The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why

Abstract

texts that “the lines are ever-transferring, constantly generating, constantly renewing, never fully built, as if always on the brink of their own vanishing,” which is not only good but also serves as a leitmotif for much of the work here. And that’s just a peripheral we see. The computer, operating on a trivial level, isn’t even on show. But it’s present by its absence, as it were, and bits of paper would not remotely be as conceptually redolent. Now what comes? Just look at some of the 14 section topics: Mainframe Mystique, Mathematical Agents in the Computational Imagination, Reboot: Mondrian and Klee in the Computer Lab, Art and Computer in the Age of Protest, Coding Dance and Dancing Code, Social Cybernetics, Information as Art, Weaving, the hugely influential New Tendencies and so on. The striking thing is that the chronological and conceptual categories often map quite well onto general trends and problematics in art. Someone leafing through the photos might not immediately know that they concerned computer art. These days, the medium is nearly always the message. Earlier it was. . . different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is a great difference between, say, Edward Ihnatowicz’s large interactive robotic sculpture Senster, completed in 1970, and . . . Oh, I’ve got it I think: That great work was about the interaction it generated. People even got married in front of it as it hovered “proudly” in the background, responding positively to gentle sounds and gestures, shying away from loud noise or violent movements. People’s gazes were on others’ interactions. Today it would be about the thing with which the public incidentally interacted. No one gets married in front of . . . well, you know the sort of stuff. Philips, of electrical goods fame, showed Senster in their flying saucer– like Evoluon, in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. To them it was a spectacle, shown in a literal segment of circus ring. When it took too much attention away from their fridges and light bulbs, they discarded it (it has since been rebuilt), allegedly without even telling the artist. (The director of the Evoluon told me he was very sad about this. He himself had completely understood what the work was really about, seeing it every day, with and without visitors.) This is what hinders much history of the computer-based arts: they are seen as images, or spectacles, but they are much more than that. Simpler, quieter, often more in tune with minimalism and conceptualism. Hence, again, the failure of artbots, only dealing with what things look like, or we could better say, actually nothing. We could make art using artbots, but it would not be what the bots produced. Tasked with showing images about artbotor AI-art, the bots show images indistinguishable from those generated by first-level prompts. So, the computer arts of 1952 to 1982 could have been so important in the history of mid-century art. Well, I have news: They were central, in themselves. It’s not that that they influenced much art or culture, but that they were, and must surely soon be seen as, the representation of the development and implementation of some of the most serious art concerns of the 20th century. It just wasn’t seen that way then and isn’t much now. If anything will change that, it is this book and the exhibition to which it relates. Much of the art covered in it could have been revolutionary for contemporary art had it been recognized for what it was. I hope and think it will be. We have to incorporate it into present artworks, though we can’t just repeat it or use its messages directly, of course. We have to understand what went on and use that knowledge to make new art now, much as earlier artists didn’t merely rework their historical discoveries and awarenesses but learned from them to make new art, impossible otherwise. Media art histories, in my view, might well promote the incorporation of the archaeology of early computer art into what we do today, artists being media archaeologists and vice versa. This is a book to change the minds of those who assume that the computer-based arts were always just empty spectacle, cynical decoration, playing with numbers or not proper art in some other way. It shows the politics, the philosophy, the virtuosity, the cybernetics of cybernetics behind, and in, some of the work. The connections the art made visible. As an oBca (old British computer artist), I wish the book’s readers, many perhaps new to the field, intriguing discovery and happy creating. The art, ideas, theories, contexts, techniques, and histories in this book have been waiting for us, for you. Use them well.