QUOTE:
"If you don't accept technology you better go to another place
                          because no place here is safe...Nobody wants to paint rotten
                          oranges anymore." -- Robert Rauschenberg, 1967

I. Announcements
- Mendi Obadike talk Thursday 4-6pm VAF
- Powering Up/Down this weekend (go over schedule)

II. Assignment One ­ best of

Comments:
Approximate art form (variables)
Different browsers
Connection speeds
Operating systems
Viewing/listening environments
Monitor color balance

When using web as medium ­ need to consider

III. What is Art?
(from variation of assignment results)

debate ongoing ­ dynamic

some ideas:

-elevation of senses
-magic/wonder/indescribable
-connection between sensuous and rational (mediary)
-illusion which makes life possible
-reflection of life - conscience/human condition
-expression/manifestation of human spirit
- gift of symbolic importance not directly related to the fulfillment of physical needs

Artist role as visionary ** Neuromancer pg.5 (1984) SNOWCRASH (1992)

Why do artists create art? Express something that cannot be expressed in another way
Artistic process - engaged with reading, logic, science, history, psychology, etc.

IV. artist as engineer

 all art has always involved technology (manipulation of reality)
  science = understanding of reality/technology=manipulation of it
 stonehenge
 pigments in painting (frescoes ushered in new type of painting)
 writing (alphabet)
 ceramics (firing kilns, glazing)
 film & photography (processing, printing)
 even drawing (perspective, cartesian coordinates

Current environment ­ Increase in importance & ubiquity of technology: now artists are increasingly asking to be hybrid of the two

TOOLS ARE POWERFUL SHAPERS OF PRODUCT OR RESULT

*WHAT BIASES DO COMPUTERS CARRY - How has that shaped idea of art made with these technologies??

COMPUTER SOFTWARE STRUCTURES SEEING, INTERACTION

Programming
 proceduralist, indirect manipulation, algorithmic, command and control structure
 need to tell computer *everything* - can't assume anything
 SHAMPOO EXAMPLE (wet hair, lather, rinse, repeat) - doesn't know when to stop

 CODE EXAMPLE = go to get cup of coffee
  routines (stand, walk to door, open door, etc), subroutines (describe standing, describe walking, describe monetary exchange) subsubroutines (breath, pump blood, etc.)
 high-level programming has set of assumptions organized in libraries - tells how to handle base operations

WE HAVE WITNESSED/ARE WITNESSING THE SHIFT FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL
Analog vs. digital (analog = analogous to nature - continuous stream)

what makes something digital?
0s & 1s - binary system
separation of content and context (universal machine) - SOFTWARE/HARDWARE
 allows for extreme speed
 instant random access
 non-destructive
 exact copies (no generation loss)
 
implications of separating content from context (N. Katherine Hayles) Cybernetics Symposia in 1950s documented in "How we Became Posthuman"

EARLY ARTWORK!!!
 done by mathematicians & scientists able to see potential of machines/programs for graphics & creativity
 
Visual artists slow to accept & embrace computers
 musicians & poets first
 why? perhaps because there was no "need" for what computers offered (as in business & science)
  computers in sterile environments (not inspiring)
  protected by labyrinthian bureaucracies - admittance daunting
  negative response to computers/machines ordering existence (freedom vs. procedure)
  some saw potential for artistic applications huge (design, architecture, direct computer output, expansion of creative process)

   much of it transformation of image using mathematical functions
 math functions most frequently used:
 1) randomness (programming unpredictable response w/in established parameters)
 2) iteration (the repetition of an operation with slight changes at each repeated act)
3) interpolation (transformation of one linear image into another through the calculation of a variable number of new values - between two existing values)
 

BREAK
 

ART & COMPUTER HISTORY - develops alongside technological developments

1) BEN LAPOSKY
 first acknowledged graphic images generated by electronic machine (1950)
 analog device - manipulated electronic beams across flourescent face of oscilloscope (cathode ray tube)

1957 - first scanner - image processing  - U.S. Bureau of Standards
1959 - first digital plotter (early printer) - CalComp

1960 - Computer graphics =  term coined by William A. Fetter - researcher with Boeing
 catch-all term - designing cockpits

2) 1962 - Ivan Sutherland - SKETCHPAD - system for interactive computer graphics
(show video 51:15)
 major breakthrough for scientists and artists
 draws directly on cathode ray-tube with a light pen
  early precursor of Wacom tablet)
 basic manipulations possible
 had basic storage capability

1965 - First exhibition of computer-generated art
 at Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, W.Germany
 organized by mathematicians - Michael Noll, George Nees, Frieder Nake

3) George Nees - Computer Sculpture 1969
cut out of aluminum by a computer - controlled milling machine following instructions of program by Nees

4) Frieder Nake - Rectangular Hatchings 1965
set up program which makes possible entire set of drawings/ small variations (iteration!)
 
