the first documenta

When artist, designer, and architect Arnold Bode initiated the first documenta in Kassel/Germany 1955 he probably had no idea that this would become the world's largest and most influential art show over the next half century.


In 1955 the devastating Second World War launched by the Nazis was a mere 10 years over, the rubble from the allied air bombardments was still piled up in German cities, and 100,000's of POWs had yet to return from the camps in the Soviet Union.

The documenta aimed at reconnecting the German art scene with the international culture of the 20th century. It coincided with the country's economic recovery, lovingly named "Das Wirtschafts Wunder" (economic miracle). The strength of its new currency, the DM ("Deutsche Mark"), boosted the start of a growing tourist stream to the beaches in Southern Europe. It was one year after Germany had become the triumphant Soccer World Cup champion and one year before her return to the club of nations participating in her first post war Olympics.

Germany was separtated into two states, an East and a West Germany. Kassel was located close to the "Iron Curtain". It was a dangerous border along which the two hostile capitalist and communist blocks had deployed their newly developed nuclear arsenal with the missiles pointing at each other. Both German states had recently been rearmed and had joined the two military organizations NATO and the Warsaw Pact respectively. Both German states were now firmly entrenched in the Cold war which ended after several decades with the implosion of the Soviet empire and the re-unification of Germany.

Into this fragile status-quo burst an international art event that became a cultural institution of global dimensions even if it only takes place every five years. Let's see how the 12th incarnation of this show of 100 days sheds new light on the needs and desires of our time. Can today's artists provide deeper insight and can their art engage our hearts and minds? That's the question I will be asking as a child of the fifty years of the short history of documenta.

We will soon find out when the doors open to what hopefully is another thought provoking documenta.

Questioning Reality. Image Worlds Today.

Cover of the catalog of the 5th documenta 1972.
A mind-blowing experience.
Still relevant today.
Conceived & organized by Harald Szeemann (1933-2005).

3 leitmotifs for documenta XII

Next year, in 2007, documenta XII will become the 12th incarnation of the so called 'museum of 100 days' in the German city of Kassel. Curators Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noak have formulated three interesting 'leitmotifs' for this important international art show.


I am impressed that they have been able to formulate such comprehensive questions in the short space of three paragraphs on a single page. Read the text on the absolutely minimalist website of the exhibition: www.documenta12.de

If you speak German I strongly suggest to read the original (very interesting and careful choice of words... quite expressive, almost old fashioned and poetic): www.documenta12.de/leitmotive.html

Another aspect of note is that documenta 12 will be master-minded for the first time by a team from Vienna. Maybe Austria is indeed the better Germany these days???

Nam June Paik (1932 - 2006)

I am very sad to hear that Nam June Paik passed away yesterday, Sunday the 29th of January 2006 in his home in Miami, Florida.

Nam June was a multi-faceted media artist who collaborated with many artists, scientists, and technologists around the world. His intelligence, spirit, and wit inspired a generation of creative minds.

We will miss him dearly, but we know his many works will continue to live on.

http://www.paikstudios.com

the archeology of our digital futures and our past

This morning my curiosity was triggered when I read David Em's email posted to the DASH list for digital/electronic arts histories:

"Christie's is conducting a computer history auction next week. Article
in NY Times and links at
http://www.computerworld.com/news/2005/story/0,11280,99519,00.html
http://www.reuters.com/audi/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=7678651"

When I checked out these references I quickly found Christie's catalog of an auction of what must be one of the most comprehensive collections of literature on all things binary, digital and cybernetic. Certainly all the important names are here, so let me do a little name dropping: Babbage, von Neumann, Turing, Wiener, Eckert and Mauchley, etc. etc. Among the true gems is the premier and personal copy of the play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek R.U.R. which gave the world the newphemism 'Robot'. Estimated price at the auction: a mere 15,000 - 20,000 U.S. dollars !! Since the robots became such an important concept in our culture I'll quote from the catalog, The Origins of Cyberspace: A Library on the History of Computing, Networking & Telecommunications, the description in full length.


ČAPEK, Karel (1890-1938). R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots.
Prague: Vydalo Aventinum, 1920.

