A Little-Known Story about a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer’s Arrival in Art New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961–1973

This recent MIT press publication documents a short-lived but intense artistic experiment that took place in Yugoslavia fifty years ago but has been influential far beyond that time and place: the New Tendencies movement, which begun in Zagreb in 1961. Pursuing the idea of “art as visual research"” the New Tendencies movement proceeded along a path that led from Concrete and Constructivist art, Op art, and Kinetic art to computer-generated graphics, film, and sculpture.

With their exhibitions and conferences and the 1968 launch of the multilingual, groundbreaking magazine Bit International, the New Tendencies transformed Zagreb into an international meeting place where artists, engineers, and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain gathered around the then-new technology. For a brief moment in time, Zagreb was the epicenter of explorations of the aesthetic, scientific, and political potential of the computer.

further links:
http://www02.zkm.de/bit/index.php?lang=en
http://aminima.net/wp/?p=859&language=en
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/public/docUploads/41.2.fritz.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/bitomatik_Fritz_eng.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/Fritz.NT_oris%2054.pdf
http://darkofritz.net/text/CIP_no.07-08-2006_Fritz_Bonacic.pdf
http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/731

Media Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications

Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka
University of California Press, May 2011

The book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media - one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. With contributions from internationally prominent scholars, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today’s interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting ‘old’ or even ‘dead’ media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding ‘new’ media in their
complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.

The introduction is available here.

Bit International : A Little-Known Story ...

A little-known story about a movement, a magazine, and the computer\\\'s arrival in art: New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961-1973 : [bit international [Nove] tendencije. Computer und visuelle Forschung Zagreb 1961-1973. Exhibitions: Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum 28.04.-17.06.2007, ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 23.02.2008-18.01.2009] / ed. by Margit Rosen. - Cambridge, Mass. : MIT, 2011. - 576 S. : zahlr. Ill.
ISBN: 978-0-262-51581-8

This book documents a short but intense artistic experiment which took place in Yugoslavia fifty years ago, but whose impact has been felt far beyond that time and place. Ostensibly, the “little-known story” concerns the advent of computers in art and a movement which began in 1961 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. It was through the activities of that movement, known as New Tendencies, and its supporting institution, the Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, that the “thinking machine” was adopted as an artistic tool and medium. Pursuing the idea of “art as visual research,” the New Tendencies movement proceeded along a path which led from Concrete and Constructivist art, Op art, and Kinetic art with its dynamic apparatuses to computer-generated graphics, film, and sculpture – from “programmed art” without computers to art generated or controlled by computers.

With their exhibitions and conferences on the theme of computers and visual research and the launch of the multilingual, groundbreaking magazine bit international in 1968, the New Tendencies transformed Zagreb, already one of the most vibrant artistic centers in Yugoslavia, into an international meeting place where artists, engineers, and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain gathered around the then-new technology. For a brief moment in time, Zagreb was the epicenter for exploring the aesthetic, scientific, and political potential of the computer. This volume, edited by Margit Rosen, includes new essays by Jerko Denegri, Darko Fritz, Margit Rosen, and Peter Weibel; a great number of essays and texts that were first published in New Tendencies exhibition catalogs and bit international magazine; and historic documents. Over 650 black-and-white and color illustrations testify to the wide and diverse panorama of artworks that were presented in the exhibitions, and introduce the movement’s protagonists. Many of the historic photographs, translations, and documents are presented here for the first time. The book presents the long overdue history of the New Tendencies experiment and its impact on the art of the twentieth century.

nonlinear history

Andrey Smirnov's Nonlinear History (of audiovisual composition) features some long forgotten yet amazing equipment...ppts and videos can be downloaded here

Interview with Ken Knowlton

Zach Lieberman interviewed Ken Knowlton:
http://thesystemis.com/category/blog/

ken knowlton interview from thesystemis on Vimeo.

Do read this !

conversation of Garnet Hertz with Jussi Parikka on Archaelogies of Media Art published on

CTheory.net/Resetting Theory/rt020 - 4/1/2010

www.ctheory.net

Art Game Studies resource

i am releasing a new + open collaborative/community-based resource on/for Art Game Studies here:

http://bit.ly/5GdzNL

this list is primarily drawn from classes that i teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where i have developed the New Media curriculum in the department of Film, Video & New Media. the list includes works that i + others have taught, played, researched, written on, developed, screened + exhibited as well those that have been developed by my students, colleagues, peers, fellow artists + myself. as such, this resource is subjectively crafted from my own experiences but hopefully objectively useful as a contribution to the field of Art Game Studies + Media Art Histories.

the resource will be used in my upcoming course Art Game Studies, a new Media Art Histories course being offered by the Art History, Theory & Criticism department + Film, Video & New Media. this course is both an overview of Art Games as well as introduction to the theories + discourses of Game Studies. the research for this resource also comes from + contributes to my ongoing work in this field, such as my essay, Running and Gunning in the Gallery: Art Mods, Art Institutions and the Artists that Destroy Them, which will appear in From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art, edited by David Getsy, to be published by Penn State Press.

