Sol Lewitt's quote in 67 also influenced me: "the idea
becomes a machine that makes the art".
A quick historical link-up which shows a parallel circuit to the one of
Paul's practice: happened across some work yesterday by US
generative/code artist Casey Reas, in which he begins by implementing
some of LeWitt's wall drawings, in code (with LeWitt's permission).
This is part of a wider investigation on Reas' part, of parallels
between conceptual and software art. See
http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/map.html
Of course before LeWitt's instructions there were the instruction
pieces of Fluxus... like LaMonte Young's "draw a straight line and
follow it." Florian Cramer notes the parallel with code art here
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps43/cramer/oooo.html