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We Make Money Not Art is making sense by pointing us towards The Analog Color Field Computer:

Instead of presenting complex images (computer programs or photographs) each computer of The Analog Color Field Computer (ACFC) repurposes its monitor such that a solid field of color is spread across its entire display. And instead of producing complex sounds (clicks, beeps or music) each sculpture produces a pure musical tone.

By minimizing the content of its audio-visual renderings to solid colors and pure tones, the device offers relief from the myriad of visual, sonic and operational conventions traditionally associated with computer systems. The audience can adjust the hues, pitches and rhythms of each computer and thus assume a role previously reserved for a computer’s video processor. They can manually regulate the electrical currents that command the monitor’s color circuitry. The ACFC does not employ display systems as media for the visualization of computed images, instead the aesthetic artifact is derived from the physical manifestations and electrical workings of computer monitors themselves.

The piece also points to the rate at which Cathode Ray Tube based monitors are being discarded to leave the space to the much leaner flat panel displays. The ACFC gives the screens a new life as pieces of art. As a tribute to the CRT century-old technology, the installation utilizes analog electronics almost exclusively.

The Learned Gentleman at Illustration Art asks “Is Art a byproduct of technology?”

Then, during the upper paleolithic period (35,000 to 12,000 years ago) stone technology took a great leap forward. Our ancestors learned how to select certain rocks that could be shaped into blades– longer and lighter with more cutting surface. Using these stones, they developed tool making techniques that gave them ten times the cutting edge from the same sized stone.

This transformed their world. They could now use sharpened rocks for spear points and projectiles. They could cut with greater precision and for the first time make use of antler, ivory and bone. Hunting became easier. Conceptual thinking became more important to survival. The first signs of symbolic thought emerged. It was in this environment that the very first art began to appear, painted on cave walls and etched in bone. More artistic progress was made in those 25,000 years than in the preceding 2 million years combined.

Since those fragile beginnings, art continued to flourish in tandem with technology.