i am offering this resource freely + openly to anyOne who wants to contribute to or comment on these histories. i will be revising the version that i use in my classes based on your contributions + comments. i hope that artists, academics, researchers + theorists of Art Mods, Art Games, Artware + New Media Art (1) in general find this resource engaging + useful as an open + collaborative/community-based resource that we can develop together, to help document these emerging theorypractices. (2)

jonCates
CHICAGO.US
2010.01.20

1. a note on taxonomies + my approach: in my thinking/feeling on the subject, Art Games are a subset of Artware (or Software Art) which itself is a subset of New Media Art. i will use the term New Media Art, as it is used in the field by authors such Michael Rush in his New Media in Late 20th-Century Art from 1999 or Mark Tribe + Reena Jana in their collaborative book simply entitled New Media Art. i am also using the phrase "New Media Art" as we use it in the Film, Video & New Media Department. When we use the phrase New Media we refer to time, screen + code based Digital Art that is connected to the histories + theorypractices of Media Art, i.e. Film Art + Video Art. we are primarily concerned with experimental Media Art + we see New Media Art in relation to all other forms of experimental Media Art such as Film, Video, Animation, Installation, Art Games, Machinima, Realtime Audio Video, Web Art, Software Art + Free & Open Source Software. i also take this perspective from two of my own professors, Lev Manovich + Sean Cubitt. For Cubitt + Manovich Video Art and New Media Art are (respectively) both hybrid categories of creative cultural work, meshworks of interconnections that are socially situated technological forms. i am similarly motivated to understand Art Games in this manner.

2. a note on the contents of the Art Game Studies resource: this resource is not intended to be comprehensive but rather as i described above, collaborative + open. not all works in this list can be included in any given syllabus, courseware, research project, published essay, book, etc. still, i believe it is very important to openly compile + discuss such lists in order to respect + encourage multiple parallel Media Art Histories to develop. in this initial version i have not included many commercial mainstream or mass market gaming products or services in terms of chronologies of hardware (i.e. particular consoles) or software (i.e. specific games). in the cases where i have included these they are primarily in place to document the development of a genre (such as the First Person Shooter) or a crossovers between markets (such as in the case of Electro Plankton by Toshio Iwaii).

COPY-IT-RIGHT 2010

Early Computer History @ University of Manchester

From "The Baby" to the "Manchester Mark 1" and the William's Tube. The University of Manchester, were these things were developed more than half a century ago, put together a website with a really nice collection of resources about the history of its early computers.

http://www.computer50.org/

paleo-future + time capsules

http://www.paleofuture.com

a great blog on "futures that never were" by Matt Novak, that covers futuristic visions from the 1880s to the 1990s.

it also has a small section of books on that topic: http://www.paleofuture.com/library/


a second blog by the same author, where he collects information about time capsules, their content and google maps where they are burried; that really made me laugh:
http://timecapsuled.org/

Olia Lialina and New Media Art Histories of the (so-called) net.art, Net Art and Web Art moments

My colleague Bruce Jenkins (formerly the curator of the Harvard Film Archive and currently on faculty with me in the Film, Video & New Media department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) asked me to recommend Web Art that could be included in his upcoming "Presenting and Preserving Moving-Image Media" course. I suggested he include a discussion of the work of Olia Lialina. In particular, her Last Real Net Art Museum project:

http://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru

which in part hosts remixes of her MY BOYFRIEND CAME BACK FROM THE WAR project from 1996. The remixes function as a form of archiving and preservation in that they extend the life of the work by reworking this now historical New Media Art project. As such, this series constitutes a significantly dynamic and vital artistic use of archives and archiving.

Her FIRST AND THE ONLY REAL NET ART GALLERY:

http://art.teleportacia.org/

directly addresses web-based exhibition of New Media Art as well as the legendary death or historical status of net.art. In particular, this issues are addressed through the online exhibition MINIATURES OF THE HEROIC PERIOD from 1998:

http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/miniatures/


Her collection of texts in the "Texts on net.art, new media and digital folklore" section:

http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/

provides important views into these histories. From that section, her text "Vernacular Web" originally from 2005:


http://art.teleportacia.org/observation/vernacular/

which was then updated and reversioned in 2007:


http://www.contemporary-home-computing.org/vernacular-web-2/

also considers New Media Art Histories and issues of historicity by unlocking ways in which artists and those who do not identify as artists have used the internet and the web over the last 15 or so years...

// jonCates

the troubled history of computer art 1963-1989

I came across a very interesting 2005 PhD thesis by Taylor, Grant D., "The machine that made science art: the troubled history of computer art 1963-1989"

