In the final years of his life, Harold Cohen continued to advance his collaborative practice with AARON through a group of late “finger painting” works. Introducing his own interventions directly onto the computer’s initial output, Cohen painted with his finger on a 55-inch touchscreen, further collapsing the distinction between artist and machine.

Reflecting on this process, Cohen described how he could transform the chromatic structure of an entire composition by altering the contents of the digital “pots” in which AARON stored mixed colours. These later works encouraged him to think about colour relationships in a more fluid and expansive way than in earlier periods of his practice.

Once completed, the digital file was printed directly onto canvas using a wide-format printer. Produced just one year before Cohen’s death in 2016, The Last Machine Age, 2015, belongs to a highly limited group of only twenty works realised through this process.

Cohen reflected on this late period of his work as follows:

“Before this new phase, it had always been necessary to bring AARON’s contribution out of the program’s space so that I could make my own physical contribution – that is, printing its drawings on canvas before I could start the coloring. Now I am working almost entirely in the program’s space. Issues of physicality don’t arise until the physical limitations of the hardware make that final stage of adjusting color relationships necessary.

I don’t pretend to know why I think this is important. It could give rise to a new level of intimacy between my collaborator and myself, our roles freed of the restrictions of drawing on its part and coloring on mine.”