May 2014

Time to blow Cassone’s trumpet!

The Washington Post has recently announced the decoding of some digital image files created by Andy Warhol but stored on floppy disks of a sort that modern computers cannot read. As we reported in our Art News section last week, Cassone broke this story nearly three years ago!

In 1985 Andy Warhol had used an Amiga computer – then the leading brand for graphic work – to produce digital art. The floppy disks used in those days are now unreadable by modern computers and so although the disks survived in the Andy Warhol Museum, the work was effectively lost.

In 2011 Darrelyn Gunzburg reported in Cassone ('Nine Warhols waiting') on the work of Don Greenbaum , who originally showed Warhol how to use the computer. He had his own copies of the disks and had himself managed, with colleague Alessandro Barteletti, to decode them. This fascinating digital detective story...

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