place. Yet also fundamental to the xerographic
work of art is the opposite notion of the medium
as an inexpensive mode of expression. As Margot
Lovejoy argues, ‘‘a signed, numbered copier print
may only be seen by a collector or by the museum-
going public as opposed to its appearance on
countless billboards in the streets, on subways, or
on buses...’’ (Lovejoy 1989, 113). Thus the issue of
market value with respect to xerography is like-
wise inextricably wound with assumptions about
the photocopy’s private versus public functions.
Also central to the process of xerography as art
practice is the concept of time. The immediacy of
an aesthetic process by which images are produced
in a matter of seconds resembles the type of
instantaneousness touted by the ‘‘you-push-the-
button-we-do-the-rest’’ claim of early amateur
photography. And as with photography, xerogra-
phy is associated with a certain democratization of
the artistic process, in which its processes are
easily accessible to the masses; in the case of the
latter, its tools are readily available in the grocery
store or copy center. Xerography is also linked to
the notion of time in terms of the ephemeral
nature of works in this medium, which are con-
sidered under the umbrella of ‘‘throw-away’’ art,
valued for their immediate impact rather than
their permanence and lasting object value. Artists
who began to experiment with the utilitarian-
found tool of the copy machine in the early
1960s worked largely in isolation from one
another, and explored just these notions of proc-
ess and time in various manifestations.
In 1970, Sonia Landy Sheridan founded Genera-
tive Systems at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, where she taught from 1961–1980. This
research program was based on the dynamic rela-
tionship between artist-scientist-industry-society
and was designed to examine the potential of the
copier machine as art tool as well as the broader
functioning of the machine within society. Born of
a certain dissatisfaction with traditional art media,
the program encouraged its students to take an
active role in the exploration of machine technol-
ogy and to reconsider photography, printing,
painting, and sculpture in light of the copier’s
potential to expand the parameters of these fields.
Generative Systems furthermore challenged per-
ceived limitations of current modes of art educa-
tion and the functioning of the museum/gallery. It
served as a model for similar programs founded in
subsequent years by the Center for Advanced
Visual Studies at MIT in Cambridge, Massachu-
setts, the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester,
and the Tyler School of Art at Temple University
in Philadelphia.
Sheridan forged the artist-scientist relationship
on another level as Artist-in-Residence at the 3M
Corporation research facilities in St. Paul, Minne-
sota in 1969. Working along with artist Keith
Smith, Sheridan had the opportunity to explore
the aesthetic possibilities of the recently developed
3M Color-in-Color machine. The two artists cre-
ated a body of xerography that challenged assump-
tions as to distinctions between art and industry.
One remarkable work borne of this collaboration
was a Color-in-Color copier composite image of a
human figure on cloth, which hung two stories tall
in the foyer of the Museum of Modern Art in New
York in 1974. Central to Sheridan’s work is the
notion of process. The artist envisions her xero-
graphic art not necessarily as completed works,
but as the presentation of information about her
generative process with the machine, which are
often shown in long continuous sequences. For
example, Sheridan’s Stretched Scientist’s Hand,
created in 1980 was a 10 inch by 6 story xerography
image of G. Roger Miller’s hand, which hung out-
side of the Xerox Corporation Building in Chicago.
Sheridan’s work has been the subject of several
one-person exhibitions includingThe Inner Land-
scape and the Machine: A Visual Studies Workshop
Exhibition of the Work of Sonia Landy Sheridanin
1974 andSonia Landy Sheridan: A Generative Ret-
rospectiveat the University of Iowa Museum of Art
in 1976.
Although often concerned with similar issues
concerning artistic process, those artists who work
with the copy machine cannot be thought of as a
unified school or movement. Manipulation of the
unique visual language of the copy machine has
yielded diverse results. Artists’ choice of subjects
and working methods are also necessarily influ-
enced by the relative immobility of the copier
machine and its accessibility. Esta Nesbitt first
experimented with the copy machine at the Parsons
School of Design but continued her work on Xerox
machines in the company’s showroom in New
York City. She has created a self-referential body
of copy art calledTranscapsas, in which she takes
the light generated by the copier machine as her
subject, redirecting it back into the lens with a
reflective material placed over a glass surface called
the platen. The wide, fixed aperture of the copy
machine’s lens results in an extremely shallow
depth-of-field, which Pati Hill exploits with respect
to her three-dimensional subjects, thus turning the
machine’s two-dimensional limitation to her aes-XEROGRAPHY