Had you asked me a few years ago, I would have said computers were an unlikely subject for art. But in 2003 I had a Road to Damascus moment when I visited the Vintage Computer Festival at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, a city in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. It’s where a bunch of guys (and it is mostly guys) get together to run the old machines. I went there planning to take pictures of the people, but when I saw the machines I changed my mind.
I saw art within these computers. There was an…
![Ryoji Ikeda, data-cosm [n?1], 180 Studios, 2025. Photo by Alice Lubbock.](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/23114419/SEI_281523359.jpg)