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY of Capek's play which introduced the word "robot" to the world; it is derived from the Czech robota, which means "drudgery" or "servitude." The word was coined by Capek's brother Joseph, a novelist and painter (the two Capek brothers were the best-known literary figures in liberated Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1939). Though the word "robot" now connotes a mechanical device capable of performing work on its own, Capek's "robots" were quasi-human figures fashioned from an artificial substitute for protoplasm, and formed in a "stamping mill." Capek's play, which reflected his concerns about advancing technology and automation, was an immediate worldwide success. In the play robots are produced on robot-run assembly lines to do work that humans do not want to do. They remember everything but cannot think of anything new or experience emotion. Frustrated with the limitations designed into them by their human creators, they eventually revolt against the humans, killing all but one. A major reason for the huge success of Capek's play may have been its dramatic exploration of the possibilities of automation technology and the nearly universal fear that machines would replace people, perhaps not in their lives but in their work. Thus the term "robot" came into our language reflecting both the promise and dangers of automation.

The auction takes place on the 23rd of February 2005, 10:00 am at 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York. I wish the library could be kept intact as one single collection but selling the items individually most likely will raise more money. Oh well.

This auction indicates that the fairly recent discoveries, inventions, and creations related to computer technology are starting to be collected and are thus gaining in value. It's easy to predict: The same will happen to aesthetic artifacts generated with digital machines. When and how this will happen is everybody's guess. But hold on to your floppys and print-outs, they may be worth thousands.

Interestingly enough I had encountered related issues, namely the archeology of our digital culture when I saw the blog and web site by the archeologist Michael Shanks who is teaching and researching at Stanford University. His blog carries the nice title traumwerk . Michael is also co-director of the MetaMedia Lab. The sub title of it reads: a collaboratory - a short circuit between the academy, the art studio and information science. These guys really know how to play with words. They also know how to play with our realities, visions, and concepts across all time zones.

What got me thinking was the notion of a history of our digital presence and future being performed at some future date by an archeologist. What are the issues, the tools, and the processes which will be available or which need to be applied to get meaningful insight about us and our special kinds of immaterial (virtual) culture? I am not sure, but I find a number of questions very intriguing which popped up in my mind. Maybe we can share our thoughts on this in the next couple of days and weeks. Meanwhile, I thank Michael Shanks for having brought to my attention novel ways of how to address these vexing issues.

The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award

Now here is a refreshing initiative from LEONARDO, the old-time tech/sci-fi/computer art society. Leonardo was founded in the 60's (does anyone know when exactly?) by former rocket scientist turned tech artist, Frank Malina as an academic, i.e. peer-reviewed journal for art and technology. After Frank Malina had passed away editorial control of the journal was taken over by his son, Roger Malina, himself a scientist in Astronomy with special interests in Space Art. I am very pleased to see that LEONARDO has created this Global Crossings Award since I am a strong believer in the simple but often forgotten notion that the the US does not represent the whole wide world (nor does Europe for that matter!). Yesterday night I spent a fair amount of time to meet -virtually at least- the winners and their work. I came away having made many fresh and exciting encounters. I can only encourage you to start exploring yourself.


Inner Space 1999, by Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal Kenawy
Mixed media installation, Iron, chiffon and glass balls

Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce that the First Leonardo Global Crossings Prize has been awarded to Abdel Ghany Kenawy and Amal Kenawy, of Cairo, Egypt, a brother-sister team who have been collaborating on large-scale installations since 1997. These works, whether tower-like structures containing glass balls rising up towards the ceiling or tunnels leading to a block of frozen ice in a room surrounded by chiffon, demonstrate that there is no "natural" barrier between the worlds of art and science.

The Kewanys' unique collaboration is built partially upon Abdel Ghany's background in the physical sciences and Amal's background in filmmaking, yet their individual efforts cannot be so neatly defined as singularly "scientific" or "artistic." Committed to their creative processes, they work very closely together on every aspect of their projects from conceptualization and structural design to production and execution in their workshop. Characteristic of all their projects is the power of texture and image, and sensorial play with surfaces between spaces (loosening up the inside/outside polarity)--whether it is a "textured" video, the texture of light projected on a triple screen of chiffon, the texture of human hair bows on a pair of wax legs in a display case, or the textures (acoustic and visual) of a beating heart on which a pair of lace gloved hands is sewing a white rose appliqué.

The three runners-up for the 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award are Regina Célia Pinto (Brazil---web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim Machan (Australia---curator, arts producer and consultant) and Shilpa Gupta (India---Internet, video and installation works).

