In 1952, the University of Illinois’s ILLIAC supercomputer was the most powerful piece of technology in the world, capable of executing countless calculations in the blink of an eye and leaping over humanity’s boundless memory. But could it create music? This question was posed by several of the university’s experimental music composers.

In 1956, Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson devised a program for this machine to become more than a mere business tool. They constructed an artificial collaborator capable of composing music. Later, in 1962, Salvatore Martirano continued these experiments by using the original TTL boards of the ILLIAC II to build his Sal-Mar Construction, an analog and digital collaborator capable of continuously improvising music. Through photographs, diagrams, correspondence and reports, this exhibition traces the development of computer music and the Experimental Music Studio from 1952-1972.