media was
preserved, not by anyone having some kind of master plan, it was preserved to
all intents and purposes by software and video pirates. Whether it was a video
game, computer demo, digital art, a film, much of it was pirated in some form.
Whilst I would never condone piracy, without the volume of backups (OK…illegal
copies) that had been created by everyone
from school children copying games to parents using a hooky copy of WordStar or
Lotus 1-2-3, a lot of these historic moments from the 80s would have been lost
long ago.
As we approach almost three
decades since the end of the 1980s, many who were instrumental in pushing all
of these boundaries are sadly becoming fewer and fewer. There’s a real risk
that without capturing the history now, we might just end up losing it forever.
Being mindful that some of that history might now be a little inaccurate due to
the number of years of forgetting and re-remembering, often through a rose
tinted lens, the importance of historic preservation should be central to every
artists thinking.
I think preservation and the
importance we should place on it is one of the 80s finest legacies. For
hundreds of years prior to the 80s, preservation was almost second nature, but
the 80s changed that. Fine art was safe enough but a lot of what had been
created during the early 80s was lost very quickly which is a real shame.
If there is one thing that we
should as artists, all take away from the 80’s, it’s that no matter how far
your career has or hasn’t progressed to date, preservation of your work and proper
documentation is so very important.
I think most people who had
been involved with creating those bits of ephemera during the decade probably
didn’t give preservation much thought, but one thing above all else I think we
should all take from the 80s, is that we should never blindly bumble through a
decade mistakenly thinking that it’s not significant, whatever you create is
significant because it’s at least part of your own story.
Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works often featuring technology. He is also
known for his landscape works and the occasional abstract, creating
professionally since the 1980s. He is also a specialist in secure computing
environments and is a globally recognised key note speaker.
You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can view Mark’s portfolio
website and see a small selection of his works at https://beechhousemedia.com
Join the conversation on
Facebook at: https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia
and Threads or connect on “X” (You realise it’s still Twitter right?) @beechhouseart
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