Medosch - New Tendencies - Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution [1961-1978]

Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor

Sean Cubitt, Editor- in-Chief

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New Tendencies: Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution (19611978), Armin Medosch, 2016

See http://mitpress.mit.edu for a complete list of titles in this series.

Armin Medosch

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

The author has made every attempt to contact the rightsholders of the images reproduced in this book. Please contact the author with any copyright queries and corrections.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Medosch, Armin, author.

Title: New tendencies : art at the threshold of the information revolution

(1961-1978) / Armin Medosch.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2016. | Series: Leonardo book

series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015038401 | ISBN 9780262034166 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262331906

Subjects: LCSH: Nouvelle tendance (Exhibition) | Information theory in

aesthetics. | Art and technologyEuropeHistory20th century. | Art and

societyEuropeHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC N7433.84.E85 M43 2016 | DDC 701/.03dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038401

10987654321

Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology, and the affiliated French organization Association Leonardo have some very simple goals:

1. To advocate, document, and make known the work of artists, researchers, and scholars developing the new ways that the contemporary arts interact with science, technology, and society.
2. To create a forum and meeting places where artists, scientists, and engineers can meet, exchange ideas, and, when appropriate, collaborate.
3. To contribute, through the interaction of the arts and sciences, to the creation of the new culture that will be needed to transition to a sustainable planetary society.

When the journal Leonardo was started some forty-five years ago, these creative disciplines existed in segregated institutional and social networks, a situation dramatized at that time by the Two Cultures debates initiated by C. P. Snow. Today we live in a different time of cross-disciplinary ferment, collaboration, and intellectual confrontation enabled by new hybrid organizations, new funding sponsors, and the shared tools of computers and the Internet. Above all, new generations of artist-researchers and researcher-artists are now at work individually and collaboratively bridging the art, science, and technology disciplines. For some of the hard problems in our society, we have no choice but to find new ways to couple the arts and sciences. Perhaps in our lifetime we will see the emergence of new Leonardos, hybrid creative individuals or teams that will not only develop a meaningful art for our times but also drive new agendas in science and stimulate technological innovation that addresses todays human needs.

For more information on the activities of the Leonardo organizations and networks, please visit our websites at http://www.leonardo.info/ and http://www.olats.org.

Roger F. Malina

Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications

ISAST Governing Board of Directors: Nina Czegledy, Greg Harper, Marc Hebert (Chair), Gordon Knox, Roger Malina, Tami Spector, Darlene Tong

Like many books, this work began as a PhD project. I would like to thank my main supervisor, Janis Jefferies, for her invaluable support throughout this undertaking. I would also like to thank my second supervisor, Michael Keith, and my examiners, Charlie Gere and Matthew Fuller. I would like to thank everybody, students and staff, at Goldsmiths Digital Studios.

I am deeply indebted to Matko Metrovi for his untiring support; I am grateful for the continuing support of my friends and colleagues Darko Fritz and Ljiljana Kolenik, who helped me gain insight into a Croatian perspective on New Tendencies.

I would like to give a special thanks to all artists, relatives of artists, and art historians who gave interviews and supplied image materials: Giovanni Anceschi, Antonio Barrese, Oskar Beckmann, Richard Beckmann, Alberto Biasi, Analivia Cordeiro, Jea Denegri, Dieter Hacker, Gottfried Kmmer, Taeko Kawano, Julio Le Parc, Michele Massironi, Almir Mavignier, Franois Morellet, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, Ekkehard Nees, A. Michael Noll, T. Michael Stephens, Biljana Tomi, John B. Thogmartin, Blint Szombathy, and Grazia Varisco.

I would also like to thank those who read early drafts of this work, in particular Brian Holmes, Richard Barbrook, John Barker, and Francesca Da Rimini. My special thanks goes to those who provided feedback at an advanced stagein particular, Miko uvakovi and the anonymous peer reviewers.

A big thanks also to those who supported this project at various stages, such as Christian Fuchs, Douglas Kahn, Lev Manovich, Nick Lambert and the British Computer Arts Society, Georg Schllhammer, Paul Stubbs, Georg Trogemann, and the members of the Technopolitics circle in Vienna.