Bird Dog, 1987

Kinetic painting programmed on an Amiga computer, sound, 3’40’’

Circles, 1987

Kinetic painting programmed on an Amiga computer, sound, 1’11’’

Fly over Jersey, 1987

Kinetic painting programmed on an Amiga computer, sound, 1’17’’

Samia Halaby was raised in the port city of Jaffa, Mandatory Palestine. In 1948, when she was eleven years old, her family was expelled from their home as the state of Israel was created. For three years, the Halabys resided in Beirut, Lebanon, before immigrating to the United States and landing in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1951. After receiving several degrees, in 1972 Halaby became the first full-time female professor to work at the Yale University School of Art. While Halaby is primarily known as an abstract painter, she is also one of the earliest innovators of digital art. In 1986, Halaby began programming and producing digital art on the Commodore Amiga 1000 computer. She taught herself how to code using the programming languages BASIC and C and called her resultant works “kinetic paintings.” These three early examples typify Halaby’s commitment to abstraction, including to its sociopolitical history and its relevance to the present moment. “The kind of painting that I want to do is painting that reflects our time,” she has said, adding, “which has the newest language, and includes the newest content of our time.”