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Had you asked me a few years ago, I would have said computers were an unlikely subject for art. But in 2003 I had a Road to Damascus moment when I visited the Vintage Computer Festival at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, a city in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. It’s where a bunch of guys (and it is mostly guys) get together to run the old machines. I went there planning to take pictures of the people, but when I saw the machines I changed my mind.

I saw art within these computers. There was an…

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