Page 22 - Studio International - September 1971

Computer Art, Japanese Stijl criteria by which art was judged, for instance photography have parallels: rejection (`It's just a
A colour mosaic by Hiroshi Kawano exhibited being 'true to life'. It could be repudiated as fashion'), and assimilation to existing forms.
recently at Plaza DIC, Nihombashi, Tokyo. A
HITAC 5020 computer, programmed in FORTRAN beyond the pale, or furtively practised, or The computer has been used to make Christmas
4, and line printer were used. Red, blue and yellow reclassified as an academic medium. Similarly a cards (by Lloyd Sumner), moire postage-stamps
colours were added manually. lot of the emotion that the computer has (by the Centrum voor Cubische Constructivies,
generated, in a wider field than that of art, has for the Dutch post-office) and mega-Mondrians
been due to its anomalous status. It is a machine, (by Hiroshi Kawano from Tokyo, who attended
and it is a major social and economic the Zagreb colloquy). At the same time there are
institution—which we are all plugged into (so to other artists who are interested in advanced
speak) in our daily transactions, and which is at bio-cybernetics and artificial intelligence.
present largely in the service of big Two lines of approach to the computer seem
administrative, military and commercial to me especially promising. One is the
organizations. But it is also an extension not of relationship between the computer and
the human sensory-motor functions, like most linguistics. The following text is not, as you
other technology, but of the human brain itself. may think, a statement by a British avant-garde
As Mary Douglas has written, 'If there is no artist from Studio International, but part of the
joke in the social structure, no other joking can output of a 'generative grammar' written by
appear'. The essence of most computer jokes is Kees Koster of the Mathematisch Centrum,
that, wherever we choose to assign the computer Amsterdam :
in the 'social' hierarchy, as slave or oracle or The experimental solution, which any
working-partner, its anomalous nature will participation progressively provokes, puts a
assert itself. Computers are often referred to limitation on the liberation power . . . The dynamic
familiarly by people in the trade as animals, contemporary intercourse sufficiently constitutes a
brutes or beasts, or sometimes as idiots or solution.2
morons. Many 'housekeeping' programmes- A second, not unrelated, line of approach is
those which perform routine functions in the the sociology of the computer. One of the
organization of information-are thought of as strongest features of Nicholas Negroponte's
consisting of a number of conceptual Seek is its sensitivity to the social function of
1
bureaucrats, giving and obeying orders in a technology.
hierarchy: the input/output monitor, the
supervisor, the queuing manager, the executive, The computer offers novel facilities but
the linkage editor, the interpreter, etc. rigid constraints. Here it is unlike those other
Many other media-for instance, paint and technical innovations which are absorbed
photography and film-have developed certain effortlessly into fine art-reflecting the fashions
specific properties which are gradually of the hour and offering little aesthetic challenge.
and effective new light-spectacle in the central understood and exploited during their history. I regret that, to judge from the catalogue, most
square at Zagreb (programmed by computer), What properties are specific to the computer ? of the recent Art and Technology show at Los
and also a small 32 by 32 matrix of flashing It is best seen as a specialized extension of Angeles seems to have come into this category.
lights which can be set so that its sweeping certain functions which the human brain can The specific characteristics of the computer
patterns do not repeat themselves for 32 years. perform but less efficiently. If I were asked to seem at present so dominant as to actually
Here the ingenious mathematics is an integral define very briefly what the computer's most oppose rather than encourage the advances of
part of the work. Such work appeals to a distinctive ability is, it is that it can keep its place. the artist. It is as if the computer were some
numerate aesthetic (just as we say that an artist We keep our place in a book by dog-earing a creature of great sexual attractiveness but whose
like R. B. Kitaj appeals to a literary aesthetic) page or writing in the margin. The computer actual anatomy remains elusive, frigid and
and its conceptual integrity has to be keeps its place by means of a myriad of unexplored.
acknowledged. electronic 'flags' which tell it what to do next. It At the end of the colloquy, a letter was read
The director of the Gallery, Bozo Bek, can maintain accurately as many totals, sub- out from Lev Nusberg, the Moscow kineticist,
stated that a turning-point has been reached in totals, cross-references, indexes and who was not able to accept the invitation to come
the Gallery's plans, comparable to that of the tabulations as we care to tell it to. to Zagreb. A letter of sympathy was sent to him
mid-1960s when the solidarity of New At one extreme the computer is regarded and signed by the foreign visitors. q
Tendencies began to disintegrate. I think the treated by the public as a tool-and the JONATHAN BENTHALL
Gallery has hit on something very important in computer manufacturers must have spent
investigating the relationship between the millions in 'data processing education' to fix it
computer and art, but there are limitations both in this menial, passive role. At the other Frieder Nake's paper was largely an attack on the
in pursuing the idea of 'visual research' (in any extreme it is a potential rival to human commercialism and modishness of capitalist art.
of its three forms that I have distinguished supremacy. Art-being always an irrepressible Most of those present agreed with him, but the idea
that computer graphics were an art-form controlled
above) and in accepting some of the concepts of and multifarious phenomenon-might be
by dealers seemed exaggerated. As far as I am aware,
art that were expressed at the colloquy: expected to express all these gradations of there are only one or two small galleries in the world
particularly Professor Moles's over-emphasis human attitudes towards the computer, and this (such as Modern-Art Galerie, Vienna, and K.
Schroder, Hanover) that exhibit computer graphics.
on the ludic and the sensual elements in art. is in fact the case. Mr Nake has written a letter, which unfortunately
(However his chairmanship of the colloquy was Let us return to the analogy with nineteenth- reached Studio too late to be published, complaining
both fluent and stimulating.) century photography. As far as I know, there is that I misunderstood him in my article of June 1970.
The computer is a new medium of the first little furtive use of the computer by artists I hope that some theories or hypotheses from his
researches in aesthetics will soon be published, so
importance. (though much of the painting to be seen around that a proper dialogue can result.
Photography in the nineteenth century was the London galleries may well, for all I know, 2 From Page 9, July 1970, available from Computer
perceived as an anomaly-not art as art was have been secretly composed at the IBM Data Arts Society, c/o Alan Sutcliffe, ICL, Brandon
House, Bracknell, Berkshire. 16 numbers of Page
generally known, but satisfying some of the Centre). But the other two early responses to have been published to date.
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