My relationship with computers began in the early-to-mid 80s with my
grandfather's TRS-80 and the
Atari 400 at
school. Computers fascinated me, but everything changed when I was
shown a Mac (I think it might be a 512K or Plus) in a demo in a mall in
1986.
That was a revelation.
I was eight years old, and I found it playful and inspiring. I
remember that I told the guys in the booth that one could videotape the
movement of the squares and ovals and make computer animation. After
half-an-hour,å my dad had to remove me from the mouse.
We ate pizza, and I only spoke about the moused wonder. I haven't
stop since then.
Early in 1987, my uncle, a graphic designer, got himself a Mac Plus,
and I spent a lot of time in his office and later got vacation jobs
there so I could have some time to experiment with the Macs, Aldus
PageMaker, KidPix, HyperCard, and, most importantly, SoundEdit. Oh yes,
the games were also important: Lode Runner, Billiards (I remember it
was made in Pascal), and my favourite: Social Climber. My first
experiments in electronic art were made with these Macs and these
apps.
I needed a computer and was 14 (with all the annoyance and noise
that a teenager can make), Macs were expensive, and my mom couldn't
afford one, so my first computer was a 486DX IBM clone (the term PC
then applied for all PCs) with a VGA monitor and a CD-ROM that I
wasn't able to configure at all in almost three years. It ran DOS 6 and
Windows 3.1. I used it at holiday work. Micrografx Designer was the
tool of choice - the only thing that made the IBM an acceptable
environment.
Time passed, and I and the Mac family grew. My dad - an architect
and industrial designer - got an LC
III and used a powerful app that could run well even in an SE called DesignCAD. He still misses
it and sobs in front of Rhino.
Finally, My Own Mac!
My sad and clumsy IBM clone began to look boring, and it gradually
went out of favour. Eventually the Plus wasn't used anymore at the
office, so I decided to borrow it and gave away the IBM clone in favour
of a 9-year-old Mac.
That was the first Mac that lived with me.
In 1996, I graduated from high school, and I began my music studies
the next year. Soon, there was a big surprise: My mom got me a Performa 6400 as a birthday present, my
uncle owed some money to her and also gave her a PowerPC upgraded
Quadra 610. That was the first
Mac I owned. It made everything I wanted and had tremendous sound
capabilities, and it ran SoundEdit 16, my editing tool which got me
into the field of electroacoustic music. I designed my own CD covers,
made numeric and graphic experiments with the golden mean, made graphic
scores for improvisation, and made a CD database in AppleWorks (man,
that was an office suite!).
My First PowerBook
Some years later, I felt the
need for mobility, and the Blueberry iMac I got later
was too big to carry around (I actually did sometimes), so I got a
PowerBook 100 for US$10 in
eBay (the shipping to Colombia was absolutely expensive relative to
the price, US$30, but still cheaper than anything else). The
12-year-old laptop ran realtime algorithmic composition software called
M2, a very good MIDI sequencer called Master Tracks (which isn't too
different than current MIDI sequencers), and Encore, the music notation
software, along with some other apps. I impressed everyone with this
old grey machine, controlling and automating the devices at the
electroacoustic studio in the University. They couldn't do that much in
their brand-new PC laptops. (They won in one thing: they could run
Minesweeper, but I had Spectre!)
Macs came and went, some died, and some were given away, but they
always were and still are important in my formative and creative
processes. I'm writing this in my MacBook Pro, which I think is a
superb machine with a superb OS, but I still find the first Macs more
elegant and charming than OS X.
It may sound strange, but Macs are more likely to develop an
emotional link with you than any other computer.
Daniel
Andrés Prieto García
Departamentos de Artes y Música
Universidad de los Andes
Daniel's Blogspot
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