Model, author, poet, mother, artist. Pati Hill had several careers. But she’s best known for the work she made in the late 1970s with a new art-making tool, the photocopier. Smitten by the qualities of the IBM Copier 2, Hill negotiated the loan of a machine through friend and IBM collaborator, designer Charles Eames. IBM delivered and installed the copier at her home, inspiring a body of work that spans years. While not the first to use a photocopier in an art context, Hill was no copycat, and proved herself in hundreds of images and words to be an innovative, eloquent, and singular artist. Pati Hill died last month . We remember her here with some of her black-and-white best, including A Swan: An Opera in Nine Chapters, Photocopied Objects (balls and jacks) and Photocopied Objects (soap), courtesy of Estate of Pati Hill.

Get a sneak peek at Arcadia University’s upcoming retrospective of her work →

10 years ago

World’s Fair 50:
The Automatic Language Translator

Another World’s Fair crowd pleaser was the IBM Automatic Language Translator. In a live demonstration, the computer translated Russian text into English in a matter of seconds.

The most amazing part was that the translation wasn’t created from a computerized ‘dictionary search’ but from the analysis of both languages’ complex nuances and shades of meaning, syntax and grammar. To think that 50 years later, we have smart phones with translation apps for just about every language spoken.  Очень здорово. Translation: Very cool.  

10 years ago

World’s Fair 50:
Popcorn, 50 feet up

The showpiece of the IBM Pavilion was the massive Ovoid Theatre. Once seated in the “People Wall”, the audience was lifted 50 feet into the belly of the theater by a massive hydraulic lift for a screening of the film “Information Machine” on multiple large screens. One of the film’s topics? “The similarity of methods that are used by the human mind and computers to solve problems.” Meanwhile, Mary Poppins was a box-office hit, women were wearing pant suits and the cost of a First Class postage stamp was 5¢.

10 years ago

World’s Fair 50:
Roberta Peters hits a high note

Metropolitan Opera star Roberta Peters performs at the IBM Pavilion with an aria from La Traviata. The sign in the background reads “50 Years of Progress,” which from where we sit now, 50 years on, means IBM can actually lay claim to over 100 years of progress. History really does repeat itself. 

10 years ago