The Naked Truth: Austrian Nudes and Nudes in Austria

I am glad I found the proper intro to what is still a delicate topic - at least in prudent US, the nude in art. Two shows in Europe deal with this ancient subject matter which is pretty much as old as art exists as a human form of expression. Our body and of course our face have always been prime sources for making images, simply because they are the vessel for our identity, the flesh and the bones to carry and contain our hearts and minds. And because the body has so much to do with our ability to live and our destiny to die.

Depending on the mores of the times the depictions of the body took on different style and form. While in the classical antique cultures of the Greeks and the Romans the body was often naked, offering its true and natural beauty to the gaze of the onlooker, we have known other cultures that covered the body up in respect for the individuality of the person. These widely oposing attitudes are still very much in place, witness the resurgence of the veil in Islamic countries at a time when in others you face an abundance of completely nude images in the daily media or nude bodies lounging at beaches and in urban parks.


Bettina Rheims par Serge Bramly, Mai 2004, Paris
© Serge Bramly, Courtesy Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont

In our short presentation we point to a show by the French photographer Bettina Rheims at the Kunsthaus in Vienna, Austria. For many years Rheims has specialized in taking photographs of nude women of all ages, races, and classes. One of her bestselling books has been a collection of pictures of young women taken in small and somewhat shaby hotel rooms. I have to admit, I like her nudes and incidentally, the Kunsthaus in Vienna, an old and nothing appartment building which was remodeled after designs by the late Austrian artist and organic architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, happens to be one of my favorite artsy places in that city.


Nuda Verita by Gustav Klimt in the Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt

At the same time French nudes are on display in Austria, Austrian nudes are travelling to Frankfurt, Germany. To be precise, a large show just opened at the Kunsthalle Schirn entitled The Naked Truth after a painting of Gustav Klimt. At the turn to the 20th century Klimt was the doyen of a group of young painters in Vienna which on various occassions provoked scandals and public outcry. At some point these painters split away from the academic artists and formed the so called Secession. The group's ideas survived to this day as a coveted building in a pronounced art nouveau style. Painters of the time represented in the Schirn show include the Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. Ironically and as these things sometimes go, the former enfant terribles are considered to be the pinnacle of modern Austrian art, today. BTW, Schiele was probably one of the early proponents of gender equality. Not only did he draw and paint numerous female nudes, he also was not above using himself as a model for nude studies. Either way he was constantly causing a stir or two.

This is altogether beautiful art work on display here. I am sure it qualifies for what John Peterson said in regard to The Gates the other day, "some art demands live viewing more than others."

It's a pity I am stuck in California and can't go to see The Naked Truth.


Seated Nude by Egon Schiele

Central-European music & dance: The Tam Fest in SF

Turning our attention to things to come back home I would like to let everybody know about the Tam Fest at the newly renamed "Croatian-American Cultural Center" in San Francisco. If you don't know what a Tam (short for Tamburitza) is or if you have never been to what was formerly called the "Slavonian Cultural Center" you have missed something.



This small hall for max. 300 people is one of San Francisco's hottest venues when it comes to authentic music and dance from Central-Eastern Europe. Last fall a concert by the Boban Markovic Orkestar, a lively brass band, cought my attention and since then I have been to several events, each different and each memorable. Let me just name two other concerts so that you get the gist and the reach of the Center's programming: One evening Esma Redzepova, "the queen of Romani (Gypsy) music" from Kosovo enchanted the audience and created a vibrant scene with everybody clapping hands and dancing wildly. The next week it was a totaly different ambiente with candle lights celebrating an evening of American avantgarde music. From the concentrated silence emerged the complex sounds of both, a computerized Yamaha Disklavier and a traditional acoustic grand piano played by distinguished pianists Sarah Cahill and Kathleen Supové. You see that the management of this center loves music and is open to present a wide variety of styles and types always with a great sense for quality and direction.

But back to the Tam Fest: In the past decade the Croatian American Cultural Center has annually showcased the best tamburitza music in California and presented nationally renowned tamburitza orchestras. On President's Day weekend each February; the Center is filled with singing, dancing, and the music of the tamburitza. For two days the hall reverberates with a rich tapestry of tambura music both traditional and contemporary. The ensembles perform for listening, play dance tunes, polkas and waltzes and circle dances, and sing Becar tunes until the bar closes late at night.

