This is one of my favorite early 80s computer art books and is worth reading for the philosophical undertones of Prueitt's text (as well as Carl Sagan's introduction). In short, Prueitt compares the computer as an artistic medium to the piano, in that aspects of hand-eye coordination are just not important anymore. With a piano, you press the key and a note comes out -- a stark difference from a horn or a violin where so much skill and effort is involved in coaxing the notes. Similarly, with the computer you specify which region of the screen should contain which marks and viola! the marks come out. Of course, there is more to music than note-making and there is more to art than mark-making but it is a fascinating shift to think about.
Strangely, this book really got me thinking about the inverse of most of the arguments. Since computer rendering was relatively new to the public in 1984, the obvious mechanisms of automated shading and perspective is described in grating detail. This provides a nice opportunity to consider both the unstoppable dominance of horizon-line-vanishing-point mechanical perspective as well as an humorous realization that in 2013 artists are *STILL* trying to perfect that automated shading now going under the name physically-based-rendering. Mechanical perspective still dominates, especially in the psuedo-realistic big-budget games, but more artistic approaches to depth and distance are surely just on the horizon. Pun intended.
Lastly, there isn't a lot explicitly said about abstraction, but the author's view that computer art is more pure (in terms of mind-image conduit not requiring physical dexterity) ties in nicely to the types of mark-making that the computer is best at. Many of the examples are what could also be referred to as graphs, charts or tables yet function nicely as shape and color.
Overall, it's an interesting look at the state-of-the-art 30 years ago and provides nice food for thought when contemplating both the old-fashioned strains of computer art today (tablet drawing) and the more algorithmic (Ryan Geiss, Memo Akten).
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