1965 - also first exhibition of digital graphics in U.S. at Howard Wise gallery
not well-received ­ reviews say "cold & soulless"

Work taking place in corporate R&D areas
BELL LABS

5) Michael Noll & Bela Julesz - early work, no color capabilities, composed of linear elements
DO WITH STUDENTS! (first Mondrian & second is computer)
 MONDRIAN TEST - DV p.25
say results
randomness!
ARTISTRY IS IN PROGRAM - programmed vertical end points - horizontal were random
 randomness as seen as human trait... (precursor to current software art movement)

6) CHARLES CSURI
 one of few people in computer graphics with traditional arts bg
 process: draw image - scanned - converted
 coordinates reassigned to outlines using mathematical functions to make new form
  Sine-Curve Man 1966
  Birds on a hat
IMAGE AS INFORMATION - AS A DYNAMIC SYSTEM (interpolation)

7) Leon Harman & Kenneth Knowlton 1966
 STUDIES IN PERCEPTION I: Nude
 STUDIES IN PERCEPTION I: telephone

read from CS on Process - p.86
PAGE 20 - COMP & ART

8) Make Own tools
Manfred Mohr - fixed system cubes
 P-300B
 P-304B
"high-speed visual thinking"
first one-man exhibition of computer art organized by a museum - 1971 Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

computer & plotter part of exhibition - visitors watch process

ARTISTS also using computer as formal or symbolic element in work

9) Edward Keinholz  1965 "The Friendly Gray computer, Star gauge model #54
 DV. description p.30 also**p.37 quote

10) Lowel Nesbitt - IBM #729 1965
  IBM 1440 1965
  IBM 1965
powerful structural forms

COLLABORATIONS - TEAMS - artists and corporate/engineering partners

Artist Jean Tinguely
1967 - THE MACHINE AS SEEN AT THE END OF THE MECHANICAL AGE
Billy Kluver - physicist in Laser research - BELL LABS-  drawing sculptures, machine which destroyed itself
Kluver just passed away ­ Jan 11th
Extremely important figure

IDEA of "interactivitity"

11) Robert Rauschenberg "Dry Cell"
 interaction based on voice - assemblage with circuit board
CONTINUED COLLABORATION WITH BILLY KLUVER
EAT - Experiments in art & Technology
seek to unite artists & engineers 1966 begun

NINE EVENINGS: Theater & Engineering
at 69th regiment armory in NYC - 40 engineers collaborate with 10 artists
 Lucinda Childs, Rauschenberg, Alex Hays & Deborah Hayes, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Tudor, Robert Whitman, John Cage, Oyving Fahlstrom

After - newsletter, open houses for meeting, educational programs, sponsored other shows
 at one time 400 members
assumption/hopefulness  = Democracy in Technology

1967 - 1971 Art & Technology Program at LACMA
 artist residencies - paired with corporations - 76 participating artists
 Maurice Tuchman - intention "to bring together the incredible resources and advanced technology of industry with the equally incredible imagination and talent of the best artists at work today"
FAILURE - Corporations fundamentally disinterested
 thought artists were dis-shevilled, unkempt, too ambitious, not organized enough
 ideas were outside of scope of technologies
 Artists also stepped out in protest - when being paired with corporations involved in military and nuclear technologies, for instance

1967 Institutional Programs begun: MIT Center for advanced Visual study founded by Gyorgy Kepes

12) Computer technique group - Japan
 visionary group of engineers, architectural and product designers
 appreciated early importance of role of computer in art
 series of graphic images
 RUNNING COLA IS AFRICA 1968
  "deformations" early morph ­( interpolation!)
"Artist's work consists large in envisaging possibilities rather than producing individual works. Program is the work of art - not the result"
ARTIST CREATES SYSTEM ***

COMPUTER ANIMATION

First - done by scientists in 1963 "Simulation of a two-gyro Gravity- gradient attitude control System" movement of a satellite as a simplified form

ARTISTS
 - John Whitney, Sr. (show video 1:48:00)
 "permutations" 1967 - with IBM
 made with John Citron - physicist & scientist at IBM

- Kenneth Knowlton (engineer at BELL LABS)  & Stan van der Beek (experimental animator)
 BEFLIX system (Bell Flicks) - first attempt to make a general language for computer animation
 motivation - cut costs
 "Poem Fields"

ADDITIONAL SHOWS
1968 - Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts at ICA in London - Jasia Reichardt, curator
 -show creative forms engendered by technology
 -show back & forth between artists and scientists
"Cybernetic serendipity deals with possibilities rather than achievements"
Read p.5 - Catalogue
still mostly engineers making art
 

1970 - "Software, Information Technology: It's New Meanings for Art" show at Jewish Museum
 extremely ambitious - organized by Jack Burnham
Software's technological ambitions were matched by Burnham's conceptually sophisticated vision, which drew parallels between the ephemeral programs and protocols of computer software and the increasingly "dematerialized" forms of experimental art, which were interpreted, metaphorically, as functioning like information processing systems.
 plagued by malfunctioning equipment
 served to further alienate artists

works:
Haacke Visitor's profile - DV p.42
The artist's business requires his involvement with practically everything ... It would be bypassing the issue to say that the artist's business is how to work with this and that material ... and that the rest should be left to other professions ... The total scope of information he receives everyday is of concern. An artist is not an isolated system ... he has to continuously interact with the world around him...40

didn't work finally - Haacke discouraged from ever using computers again

13) Nicholas Negroponte with Architecture Machine group at MIT
 "SEEK" 1969-70
 plexiglass enclosed computer-controlled architectural environment inhabited by Gerbils

exhibition critically bombed
"Artists who become seriousaly engaged in technological processes might remember what happened to four charming gerbils..." Thomas Hess

14) Miriam Schapiro 1971
 "Keyhole"
 "Iris"
 computer played role in painting - draws variations on a simple design - choose one or composited several, as basis for large painting.
(precursor of projects being done today between not just computing & painting, but sculptural forms, 3D printers & rapid prototyping.