So make time this coming weekend to visit the San Francisco Tamburitza Festival, a wonderful musical experience is guaranteed for all. For more info on the venue and the program and what a tamburitza is turn to the Cultural Center's web site. You'll see that there are many more interesting events coming up in the next couple of weeks.
February 18, 2005 8PM $15 - Welcome Dance and Performances
February 20, 2005 1:30PM $15 - Concert and festivities.
(there will be no programs on Sat 2/19).

Disclosure: In my professional life as a wine merchant I supply wines to the Croatian-American Cultural Center. But believe me, their events are good!

The Gates: Vision vs. Reality

The newest Christo and Jeanne Claude creation, The Gates, is up and running in New York's Central Park and I get to add my two cents to the flood of reporting on this grand piece of public art. Now that we can see the Reality of it (or in my case: I can see the photos of Reality) we can compare it with the original Vision Christo has drawn up in so many beautiful sketches. These paper pieces help to prepare and to finance the actual event, but they are subserviant to the work itself. Still, anytime when I saw them on the artists' web site I loved the look and my expectations were set by these images.


In this photo provided by the Mayor's Office, Christo, second from left, and Jeanne Claude, third from left, are joined by students for the opening of 'The Gates' project in New York's Central Park Saturday, Feb. 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Mayor's Office, Edward Reed)

Now I see how the project turned out and I am somewhat disappointed: The gates have a very mechanical appearance, the saffron cloth lacks elegance and vibrancy, and there is just not enough density to make the gates snake through Central Park and redefine this icon of rest and green in urban America. Just take a look at one of the aerial photographs and you will understand what I mean, the orange of the Gates is just too whimpy and not powerful enough. Even the proportions of the height of a single gate to the amount of textile flowing down seem to be out of whack, you see more of the construction than of the beauty. Maybe this is a function of the safty requirements they needed to consider and meet but those never dominated any of the couple's previous projects: you always saw their surprising and delightful beauty and never the necessary but boring sweat. Could it be that I got it all wrong from afar and the best way to watch and enjoy the work is from the perspective of the joggers as they cruise along under the Gates? To help you answer all questions you may have, turn to the complete coverage about the project and the artists in the New York Times. Alternatively, you can switch on the blog dedicated to the Gates @ Central Park.
Let me then disclose at this point that I have been a big fan of C&JC for many years. Moreover, I firmly believe that they are the true successors of the bold dreams and lofty visions leftist artists like Tatlin and others had in the early hours of the revolutionary Soviet Union. These were the few beginning years when they were encouraged to experiment and to think fresh and free - before artists were subjected to the one and only dogma of the so called Socialist Realism. They conceived of an utopian art form created for the entertainment and education of the masses, accessable for free to everybody in public spaces. This art would have to be as colorful and joyful as Christo and Jeanne Claude made their projects over the decades. It is no accident that Christo who grew up in Socialist Bulgaria picked up on these visionary concepts, resurrected their true core, and made some of them real in his own art. You see great dreamers at work here! (and how good they are at making it happen!)

the tri-continental Nam June Paik

Recently, a friend returned from her trip to Germany with a big book on the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal. In 1963, young musician and fluxus artist Nam June Paik had just finished his studies in Germany and staged his first solo show at Galerie Parnass, a vivid center of avantgarde art in those days. Paik's show is remembered today as the coming out party of Video Art. Among the exhibited pieces were a "Prepared W.C.", an interactive audio tape installation mounted on the wall, and a room full of 13 TV's, all electronically manipulated to display a different "strange" image. Paik also offered his insights from "A Study of German Idiotology". You can tell, everybody must have had a great time at Galerie Parnass.


Nam June Paik's "Exposition of Music & Electronic Television" at Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, Germany 1963 (BIG:720KB)

Paik of course soon after moved to New York where he bought one of the first SONY Video Porta-Paks and became the revered "George Washingtone of Video Art". During the next 30-40 years Paik has been at the forefront of exploring and defining this new medium. In his studio in SoHo he created the many, many pieces which were shown in numerous museums and galleries world-wide, as well as on many TV programs and videos. During all those years chances were that you'd run into Nam June at the Frankfurt-Main airport (as I did once in the 80s) since he was "commuting" back and forth between the US and Germany to meet his teaching obligations at the famed Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, the place where his friend and fluxus buddy Joseph Beuys tought (or did Beuys hold court there?)


