I was an Amiga 1000 owner! I did not remember this Warhol connection at all! This is awesome!
In 1985, Commodore International (makers of the once-famous Commodore 64 home computer) released the first model of the Amiga the Amiga 1000 as a move into more serious business and productivity computing. To show off the multimedia capabilities of the machine, Commodore hired Andy Warhol to appear at the launch and produce several artworks using the Amiga. Warhol’s presence was intended to convey the message that this was a highly sophisticated yet accessible machine that acted as a tool for creativity. He was provided with various pieces of pre-release hardware and software, eventually exploring digital photography, video capturing, animation editing, and audio composition. All of this had been done to limited extents earlier, but Warhol was an incredibly early adopter in this arena and may be the first major artist to explore many of these mediums of computer art. He almost certainly was the earliest (if not the only, given several pre-release statuses) possessor of some of this hardware and software and, given their steep later sale prices, possibly the only person to have such a collection. According to the contract with Commodore located by the museum in March 2012, Warhol was to own the rights to all such work created and any hardware provided, so these works and the machines themselves have, except for sporadic “rediscoveries” of small components, remained hidden and unpublished within Warhol archives.
This is the launch?
Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol at 3:50 in the second video.
Data was retrieved from the old floppies using a KryoFlux!