abstract: This thesis represents an historical account of the reception and criticism of computer art from its emergence in 1963 to its crisis in 1989, when aesthetic and ideological differences polarise and eventually fragment the art form. Throughout its history, static-pictorial computer art has been extensively maligned. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and often hostile response. In locating the destabilising forces that affect and shape computer art, this thesis identifies a complex interplay of ideological and discursive forces that influence the way computer art has been and is received by the mainstream artworld and the cultural community at large. One of the central factors that contributed to computer art’s marginality was its emergence in that precarious zone between science and art, at a time when the perceived division between the humanistic and scientific cultures was reaching its apogee. The polarising force inherent in the “two cultures” debate framed much of the prejudice towards early computer art. For many of its critics, computer art was the product of the same discursive assumptions, methodologies and vocabulary as science. Moreover, it invested heavily in the metaphors and mythologies of science, especially logic and mathematics. This close relationship with science continued as computer art looked to scientific disciplines and emergent techno-science paradigms for inspiration and insight. While recourse to science was a major impediment to computer art’s acceptance by the artworld orthodoxy, it was the sustained hostility towards the computer that persistently wore away at the computer art enterprise. The anticomputer response came from several sources, both humanist and anti-humanist. The first originated with mainstream critics whose strong humanist tendencies led them to reproach computerised art for its mechanical sterility. A comparison with aesthetically and theoretically similar art forms of the era reveals that the criticism of computer art is motivated by the romantic fear that a computerised surrogate had replaced the artist. Such usurpation undermined some of the keystones of modern Western art, such as notions of artistic “genius” and “creativity”. Any attempt to rationalise the human creative faculty, as many of the scientists and technologists were claiming to do, would for the humanist critics have transgressed what they considered the primordial mystique of art. Criticism of computer art also came from other quarters. Dystopianism gained popularity in the 1970s within the reactive counter-culture and avant-garde movements. Influenced by the pessimistic and cynical sentiment of anti-humanist writings, many within the arts viewed the computer as an emblem of rationalisation, a powerful instrument in the overall subordination of the individual to the emerging technocracy.

Roy Ascott retrospective, "The Syncretic Sense"

http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/future.html
starting: April 4th 2009
end: May 24th 2009
Plymouth


from the Plymouth Arts Center's website:

"The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with
i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).

Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.

This exhibition explores the influences and rhetoric of Roy Ascott’s work, mapping the impact, history and development of technology and looking to the future of Web2 and Second life. Roy Ascott sees telematic art as the transformation of the viewer into an active participant in creating the artwork, which remains in process throughout its duration. Significantly, the content of his projects were often spiritual: staging the first planetary casting of the I Ching with an early form of network in 1982; whilst his major installation at the Ars Electronica centre in 1989 explored Gaia theory.

The exhibition also looks back at the impact of Roy Ascott’s experimental years of art education. In the 1960s Roy Ascott was the head of Groundcourse at Ealing College of Art and developed one of the most influential and unorthodox approaches to teaching foundation studies in art. The basis of the course was developed around cybernetic theories of systems of communication: the flow of information, interactive exchange, feedback, participation and systemic relationship.

Roy Ascott studied under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton at King’s College, Newcastle, University of Durham. His exhibitions include Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica Linz and Biennale do Mercosul, Brazil. He was President 
of the Ontario College of Art and Dean of San Francisco Art Institute. He is President of the Planetary Collegium, an international research network based in the University of Plymouth www.planetary-collegium.net

Press enquiries: Contact Hannah Prothero
Marketing & Communications Manager
Phone: 01752 276993
Email: hannah at plymouthartscentre dot org"

"

White Heat Cold Logic British Computer Art 1960-1980

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11548&mode=toc

Edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert and Catherine Mason
+you can read charlie gere's introduction here

Prehystories of New Media - students' research papers online

Over the course of the fall semester, students of the Prehystories of New Media class (at The School of the art Institute of Chicago, SAIC) have been working on their research on various aspects of media art histories. In the upcoming week, their work will be published online on prehystories-papers.blogspot.com.

Works include research on Game Art, Media Art in Korea (see also: mediaart-korea.blogspot.com), pioneers of media art like Nam June Paik, Myron Krueger and Manfred Mohr and Human-Computer-Interaction.

The full list of topics will be published soon.

prehysteries of new media

http://prehysteries.blogspot.com/

the "prehysteries of new media" blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it is the base for a forthcoming book and consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.

it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.

the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today.

Lilian Schwartz - The Artist and the Computer

documentary in two parts:

Sten Vanderbeek presents Beflix (written by Ken Knowlton)

Sten Vanderbeek + Beflix

early new media videos

I have collected some videos on youtube that deal with early new media art and develpoments, you can either watch them here or go to: http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=03BB467DF23B962B

evaluations

evaluating scope and content:
when we are evaluating archives of media art, the question is not so much what is included, but what is left out; it is not what the creators themselves tell us about it, but what they are not mentioning that should raise doubt and be a cause for critical investigation.

evaluating methods:
the relation task - method -result
it is not the most important question which methodology you are using and within this method, whose direction you are following or that you are applying someone else's methodology to legitimize your own research. the task itself should legitimize the method and the method should be adequate to deal with the task. looking over the boundaries of a discipline and defining your own set of methods is necessary to deal with media art histories.
a chain of constant, unbroken legitimization only prevents change. it preserves the glory of everyone in that chain. continuity of the chain just makes sure that the gatekeepers keep control and keep themselves and their work historically manifestated, that they will be referenced over and over again and that mankind stays dumb and blindfolded.

society of algorithm - timeline of art

http://societyofalgorithm.org/networktime/

a great timeline/matrix of art from the 1920ies up to now