Page 56 - Studio International - November 1970

New York preview because this reportage was already needn't detain the aesthete, but is one of the
late, at which time the mother computer for most powerful exhibits in a show devoted to a
commentary Labyrinth, an important system within the questoning frame of reference. The questions
system, was out of order. Today, more than raised by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and
twenty-four hours later, I have telephoned his Architecture Machine Group at M.I.T.
(software ?) and confirmed that today, more are urgently significant. The experiment (for
than twenty-four hours later, the mother that is what it is) is called Seek. It consists of a
SOFTWARE—EVERYWHERE computer has not yet recovered. giant cage in which a number of gerbils
Jack Burnham's definition of Software hangs Had the mother computer been operative, I meander through an elementary environment
fire, mercifully, for some future definition- could have entered the museum, seen scat- of small building blocks created by a com-
processor to cope with. The syntax of the tered throughout the three floors of the exhibi- puter that can pick up blocks, sort them, and
preceding sentence is deliberately askew, tion nine video terminals with typewriter key- drop them into fairly orderly structures. The
mitigated by the experience of Software, an boards which would have functioned as a gerbils tumble or disarray the blocks, disturb-
exhibition at the Jewish Museum introducing multidimensional catalogue of the exhibition. ing the programme order. The computer,
Jack Burnham's hung-fire meditations on art, This is appropriately called a 'hypertext'. It is which has a programmed memory of block
history, technology, industry, philosophy. It programmed to answer questions about placement, is then faced with the dilemma
is in the form of what he hoped would be a specific artists and works and to render unto imposed by the unpredictable behaviour of the
system (the exhibition in toto). Reading is the visitor 'his own personalized computer gerbils.
very important to software because software, printout' of what he has read on the video Strangely, Burnham describes Seek as an
finally, has no definition, as the numerous screen. Personalization—that detestable word— effort to discover if the animals called gerbils
definitions in the exhibition catalogue prove makes its way into several of the accompany- can tell architects and urban planners how
by cancelling each other out. But because Jack ing texts, as though direct experience must be humans react and adjust to a changing
Burnham's intelligence is of a very high order, somehow personalized before the person being environment. But in reality (that is to say,
and because he is one of the most inquisitive personalized can recognize it. from my point of view as the open receiver,
intelligences active in the United States, it My next interaction would be with several unprepared by the text) the experiment is
doesn't matter that software turns out to be movie screens in a bay with informal inter- designed to tell the team how the computer
nowhere and everywhere. What matters is views of the participants. Although the simul- grappler can or will react to a shift in its
that he has compiled a group of radically taneous chattering blunts sensibilities (the accustomed environment. It is geared more
different attitudes that converge somewhere arousing of sensibilities is one of the avowed in- nearly to the development of efficient com-
in Burnham's intelligence in order to present, tentions of the show) I quickly sensed that the puter adjustments than to the observation of
as he finally enunciates in his foreword, 'a information being purveyed, was that inter- human behaviour as affected by the com-
questioning frame of reference'. acting isn't all that easy; that the participants puter. This turnaround is of great importance.
This he has certainly accomplished to the were self-conscious, giggly, hamming it up, or As Professor Negroponte says, 'the distinction
highest degree. embarrassed, and that the 'human' side of the between an input-output device and a sensor-
INFORMATION : experience was as complicated and incom- effector remains unclear and unresearched.'
Since the Software exhibition emphatic- municable as most human experience. Very When the grappler can grapple with three-
ally demands an 'interaction' with what Burn- softwareish. Most of these guys seemed con- dimensional problems on more than its
ham calls 'transducers' (lots of new rhetoric to cerned about 'art'. Burnham himself is very present rudimentary level, the sensor-effector
cope with here), that is, 'the means of relay- concerned about art, and cannot leave it device will have drastic implications for human
ing information which may or may not have alone. A willing subject, like me, doesn't existence. Such experiments are of signal
relevance to art,' I will shift into the first really need to be told that art is not exactly importance and it is to Burnham's credit that
person. I must first of all convey the informa- what software is about, although it could be. he exposes the process widely (even if by his
tion that I attended the pre-exhibition press Obviously, the exhibit in the adjacent room habitual and provoking twists of logic he

Left: Theodor H. Nelson,
Technical Adviser
Centre: Ned Woodman
(A.T.I., Boston)
Right: Scott Bradner, Assisting
Labyrinth : An Inter-Active
Catalogue
2
Nicholas Negroponte and
The Architecture Machine
Group, M.I.T.
Seek
3
Poet Giorno Poetry Systems,
formerly known as John
Giorno, testing his equipment
for Radio Free Poetry, a work
in the exhibition,
Software. Mr Systems is
thirty-four years old, and was
born in New York City. He
earned his B.A. at Columbia
University, and has worked as
a seaman, a Wall Street
stockbroker, and is the man
sleeping in Andy Warhol's
movie Sleep. His work in
Software is Free Radio
Poetry, continuous poetry
readings which are broadcast
within the museum, and are
picked up on transistor radios
carried by museumgoers, as in
the photo.