Take a peek inside NJP's studio in SoHo, New York

It was only in the last couple of years that the Korean born artist returned again to visit his homeland. For the 1988 Seoul Olympics, he created the tower “The More the Better,” an installation comprising 1003 video monitors and he kicked off the Seoul Olympics with a global satellite TV show. In passing, it is interesting to note that he switched from using the Japanese brand SONY to electronics made by the Korean manufacturer Samsung (a tell-tale sign about current shifts in the global marketplace).


Look here for a nice web rendition of The More the Better

It will be interesting to see what will happen to his legacy once the newly founded Paik Nam June Museum (notice the Korean order of names!) will open its doors in the Province of Gyeonggi in 2008. The founding committee has just recently selected German architect Kirsten Schemel to do the job and construction will commence shortly. Good to know that the tri-continental nomad NJP will find a permanent home.

Finally, a few web pointers to his work (as far as I know, no single "official" web site exists today):
- Paik's Global Groove at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin
- From Wagner to VR by Randall Packer

Art on the Edge in San Jose, CA 06

This morning the new edition of the weekly Rhizome digest cruised into my mailbox. It contained the first public announcement about the ISEA2006 Symposium /ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to take place in San Jose, CA in August 2006. A clear sign that planning is kicking into high gear!


Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, California

In the main I like the concepts for a pretty large and ambitious week-long tech art festival with a conference, workshops, shows, and other activities in various venues in and around San Jose, California. The location of this 10th largest city of the US (!) close to the Pacific Ocean is emphasized by a special event in the program bringing together art projects representing 8 to 10 different countries from the Pacific Rim.

The style in which the organizing trio of Steve Dietz, Joel Slayton, and Beau Takahara is approching the planning of this event is promising. They seem to encourage the co-operation between the various agencies of the city (they call it the San Jose 7). They also try to get many of the cultural organizations in the Bay Area to chip in. That's the right direction, my only gripe is that I could not find the Computer History Museum listed as participant. It is housed in a former flagship building owned then by Silicon Graphics, Inc. AKA sgi. It would be ideal if the museum opened its doors (and spacious floors) to a show of computer art. Maybe all hope is not lost that this will happen extending this festival of the future in the historical dimension as well.

For your own planning purposes and to see where you might be able to provide input check out the preliminary web site. And don't be shy, I am sure there is still lots of work to do before the show curtain can rise.

more on Molnar Vera

I finally received the two big books covering the entire oevre of Vera Molnar, that is more than 50-60 years of focused, consistent, and inspired art producing work. And what beauties these books are: they sport an oversized format and contain between 500 to 600 pages each. Almost on every single page you find one illustration, presenting several hundred pieces, page after page. One book is dedicated to black and white work, the other to the color pieces. A beautiful hard cover (with her signature embossed) holds the snowwhite, strong paper stock. The texts are bi-lingual in german and french (but don't worry if you don't understand either language, the images speak for themselves). This is a limited edition of 1000 copies each and it comes with a serious pricetag of 150 Euros for both! Don't even ask about the shipping cost from Europe to the US, it's probably another 150 Euros, that's how heavy the books are. I had them hand-carried to California and saved a bundle.



What is amazing to me is that these books are a R E V E L A T I O N of the artistic strength, aesthetic beauty, and intellectual power of Vera Molnar's art. Only now do I see her true stature with full force. The bits and pieces I had seen over the years, in articles and books, exhibitions and shows, did not add up to the panoramic vistas displayed in these two books. It becomes crystal clear that Vera has been developing her very own vocabulary consisting of elementary visual units such as lines, and squares, and circles, and - of course: COLOR. Also documented here is a strategy Vera has been employing many times over the years, namely to study and analyse paintings of masters of art, abstract art in particular, only to apply her findings in newly enriched pieces made by herself. She usually titled them as a "Hommage" to a particular artist. That's why we find a "Malévitch dérangé" next to studies on a theme by Mondrian next to Hommages á Dürer, Renoir, and Klimt.



Also interesting to watch the interplay unfold between her sketches, drawings, and paintings and the many trials and studies of computer generated work. Now you can understand how her early vision informed her computer concepts and vice versa as she proceeded to explore new visual dimensions. It is pretty obvious: Vera Molnar is one of the masters of abstract art or Konkrete Kunst regardless of the medium and the means involved. It's very nice to view documents of her mastery in these books. Still, it would be much more powerful to see the real thing like those lucky visitors of her recent retrospective at the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen. Judging from a few large scale photographs, Vera Molnar's shows at the März Galerie in Ladenburg, Germany must have been fabulous as well. BTW the gallerist, Linde Hollinger, is the editor and publisher of the two books and she deserves full credit. Inquire about the publication, Vera Molnar - Inventar with her.

