Previously Unknown Warhol Works Discovered on Floppy Disks from 1985 | Hacker News Reader

Previously Unknown Warhol Works Discovered on Floppy Disks from 1985

studioforcreativeinquiry.org

154 pointsyankcrime42 comments

ETA: I think it's awesome they found and recovered this data.

As I recall, Warhol's Amiga usage was actually very limited. He used it for the Carnegie Hall A1000 demo (that was on software and hardware that was still prototype and the Amiga people were praying would work - it did), b/c Commodore paid him, but he didn't actually use the Amiga beyond that.

Looking at what they recovered, it makes sense that he would have tried to make a few pieces of his recognizable style, done the Deluxe Paint tut, etc. IIRC, the final demo was mostly just paint fills on a Debra Harry image imported into the Amiga.

There is also that anecdote about Warhol being mesmerized by the Macintosh at Sean Lennon's birthday (where Steve Jobs was setting it up), but as far as I know, be never used one.

For all of his tech saviness, Warhold didn't seem to be enamored with digital art, at least as it existed by the time he passed away.

I'll let other Warhol nerds correct me where I'm wrong, I'm typing this purely on memory of Warhol, Commodore and Apple history books I've read over the years (and a Warhol class I took in college, though that was more focused on his films).

Interesting that they used a KryoFlux [1] (just visible next to the laptop in the third image) to recover the data. I used one earlier this year to recover some source code from some old 5.25" floppies that I'd last used in the early/mid eighties and which were otherwise unreadable. This was some of the first code I ever wrote, and it was fascinating to read it again and run it under emulation. The KryoFlux software is definitely not simple to use but it did the job for me.

If you've got any old floppies that you might one day want to read then get the data off them now because, if they've not already succumbed to entropy, they soon will.

(If anyone in the UK wants to buy a slightly used KryoFlux then my email is in my profile.)

[1] http://www.kryoflux.com/

"Floppy Disks: It’s Too Late" http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191

Thanks for posting that link. It was actually reading that article some-time last year that reminded me about the floppies I had stashed away and got me stared on trying to recover their contents.

I wonder why it took the best part of thirty years for someone to wonder if there was anything on those disks?

In theory one could have just fired up the machine, put the disks in and seen what was on them. This would have risked damage to the disks, hence the extreme measures here.

However, the task was not exactly huge. I wonder how big this ballooned out to, how many people were needed to work on the grant application to get the funding to approach the right people to get their permission to read the disks? Factor in the TV documentary crew and all the other hangers on, the experts in digital forensics, the art historians, the list could be endless!

I imagine that if the 'artworks' are genuine Mr Warhol was loathed to do anything creative with the new medium. Being a canny guy he probably thought he best stick to the Marilyn and soup themes making sure he put his name on everything so that in aeons hence there would be no doubt whatsoever that these were his definitive artworks.

The linked report at the end of the article goes into more details and is much more interesting for a more technical inclined audience:

http://studioforcreativeinquiry.org/public/warhol_amiga_repo...

Warhol began archiving material well before his death. There is a lot of it, and until there's a reason...such as a grant...to look in a box, nobody is likely to.

http://www.warhol.org/collection/archives/http://www.warhol....

Thank you for that!

http://www.warhol.org/collection/archives/

(Correct link).

It has given me an idea - I think I will do the same, I sort of do now anyway. Put stuff in a box and send it to storage. Saves having to deliberate over clutter and its bin-worthiness.

I am sure that was what Mr. Warhol was doing rather than deliberately putting together some archive of his life for people with annoying art interests to fester over.

It is just as well all x billion of us don't leave 100s of boxes of clutter behind, to be archived.

"Click here to launch the experience"

Its a bloody web page not an "experience".

No. It is an experience. In bad design. Almost as criminal as the 'Design Museum' or a Flash landing page (I wish we still had them).

Yes he was an extreme pack rat, like a lot of artists. I read he even archived his garbage. If you do mixed-media work or still-lifes, it makes sense too. I think Rembrandt and Picasso were pack rats too.

"Being a canny guy . . . "

I see what you did there. :)

That's the deluxe paint Venus! https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deluxe+paint+venus

Andy added an extra eye though...

edit: as did everybody with deluxe paint.

Damn, beat me to it. I was scrolling down expecting Tut with a palette shift to appear.

Yeah i was thinking the same , hardly momeumental.

I loathe the way that gets counted as "art," yet the people who used the Amiga for art in movies, graphic productions, etc. are marginalized.

