{"id":1027,"date":"2014-04-25T10:26:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-25T10:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mertboru.com\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2014-08-29T09:52:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T09:52:00","slug":"lost-andy-warhol-artworks-discovered-on-amiga-floppies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mertboru.com\/?p=1027","title":{"rendered":"Lost Andy Warhol artworks discovered on Amiga floppies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dozen previously unknown works created by Andy Warhol<\/a> have been recovered from 30-year-old Amiga floppy disks!<\/p>\n

The art experiments were produced in 1985 by Warhol under commission from Commodore, creator of the Amiga computer.\u00a0Commodore paid the artist to produce a series of works to aid the launch of the Amiga 1000<\/a>, and\u00a0this particular batch of lost Warhol works was created on it.<\/p>\n

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\"Commodore<\/a>
Commodore Amiga computer equipment used by Andy Warhol 1985-86, courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was on July 24, 1985 that the Amiga 1000 computer had its debut at Lincoln Center in New York City.\u00a0He began working with the computer as part of a live event touting its multimedia capabilities. The demo involved Andy sitting down at the Amiga, then capturing and retouching a digital photo of ’80s pop-punk star Debbie Harry<\/a>, who joined him on stage. That particular image has been on display at the Andy Warhol Museum (AWM), but the rest of Warhol’s fledgling computer-based art from that time was spread across 41 floppies and remained unseen for decades.<\/p>\n

A media archaeology project<\/strong><\/p>\n

CMU Computer Club members determined that even reading the data from the diskettes entailed significant risk to the contents, and would require unusual tools and methodologies. By February 2013, in collaboration with collections manager Amber Morgan and other AWM personnel, the Club had completed a plan for handling the delicate disk media, and gathered at The Andy Warhol Museum<\/a> to see if any data could be extracted.<\/p>\n

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“… the Club\u2019s forensics experts had reverse-engineered the unfamiliar format …”<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was not known in advance whether any of Warhol\u2019s imagery existed on the floppy disks\u2014nearly all of which were system and application diskettes onto which, the team later discovered, Warhol had saved his own data. Reviewing the disks\u2019 directory listings, the team\u2019s initial excitement on seeing promising filenames like \u201ccampbells.pic<\/strong>\u201d and \u201cmarilyn1.pic<\/strong>\u201d quickly turned to dismay, when it emerged that the files were stored in a completely unknown file format, unrecognized by any utility.\u00a0Soon afterwards, however, the Club\u2019s forensics experts had reverse-engineered the unfamiliar format, unveiling 28 never-before-seen<\/em> digital images that were judged to be in Warhol\u2019s style by the AWM\u2019s experts. At least eleven of these images featured Warhol\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n

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[ previously unknown works ]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n