A final tip, if you don't feel like spending a fortune on the big books you can go for a smaller but very nice catalog. It's only 20 Euros and provides a good initial glimpse into Vera's World. You can order it at the Wilhelm Hack Museum's bookstore. In the meantime we keep dreaming of a comprehensive Vera Molnar retrospective stateside.

new wave Generative Art

In the early days of computing you had not many choices when you wanted to create computer art. One of the very few available strategies was to embrace programming and to try to unleash the "generative power" of the machine. Today, many methods to visualize with computers are beckoning, incl. photoshopping, 3D modeling, drawing, painting, etc pp...

No longer forced by sheer necessity there seems to be a growing number of graphics afficionados who use some kind of programming language to generate their art. It appears to me as if the net art of the 90's with its sometime furious attacks on form and content of the browser has left its mark. The new wave of computer artists prides itself to be technically savy and to tickle more than the obvious out of digital technology. We seem to have entered the phase where digital aesthetics might really come into its own.


Audio wave in random ether by Tony Scott AKA Beflix

Here are a few pointers to work I have recently seen and enjoyed. In most cases visual wizardry is intertwined with a good dose of intellectual curiousity, both potent ingredients for novel artistic discoveries.

A free-ware programming system named processing has been incubated in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at MIT's Media Lab by (former) students Ben Fry and Casey Reas. On their webpage www.processing.org you'll find downloads related to the programming environment, as well as pointers to the personal sites of the founders and the growing community of users and developers.

Then there are personal sites of artists like Paul Prudent in London. Paul actually manages two sites, one is the always informative and widely read "DataIsNature" blog and then there is his studio site transphormetic where he showcases his own artistic work mostly executed in Flash.

Also check out a new blog G2 by Indian software artist Sajied Saiyed. G2 carries the ambitious subtitle Generative Graphics Portal. Judging from the frequent and well selected updates and his ongoing outreach to an interested global community, Sajied is starting to do justice to his lofty objectives.

Finally, let me recommend the sites by two artists who are courageously and uncompromisingly investigating the thresholds to bold and promising new image territories. Chris Ashley paints and also creates html pictures that are dominated by big bold blocks of colored pixels. Some have the innocent feel of children's drawings, others in the series come across as visual products of a somewhat stubborn artistic credo. Follow the title of his blog and Look and See!

Tony Scott (AKA Beflix) is well on his way to make visual scratches, mistakes, and glitches into a high art form. His goal is to complement the audio glitch with its visual equivalent. We will see if he'll succeed to rival the popularity of the audio artefact which is loved and listened to by millions of techno music fans. Then the outtakes from yesterday will be the masterpieces of tomorrow's Glitch Art.

wordnews

While researching the background of Glitch Art I ran into Benjamin Fischer's first solo exhibition at the «Galerie Oberwelt» in Stuttgart. An installation with material from his latest work «Wordnews».



"Like a seismograph the application registers amplitudes and eruptions in current world-news headlines", says Benjamin. Try it yourself and see what's in the news today.

www.photogram.org and the creator of Imachination

Just recently I was researching info on the early investigators of the photogram when I came across this web site: www.photogram.org It covers the entire spectrum of this esoteric medium and presents the work of hundreds of artists. A real gem and a fun world to explore. One of the intellectual surprises is the "Declaration of Independence of the medial home of the photogram". Let me quote here only the very end, it's certainly best to read the manifesto in its entirety:

Finally the photogram reveals as a medium that offers a plural variety of perspectives. It contrasts the artificiality, the perspectivity and the limitation of human perception. In the pure sense of Kant the photogram appears as a critical medium.

Then yesterday, in the context of finding info about Frieder Nake's dissertation which he published under the title "Ästhetik als Informationsverarbeitung" in 1975 I come across a young German light/video/tech artist, Tim Otto Roth, and I see that not only is he is the editor of the photogram site but an award winning artist himself.