Hey art historians: That computer was DESIGNED for art, and designed and USED for much better works that touched many more people's lives than Andy Warhol cloning an eye on a corporate sales demo image.

People actually spent hours and days and years making refined aesthetic choices, putting their bodies and hearts into works and gaining commercial popularity and telling stories using that computer. Most importantly, they used it in ways that were previously unknown, unlike using one of the most popular launch titles to edit a "launch image."

Believing that these images have special powers b/c of the person who made them is textbook fetishization.

Why valorize $famous_guy's random scribbles over the rest of the corpus of works in the medium? Just because it's easier to say, "Well it's from Him, so it's famous," rather than to examine and /critique/ other works made on the machine?

Ever wonder why art historians make such low salaries and have difficulty paying their loans? How about creating some value for other people by understanding, critiquing and explaining the vast body of Amiga works rather than echoing to each other and telling us, "yup, that one's important cuz it's by that famous guy."

Tell us something we don't know. Give us some bread and not candy and you will amply rewarded. It's not George Bush's fault.

In my opinion lot of "art" is pretentious celebrity culture for snobs. I went to a Warhol exhibition recently. It was basically a load of photos of a group of people like you would expect to see on some hipsters facebook page. But because of the name behind it certain people assume some greatness to it.

I went to the Warhol exhibit at the Dali museum a few months ago. I never was a big Warhol fan before going, but perhaps viewing an entire exhibit devoted to his work might give me a better appreciation. I now theorize that Warhol's artistic life was one big piece of performance art. "Can I become famous and revered by hanging out at the right NYC parties, and immortalizing famous people in what is otherwise the visual equivalent to sampling?" Ignore "Marilyn" where he just silk screens over a photo, and pay attention to the fact that he's famous for it.

Polaroid photographs? If they were photographs of your friends, no one would care. But when the pics are of Mick Jagger at Studio 54 or Jackie O, and Andy Warhol took them, now you've got art. Why? Because famous people.

It seems he his overall theme was fame. His most famous quote even deals with that. So it seems fitting that he is famous not for being a great artist but because he hung out with famous people and made art that involved them.

That's the theory I'm sticking with, anyway. It's either that or take the cynical view that the art world is more shallow than I previously thought.

Afterward we revisited the Dali side of the museum. Holy crap, now there's an artist.

"Can I become famous and revered by hanging out at the right NYC parties, and immortalizing famous people in what is otherwise the visual equivalent to sampling?"

That sounds pretty like celebrity culture to me. Is that not more or less why people like Kim Kardashian are famous?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous

Can a low-res digital image really capture Warhol's unique gestural moves? I won't even go there but my personal opinion is Warhol was more a conceptual artist who just happened to be "on the scene" in NY around the time modern art was on the way out and post-modern (more conceptual) was on the way in.

I'm more passionate about modern art, which I think is more in line with the "refined aesthetic choices" you're talking about. I think Warhol was better known for his ideas, he just happened to know how to draw/paint to execute what was on his mind. I can't read your mind but your "random scribbles" comment caught my attention. Not speaking to you specifically, but I think with the right teacher anyone can see there's more to so-called random scribbles aka abstract art. Even the nutty Jackson Pollock who made his own rules, I got to respect he trained under Thomas Hart Benton, etc.

I think most American universities teaching drawing/painting (fine art) today, the professors are students of students of students of Hans Hoffman (directly or indirectly) who was himself a student of Picasso, Matisse and other undeniably talented giants. Personally, not a huge fan of Hoffman's work but if I had a time machine, I would want to be there in one of his classes. I don't think the secrets are closely guarded, it's more like esoteric nuance. If you read old graphic design books, you'll find some of the concepts underpinning great abstract paintings. If I find time, maybe I'll post YouTube videos explaining how to see abstract art through the eyes of an artist.

Warhol might have agreed with you. I believe he started out drawing ads. He was definitely thinking about commercial popularity throughout his career. I think "popularity" was the subject of much of his art. Maybe because he felt so unpopular early in his life/career. I think most artists would tell you, the best art is not concerned with commercial popularity, but that's debatable I suppose. I believe the truly great "random scribbles" reach toward truths and concepts that can't be expressed well with words, or the words may not yet exist.

I really appreciate this post for a number of reasons, but you should be aware of some irony in what you write, particularly as it relates to Andy.

Andy Warhol's entire worldview as an artist revolved around the parody of fame and "art". He was primarily an unmasker of those with a certain view of "art" as a precious, special thing. He would be laughing at the idea that anyone took his images for "art"! The fact is made even more delicious by the insanely high value placed on his images of ridiculously mundane stuff.

