Legacy of Charles Csuri, former Ohio State professor and computer art pioneer, honored in Hopkins Hall Gallery Memorial Exhibition

Exhibition curator Janice Glowski speaks during a walk-through tour of the Charles Csuri Memorial Exhibition at Hopkins Hall Gallery on Nov. 3. Credit: Jackson Wood

In 1964, only one mainframe computer existed on Ohio State’s campus. 

Alongside processors, chords and drum plotters, the computer sat in its own room. It was in a space typically occupied by engineers and mathematicians. One man entered and saw another potential use for the device: creating art. That man, Charles Csuri, would go on to pioneer computer art and animation in the 20th century.

According to his online biography, Csuri was born in Grant Town, West Virginia. He earned a scholarship to play football at Ohio State, leading the Buckeyes to their first national championship in 1942. 

Csuri would have little time to celebrate the win, as he enlisted for the U.S. Army in 1943. In an interview with College GameDay, Csuri discussed his experience fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. According to the interview, Csuri’s heroic actions in delivering vital communications across an open field of machine gun fire earned him a Bronze Star.

After the war ended in 1945, the biography states that Csuri returned to Ohio State as a professor in fine arts, becoming the youngest professor at the university at that time. 

Simultaneously, Csuri explored his artistic passions with canvas painting. According to a DVD commentary sold at the Urban Arts Space’s 2006 exhibition “Charles Csuri: Beyond Boundaries, 1963-present” — which toured various locales, including Boston, Taiwan and Columbus — many of Csuri’s works were exhibited in galleries throughout New York City from 1955 to 1965.

As he painted, Csuri became fascinated by the overlap between art and machine.

“I manually created drawings that simulated a mechanical process,” Csuri said in the DVD commentary. “I was interested in seeing whether or not I could operate physically like a mechanical device.”

This fascination prompted Csuri to leave the traditional painter’s studio at Hopkins Hall — home of Ohio State’s Department of Art — and venture to the mathematics building. According to the Urban Arts Space’s webpage, Csuri met various influential faculty members in mathematics, computer science and engineering. 

Namely, engineering professor James Shaffer and math professor Leslie Miller worked alongside Csuri from 1964 to 1969 and would contribute to many of the artist’s boundary-pushing works, the webpage states.

Csuri’s goal was to use the university’s solitary computer to fuse the worlds of art, mathematics and computer science, the webpage states. Alongside Shaffer and Miller, Csuri experimented with technological transformations such as stretching and replicating to redefine his old drawings, according to the College of Arts and Sciences’ Charles A. Csuri Project webpage.

This exploration of computer animation began in 1967 with Csuri’s drawing “Hummingbird,” the Csuri Project webpage states.

According to Csuri’s personal website, bringing the drawing to life required over 30,000 punch cards — or card stocks that store data via punched holes, which were commonly used for data processing at the time — and work with mathematicians to write equations that could be translated onto the computer. These translated equations created visuals that featured the drawing flying around the frame as well as being torn apart and pieced back together.

The “Hummingbird” film (1967) was recognized as one of the first-ever computer-generated films. It was also one of the first computer-generated works to enter the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, according to the museum’s webpage.

“Random War” (1967) stands as one of Csuri’s most renowned pieces. To create this work of art, Csuri and Schaffer used a random number generator to assign names and outcomes to 400 red and black soldiers on a simulated battlefield, as detailed on the Csuri Project webpage. 

For the list of soldiers, the webpage states that Csuri pulled names from Ohio State faculty members and administrators while also using the names of famous figures such as Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Jack Nicklaus. Potential outcomes included deceased, missing, awarded an honor and surviving. 

Csuri crafted this piece at a time of heightening anti-war sentiments in reaction to the Vietnam War, drawing from his own experience as a soldier who understood the chaotic and indiscriminate nature of battle, the webpage states.

Csuri’s groundbreaking work in computer art and animation earned him the first grant to ever be awarded to an artist from the National Science Foundation — also known as the NSF — the webpage states. Despite Csuri receiving the grant, the NSF discouraged him from making his achievement public due to prevalent doubts regarding computer-created art in the science and art communities at large. 

In a message to an Ohio State fine arts professor regarding the publication of Csuri’s work in Artforum magazine — which was showcased at Hopkins Hall Gallery — the editor wrote, “I can’t imagine ‘Artforum’ ever doing a special issue on electronics or computer in art, but one never knows.”

Despite skepticism, Csuri continued pushing the boundaries of computer capabilities in creating art and animation. In 1971, Csuri founded the Computer Graphics Research Group to further research the potential of applying computer animation to art. The organization was converted to the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, also known as ACCAD, in 1987 to enable collaboration among students across math, arts and computer science backgrounds. 

Recently, the Urban Arts Space paid tribute to the legacy of Csuri — who died in 2022 — in “Charles Csuri: Art & Research, a Memorial Exhibition in Three Acts” at Hopkins Hall Gallery, where he once lectured as a fine arts professor. The exhibition, which showcased Csuri’s art and research, was brought to life in collaboration with curator Janice Glowski, who previously curated the retrospective exhibition, “Charles Csuri: Beyond Boundaries, 1963–present,” which highlighted Csuri’s work as a fine artist.

“We needed to examine Csuri’s life and work at OSU, specifically,” Glowski said. “Who was this artist at Ohio State? What did the research university environment offer to his work? How did OSU shape his creative path, and how did his intellectual inquiry and creative initiatives shape Ohio State?”

The exhibition, which was open from September to November, was divided into three separate acts that each highlighted Csuri as a collaborator in different periods of his life. 

“This framing also created space to investigate Csuri’s work as a principal investigator, as an artist who was not generating art in a conventional way, but as one who headed up a research laboratory, supported multiple graduate students, engaged in interdisciplinary research and scholarship, wrote grants and grant reports and even established a commercial company for computer graphics at OSU called Cranston/Csuri [Productions],” Glowski said.

The process of bringing Csuri’s work back to the university was one rooted in collaboration with former ACCAD directors Maria Palazzi and Wayne Carlson, also a professor emeritus of design technology at Ohio State, Glowski said. Csuri’s daughter, Caroline, was a chief contributor to the project, providing guidance for the show and leading walkthroughs alongside Glowski, she said.

Collaborators among arts leadership included Vice Provost for the Arts Lisa Florman and Urban Arts Space staff and student interns under the support of Director Merijn van der Heijden, Glowski said. She said the exhibition was funded by the “Computer Art: Communicating Human Imagination and Intelligence through Art, Technology, and Science” grant, spearheaded by Terron Banner, Urban Arts Space manager of community learning and experience.

“The memorial exhibition was a second pass, and an important one that revealed new learning that would not have happened without [the Urban Arts Space’s] support,” Glowski said. “True to Csuri’s legacy, something fairly monumental happened in the rather modest space of Hopkins Hall Gallery because of our collaboration.”