KASCADE - a cosmic particle shower live at the Internet Art Façade at the Haus der Kommunikation of Serviceplan in Munich, December 2004.
76 light elements fashionable via internet, by Tim Otto Roth

I spent a fair amount of time looking at his work, in particular at the site of his recent project imachination. What an inventive and multi-faceted name seemlessly combining image and imagination and machines into a single, novel term. The project itself is multi-dimensional as well, it reaches far across the universe and it digs deep into the social and technical realms of the history and science of imaging media. Well worth a visit and worth to keep an eye on what T.O.R. will do next. Another big surprise happened right away between reviewing the site yesterday and seeing added new material today:

The Imachination project dedicates to the interaction of the human imagination with machines. Above all it explores the pictorial results of this process. The interaction of man and machine must not only result in images, but also can create new physical structures like synthetic elements.

In continuation of this initial thought Tim Otto Roth is weaving a smart sci-fi thriller leading to the machinations in the current war in Iraq. Don't miss this piece of "brainstorm web".

political art

All this talk about computers and digital genesis, bee wax, pollen, and natural materials let me almost forget that art has a political dimension. At certain times and at specific locations politics can even be so strong that it overpowers everything else, including the art itself. Today, politics almost vanished from the international artistic scene. So it's a special occasion if several political art shows are happening simultaneously. Here I provide pointers to three that came to my attention.


Dürer, I am personally guiding Baader + Meinhof through Dokumenta V,
by Joseph Beuys, 1972, Leihgeber Sammlung Speck, Cologne

The first takes place in Berlin at the newly established Kunstwerke or KW Institute for Contemporary Art. The topic of Regarding Terror: The RAF-Exhibition are artistic views of the RAF (Red Army Faction), also known in the late 60's and 70's in Germany as the "Baader-Meinhof Bande" (gang) after the names of two of its founders. From the early planning phase grappling with recent forms of terrorism attracted significant controversy. Promised public funding was cancelled and was only later secured by selling contributed artwork on ebay auctions(!)

I believe among the exhibited pieces are samples of the 15-painting cycle "October 18, 1977" by Gerhard Richter, one of the most distinguished artworks dealing with the RAF and that part of German history. The entire set is now owned by the MoMA in New York.


Aleksandra Mir, Che and Concorde (2003)

Another exhibition opens this weekend in Dublin, Ireland, under the title: Communism - a Group Show. A truely unusual theme, even if it is very timely, considering the recent demise of Communism on a grand scale. This changed the political, cultural, and economical situation of the larger part of Central-Eastern Europe with a population of approximately 250 Million people. One interesting component of the show is the reinterpretation of the Che Guevara poster, an ubiquitous icon from the international protest movements of the 60's and an interview the artist, Aleksandra Mir conducted with the creator of the original image, Jim Fitzpatrick (Dublin). Actually, who owned the copyright to "Che" was contentious for a while between the graphic artist and the photographer who snaped the "original" image of our hero.


Front’t—Activism in Exile, Škart (1999)

I saw the interview first on NYFA Current, an artsy ezine which I subscribe to (free of charge). This is also where I became aware of the Serbian Duo, Škart. This is a Belgrade-based collective whose core members are Dragan Protic and Djordje Balmazovic. In this line-up of politically informed art they contribute an online-exhibition showcasing their humorous commentaries on sometimes deadly events. In our time Serbians are often ostracized simply by being Serbian while relatively little is known about the living conditions in that country. It is refreshing to see that NYFA Current took the initiative to ask Škart to “critically communicate” (a phrase they use to describe their interactions with the public) with an American audience.

Visual Intelligence - redo

OK, so here is what I consider to be a Golden Oldie: an article I presented at SIGGRAPH'84 and published in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, then the most important journal on the fledging art of Computer Graphics technology. Long out of print and not easily accessable anywhere I pulled it out of storage, scanned it, and created an Acrobat pdf. Still good info and an extensive list of references. Sorry for the relatively poor quality of the illustrations.



Read it (3.2MB) if you are interested in the history of digital media.

grand daddy of POP

If you have not yet seen the Lichtenstein retro at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art I strongly recommend to go and see the show. Here is a well curated retrospective of one of the masters of pop art. When I saw the show I instantly remembered many of the pieces on display - they were kind of burned into my retina - just like you can burn a picture into the imaging surface of a video camera. It might have been many years since some of Lichtenstein's trade-mark images were pinned as posters onto the walls of my student appartment in Berlin but the SFMoMA show was proof that these icons of modern American art never lost their appeal and freshness.



What makes Lichtenstein's work so interesting in hindsight is that he succeeded to investigate the world of printed dots and continued to come up with novel images. His visual laboratory straddled the language of the comic strip and simultanously, the formal building blocks of offset printing. One being the narrative medium of the entertainment section of the American newspaper, the other the techical foundation on which the wide dissimination of this mass medium rested... and from which it derived its immense popularity.

