
Previously Unknown Warhol Works Discovered on Floppy Disks from 1985 - yankcrime
http://studioforcreativeinquiry.org/events/warhol-discovery
======
filmgirlcw
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).

------
andyjohnson0
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/](http://www.kryoflux.com/)

~~~
sp332
"Floppy Disks: It’s Too Late"
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191)

~~~
andyjohnson0
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.

------
Theodores
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.

~~~
brudgers
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....](http://www.warhol.org/collection/archives/http://www.warhol.org/collection/archives/)

~~~
Theodores
Thank you for that!

[http://www.warhol.org/collection/archives/](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.

~~~
collyw
"Click here to launch the experience"

Its a bloody web page not an "experience".

~~~
Theodores
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).

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

~~~
chillingeffect
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.

~~~
collyw
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.

~~~
mikestew
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.

~~~
collyw
"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?

~~~
tripzilch
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous)

------
DanBC
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?

~~~
dionidium
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](http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html#401)

------
waterlesscloud
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/](http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/warhol-the-computer/)

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

~~~
waterlesscloud
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.

------
awda
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...](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-
next.git/commit/fs/fat/inode.c?id=4285b109e7c45a033c37eed9d5913fa0a80979e8)

------
drdeadringer
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.

~~~
DanBC
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/](http://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/)

~~~
drdeadringer
> 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..."

------
theandrewbailey
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/](http://pubhub.hivefire.com/articles/share/16870/)

~~~
nsxwolf
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.

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

[https://www.coursera.org/course/warhol](https://www.coursera.org/course/warhol)

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

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

------
guard-of-terra
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHwFmQZFzw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHwFmQZFzw)

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

------
n2j3
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?

~~~
pessimizer
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.