That said, Andy, probably much to his own chagrin (although there are few artists who don't occasional marvel at their own skill!), was a brilliant graphic artist. His work is immaculately designed, beautifully proportioned, elegant and indeed, very "special" (in the sense of art, the craft without the air quotes). This is a double or triple or Nary entendre, if you are Andy Warhol: You are commenting on the ridiculous qualities of "art" while at the same time creating exactly the type of "art" that you are parodying - and loving every minute of it! Genius! Someone has to do it!

Please don't think that the fixation on people like Andy means that others are lesser. All are not. Like any other discipline, some are, some aren't. Andy just happens to be famous! And dead, of course.

I don't think that art historians have really caught up with the digital age. It's kind of funny that 99% of all of the images we see today have been manipulated by computer.. you think that some of them might have figured that out! Either way, Andy elevates all digital artists by creating digital art on the Amiga. I'm very glad they discovered it.

Give the art historians a little time. They'll figure it out eventually.

I really don't understand copyright.

Warhol created these images in the 1980s, but the images are copyrighted 2014? And the copyright is not Warhols butthe foundations?

It's the year it was first published:

Form of Notice. — If a notice appears on the copies, it shall consist of the following three elements:

...

(2) the year of first publication of the work; in the case of compilations or derivative works incorporating previously published material, the year date of first publication of the compilation or derivative work is sufficient.

Source: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#401

Heh. Talk about synchronicity. I'm taking the Warhol class on Coursera that just started this week. On Wednesday I posted a pic to my Facebook feed of Warhol and Debbie Harry with an Amiga, commenting mostly on the Amiga [0].

Cool to see this today. :-)

0 - http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/warhol-the-computer/

What do you think of the course so far? I added it to my watch list but haven't started it yet.

To be honest, the first week is a bit thin on content. But the forums are lively and valuable, so they might make it worth the time.

Interestingly enough, that was an Amiga event that paid him who knows how many dollars to edit an image of Harry for the press. From what I've heard he wasn't into digital art at all. The images from this article are from the same deal, Amiga paying him to commission work to show off their new PC.

I just saw that Buzz Aldrin is now the spokesperson for Avaya. I hope kids in the future don't remember him for being into phones in his later years. I'm sure he doesn't give two shits about phones. This is also why my astronaut mancrush is for Neil Armstrong. He seemed to keep a private life which just feels so much more endearing to me. There's something cheap about constantly using one's celebrity for a quick paycheck and touting words like "leader," and "visionary" and other marketing junk.

Are all celebrities destined to shill some product they're not really interested in? Seems to be the case.

If anyone wants to read 1985-era MSDOS 1.x floppies in Linux, support is coming in 3.16[0] ;-).

[0]: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next...

There's a part of me giddy with the idea that "computer archeology" could be a viable career or "string of gigs" in the future.

I know. I'm desperate to pull some random file off an old 5.25 and be the guy saying "ohhhh it's one of these! I used to do my homework on one" — naturally to the astonishment of my young helpers.

It possibly already is. At least, there are plenty of code that have been lost and people are looking for it. Possibly not quite fulfilling the career part yet, but maybe that'll come in time.

For a start: this guy is looking for Cray1 software and documentation. http://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/

> It possibly already is

Quite, with this article plus regarding the recently resurrected Andy Warhol works from ~1985 floppy disks [and somesuch.

I anticipate more so as time goes on. "USB? My word, I doubt my father heard that since his youth..."

Its fantastic that they were able to get the data off. Floppies that old are probably beyond recoverable by ordinary people by now.

I am reminded of Jason Scott's article. http://pubhub.hivefire.com/articles/share/16870/

Is the situation really that dire? I have a large collection of Apple II games on 5.25 and they all work. I frequently buy old boxed games off eBay and never have problems.

Certainly how they are stored counts for a lot.

Btw, there's a coursera course on Warhol right now for anyone wanting to learn more about him:

https://www.coursera.org/course/warhol

The detailed technical report in the header contains more technological details.

I have old files on floppies, too. I'm sure one of these is a Warhol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHwFmQZFzw

I myself own one of the few works Van Gogh ever did in ballpoint. Cost me nearly thirty dollars.

Sad to see Warhol being too full of himself; his alleged first foray in digital art includes numerous attempts at signing his work using a pointing device. Pop art you say?

Warhol specialized in (and originated) the art of pop culture, celebrity, and personality. I'm pretty sure that's the only reason you've ever heard of him.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com