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Samia Halaby on Different Brushes

Abstraction icon Samia Halaby, whose work has recently been featured at Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams, The 2024 Venice Biennale, MUDAM’s Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960-1991, and Frieze London, spoke with Peter Bauman (Monk Antony). Halaby reflects on her transition from traditional painting to digital art, emphasizing what programming allowed for her practice.
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Peter Bauman: You’ve said, “I came to the computer because of the nature of what it can do. The nature of programming. The possibility of motion and sound and time.” How did these possibilities allow you to explore concepts that weren’t possible with traditional mediums?‍

‍Samia Halaby: I assume you are asking me what I discovered. I discovered a great deal. I discovered that digital art is highly repeatable and therefore lends itself to sociable functionality. It can pass from hand to hand very quickly and more people can enjoy it. I learned that the screen has a memory and is luminous and that shapes can move and have sound. Through programming, the work had to have a certain time lapse. All these things are different from still painting.

‍Peter Bauman: Yet your practice includes both still paintings and digital work. You’ve spoken before about the importance of using the technology of your time, saying, “To me, [computers were] the technology of our time and if I were a painter of my time, I’d have to use the technology of my time.” How did your early experiences with painting inform your transition to computer art?
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‍Samia Halaby: When I resolved to buy a personal computer, I was worried about the range of colors available. I discovered immediately that the Amiga 1000 was rare and unique in that it had immense possibilities for colors. That made the decision for me. The PC, on the other hand, had only 4 colors and nothing more.
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There were hints in my artwork that were algorithmic prior to buying a computer. In my sketchbooks there are pages that show that I was definitely thinking of computers. 

Once I started using the computer, I discovered that I was repeating all the things I had already done in painting and then moving forward to new directions.

‍Peter Bauman: Despite your interest in new directions, your work draws inspiration from something essentially timeless—nature—which is evident in the titles of much of your work. How did your understanding of abstraction and nature influence your approach to the Amiga and other digital tools?‍

‍Samia Halaby: Nature is our guide. It may sound old-fashioned—and my professors always said this about nature to me through my education—but it is true. With digital art, I am more able to use principles I see in nature through the addition of time and sound. Also, I would like to add that while I am so grateful for discovering things that are in nature and how the digital leads to new inventions, I am simultaneously saddened by the destruction of the environment—global warming and loss of species—that comes along with that development.

‍Peter Bauman: Your work is also known for its connection to Islamic architecture and the Soviet avant-garde. How do these influences manifest in your computer-based kinetic art?‍

‍Samia Halaby: Those are my ancestors and I am building on them. I have many, many influences because I am international and I accept all inspiration. When I am confronted by someone who says, “You are influenced by such and such,” and they are trying to shame me by not being original, I am shocked.
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I think that it is my duty to be influenced by everything I see. It is the opposite of enlightenment to reject influence.

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‍Peter Bauman: Is there a thread that connects the geometry of your paintings to the commands you use in digital art?‍

‍Samia Halaby: Media always has its limitations and opportunities.
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We also know that a new technology is not used only for the fun—or privilege—of using a new technology. It makes the container of information wider—more able to reflect our modern times.

I am much more able to tell about my life in big cities through digital art than if I were to regress and use the media of the cave painter. I would be reduced to bones and pigments, and that is not going to tell you about the experience of walking the streets next to high-speed automobiles and under skyscrapers.
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‍Peter Bauman: Working with the Amiga was “a challenge you posed to yourself.” You used Amiga BASIC and C, mentioning that you’re not drawing images with the Amiga but rather using commands. Can you elaborate on how this shift from traditional mark-making to command-based creation influenced your artistic process?‍

‍Samia Halaby: When I make a mark, I am using a brush and not my finger (although some have used fingers directly on canvas). When I do it through the computer, I allow the command I am using to make the mark. It’s just different kinds of brushes. When I am painting with a brush or palette knife, I always put a mark or two and then back up to check the results. If I don’t like them, then I redo it. It is a similar creative process in programming. I add a few commands, I compile and link the program, I run it, and I see if I like it. If not, I go back and change it.

‍Peter Bauman: What did you find most challenging or rewarding about this new way of creating art?‍

‍Samia Halaby: It is a new medium for making an image. I see it not as a new art but more as a contemporary tool for making art. However, this contemporary tool has powerful attributes that transcend, let’s say, the mere difference between oil and acrylic painting.
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I fell in love with programming because it was so much to me like a city, with its pathways and locations.

I was always comparing a function to a factory. You feed it something and then a product comes out. At the front, you feed it information. In the middle, you give instructions. Then it spits out what you are asking for. Program logic—how you structure the path of information within a program—is also very much like how a city functions. It’s invigorating from that point of view and an exciting medium all by itself. And that is something new. For me, that was part of discovering the nature of computing.
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When you are typing code for one command, it is like a brush. However, what is unique is that programming is like the brush with the whole watercolor box. Programming is the larger, collective level.

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‍Peter Bauman: You’ve spoken about what the art work is with your digital work. Your conclusion was quite unique in that the “hardware itself, the machine itself sitting in front of me is the art work. When I want to show it, I have to show it on this machine. It can’t be seen anywhere else. The computer itself is the medium.” Given this perspective, how do you view the relationship between your traditional practice and your digital creations?

Samia Halaby: I must confess that was a very strong opinion that I had at the time and it applies to the time. There was no other way to see the work other than on the Amiga; the program was not portable. However, many decades later, I have learned that what is important is the scale of the artwork relative to the viewer. To me, sitting at the computer, the scale of the screen occupies 80% of my field of vision, and so when the work is seen in an exhibition from far away on a small monitor of that size, you need to walk up close to it and have it fill your field of vision to best appreciate it. I now appreciate that the digital can hold its own on a huge scale, if in an equally scaled space.

For example, the billboard-sized LED screen display of my work on the beach at Manar Abu Dhabi worked well. At the time I said the quote you mention, there were no emulators for the Amiga, and certainly no one was exhibiting my pieces on a billboard.

‍Peter Bauman: Are they separate entities, or do they form a cohesive artistic language?‍

‍Samia Halaby: They are cohesive. I also make drawings and wall hangings. They all respond to the same aesthetic questions.

‍Peter Bauman: How do you think new technologies can further expand the possibilities of abstraction and its role in society?‍

‍Samia Halaby: We need a social revolution before that happens. I say that because digital media can be given free of charge so easily and at so little cost.

A new technology gives us expanded capacity to express our times. It is predictable that if the population manages to rescue the earth from impending natural disasters and war, there will be even newer technologies and beautiful new ways to express art.



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Samia Halaby is a Palestinian-born artist, academic and former professor, whose nearly sixty year career has explored the essentials of abstraction in painting as well as the digital. Her work has exhibited in galleries, private collections and exhibitions around the world including at Tate Modern, Venice Biennale 2024 and Frieze London. Halaby is collected by many museums such as Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art.

Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) is Le Random's Editor-in-Chief.