MEETING MR. KID PIX, a video about the man who in the 1980’s designed a painting program for kids. One where they could not accidentally click on something wrong, or even accidentally click out of the program… even when they played on the computer unsupervised.
It was a simpler time when digital programs were designed and intended to be easy to use, even for adults!
KID PIX was a tool to make art, and it was made not to be serious, but just for fun. Over time operating systems and tech advances in the Apple® Computer, quickly left KID PIX behind.
Somewhere out there… in a box somewhere you may have stashed the artwork you did on KID PIX!
TECH COLUMN for ARTSandFOOD.com ®
Some of the transcript from the video:
…
I received an interesting email.
It began…
“Dear Mr. Craig Hickman, your Kid Pix software changed my life.”
It was from artist Jeffrey Alan Scudder.
He wanted to visit my studio and meet with me.
It seemed like an opportunity to think…
and I hadn’t thought hard about Kid Pix in a long time.
This year was its 30th anniversary.
My younger son Arthur
had this tattoo
of the “Undo” guy put on his arm!
I wondered why Jeffrey was still so interested.
When Jeffrey arrived he was excited to see the original self-published Kid Pix from 1990.
He asked me what it was like back then.
So we decided to watch some VHS tapes.
Kid Pix is a paint program designed especially for kids.
It uses not only visuals, but sound.
As you can hear, each tool has a characteristic sound.
This is our “Rectangle” and this is our “Oval”.
Even our “Undo” is fun and has its own sound.
There are some real fun effects you can have clearing your screen.
This one’s “Firecracker”. (BOOM)
My son Ben…
was using an existing paint program
one day, when he was 3 years old.
I was very surprised at how well he could operate the mouse.
He could draw lines and select tools
and it just took him a few minutes to do that
and he loved it.
But if I left the room and came back
I would inevitably find that he pulled a menu down and selected a desk accessory
or done something to stop the process
and he found that very frustrating.
I enjoy programming…
and this seemed like
a good project.
To develop a paint program that Ben could use
and other children could use, but…
Ben was really in a sense…
kind of the boss.
I would come up with ideas.
And then try them out on Ben.
If he had any trouble with them, then it got changed.
It was a case of…
“The customer’s always right.”
…
I wanted to write the program so that it was fun to explore
so even if you didn’t know how to use it
you had some reason to try things.
And also…
you knew that if you tried something
you wouldn’t end up in someplace you couldn’t get out of.
Then, he started to have fun.
…
Kid Pix is one of Oregon’s most popular exports.
…
Kid Pix is a tool.
You know, it doesn’t generate a painting or something.
It doesn’t really fall into the category of what we would think of as like
“Systems Art”
or even new media art, right?
Because it’s like a commercial product that is meant for people to use.
Yeah.
There’s some parallel with Muybridge’s photography
of the…
motion studies.
When those were made, they were not made as art.
They were actually in many ways made
to be tools for artists.
If an artist wanted to know how a horse looked at a certain place in a stride
they would refer to these pictures.
But over time, that work, you’ll find now in art museums.
What seemed like a technical thing at first
ended up really being art.
What meaning do you think that Kid Pix has culturally?
I wanted it to kind of expand people’s idea
of what, say
a drawing program could do
or what a computer could add to that.
Because, at that time
people who wrote computer software
and especially paint programs
were often very apologetic about it being on a computer
and they always gave it names that referred to painting.
Even the name “paint program”…
it isn’t really paint.
Yeah I sort of wanted people to have a positive experience.
I suppose if there’s anything I wanted actually
was just to do something with the computer
that gave people a positive experience.
They walked away and felt that maybe
their life was a little more interesting now
than it was before they started.
At least for me, it certainly changed the way
that I looked at drawing.
And thought about what drawing was for.
Often when I’m drawing with a pencil or traditional media
I’ll think about…
ways to make drawing fun
or ways to make it more exciting for me.
And so I’ll come up with a lot of, the sort of…
Kid Pix idioms, in my head.
When I make a mark, I’ll make a sound in my head
or with my mouth, to sort of draw the mark
or something like that.
One thing that always really excited me about Kid Pix is that…
the meaning of what I was doing
was just using… the software.
Like it didn’t really matter what I made in the program.
It just wasn’t really about the results.
It was all about just…
the fun that I was having just playing around.
That was, my experience with my children and other children
was that they enjoyed making things
and if the parent put that picture up on the refrigerator
that was nice…
but that was not why they were making the picture.
They were making the picture to make the picture.
And I think also to…
start to see things differently.
If the program isn’t really about…
leaving with some physical picture…
…
Joseph Beuys who grew up on Kid Pix.
I’m really interested in education
and these systems of play.
Sometimes I’ll even talk about how…
you know of course I was inspired by a lot of software
when I was growing up.
Even just playing Mario, for example.
If we think about for a second, Craig
like, what is a paint program?
What does it mean?
How is that category defined?
It’s really a program for making images or manipulating images
with some limitations right?
We were talking once before how
if you make something in Kid Pix
and show it to someone
and they know what Kid Pix is
they’re probably gonna notice that it was made in Kid Pix.
There’s all kinds of evidence in the image, right?
…
I could tell Jeffrey was inspired.
It’s important to meet people like that.
(Source: for this article is YouTube.com)