It is noteworthy that Lichtenstein discovered the raster dots in primary colors at a time when the supercharged electrons of TV had already started to replace the newspaper as the leading medium of the day. The beginning demise of this 19th century mass medium kicked in the stellar career of what became one of the grandmasters of pop art.

Lichtenstein had started his path into the world's museums and numerous privat collections in the early 60s with a couple of relatively small paintings starring Donald Duck, a piece of soap, a bathing beauty and other illustrious themes. He rapidly developed his personal style - based on extremly generic techiques and iconic "Versatzstuecken" found in art, advertising, and popular media- and created his landmark paintings of love and despair and the fascinating firepower of modern war machines.


Roy Lichtenstein in front of his paintings (early 70's?)

It could have been the beginning and end of a one-time-wonder, like the musicians who come up with their one and only Number One Hit Single, only to be forced to endlessly repeat this one hit for the rest of their artistic life. Instead, with a clever turn Lichtenstein started to apply his signature style to the entire arsenal the history of painting had been building up over the centuries: in quick succession he came up with Monet's and nudes, cubist still-lifes and abstract color strokes. Finally, he was bold enough to add his own interpretations of Chinese scroll landscapes to the international canon of art. I had the luck of seeing his "Chinese" landscapes at the Smithsonian Museum of Asian-American Art juxtaposed with the ancient originals. The Lichtenstein "copies" worked extremly well in this environment. I was happy to revisit a few of these fantastic paintings at the show in San Francisco. Again, I found the contrast between the vast mountainous countrysides and the tiny little people lost in it truely amazing.

Two quick remarks in closing. Unfortunately, an exhibition of Lichtenstein's prints held in December at the Meyerovich Gallery is already over (with their web site still open!). It was a nice show of late prints, most pretty big, trying hard to be like paintings and as such too fakey for my taste. While you missed this show you will have the chance of getting another view at the museum building itself, an architectural marvel which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in these days. The first ten years demonstrate that Italian Swiss architect Mario Botta - who was in town last week - created a stunning and visually challenging environment to display contemporary art. It's fun to visit again and again and it's probably even more fun to hang as a painting on such spectacular walls! I am sure the Lichtenstein's are having a Great Time here!

art on slashdot

Today, I received this email from a good friend with a few recommendations he had seen on slashdot, a famously well known tech blog. I am forwarding it on for your enjoyment:

Hi Frank,

I don't recall if you follow Slashdot, but I couldn't help but
notice a number of "Teleculturesque" items turned up on it today:

iCE's Modern Version Of Old-Fashioned Quilting Bee
[on-line collaborative art]
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/24/0315221

Musical Robots Invade Juilliard
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/23/2342211

Decrypting Kryptos
[about a sculpture on the grounds of CIA headquarters]
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/23/2024241

Cheers,
jp

machine art

Last week a friend invited me to come over to her place in the city and pick up some books, posters, and catalogs on computer art which she was clearing out prior to moving to a new appartment. One of my finds was the classic Apparative Kunst by Herbert W.Franke and Gottfried Jäger published in 1973. If you wanted to translate this book today, its English title would probably be Machine Art! It covers myriads of image making machines (German: Apparate) such as the camera obscura, oscilloscopes, crystallography, typewriter graphics, chemigrams, and of course computers. The real question for me remains: why is it that computers have this almost omni-potent generative power, much more so than any of the other imaging techniques?


Portrait Albert Einstein, by Herbert W. Franke 1973
Herbert W.Franke is pretty well known in computer art circles due to his numerous publications on the topic and his participation in conferences and exhibitions throughout the decades (!). Co-author Gottfried Jäger, himself a prolific author mainly in German publications, has made a name for himself as a longtime investigator and practitioner of generative photography, an esoteric, highly experimental branch of the medium developed in the early 20th century by artists such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Christian Schad. A telling clue as to how esoteric these techniques are can be found in the fact that they often were named after their "inventors": Rayograph or Schadograph, in the end the simple, generic term photogram survived them all. As I was writing this I even discovered an apparently huge web site using this terminology: www.photogram.org


Gottfried Jäger with
Pinhole Structure 3.8.14.F, 1967
Gelatin silver print, 118 x 110 cm
Photographer: Ursel Jäger