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Peter Bauman: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Le Random podcast. I'm your host, Peter Bauman, the editor in chief of Le Random. And today we are continuing our Friday podcast episodes as companions to our Monday editorials. And today's episode is with Melanie Lenz, the curator of digital art at the V&A in London. And our editorial that this is a companion of is actually from last week, where I wrote an essay about Degrees of Disruption, which opened on Friday at the V&A. Melanie Lenz is, of course, the curator of that show that I wrote about on Friday.
This is a bit of a companion episode to that piece. Go ahead and maybe read that before you listen to this or, you know, the other way around. And today I speak with Melanie about Vera Molnár. We speak about her practice and how it corresponds to Melanie's presentation of it at the show and how she began her practice with painting, abstract painting, and then moved to human-executed and then automated rules. And then we also talk about the room where Melanie juxtaposes some contemporary artists with Molnár and her work. And it's a really interesting conversation. A very long time, and I can't wait to share.
Let's begin. Something really interesting about the show is that the V&A has been collecting digital art for so long. Since, I think right after Cybernetic Serendipity, so 1969, you ordered prints that show, you have of course then the Computer Arts Society collection and then the Patric Prince collection. You have this great history of collecting digital art. How did you look at everything and decide for this season, let's celebrate Vera Molnár?
Melanie Lenz: Great question and you're right, yes, '69 was the year that the V&A like officially started collecting computer-generated art, but it wasn't really until 2009 when the museum had its first exhibitions showing this material which was Decode: Digital Design Sensations, which was the contemporary exhibition, and Digital Pioneers, which showed works from the donations that you just referenced, the Computer Arts Society and Patric Prince, as well as some of the early works that print curators had acquired across different times, including, I should say, work by Vera Molnár. The museum since that time has shown digital work in different ways, principally through commissions and performances. But I thought it was really timely to think about what another dedicated space in the museum would mean to show this kind of work. That said, in 2018 there was Chance and Control, another display, but I mean 2018 was some time ago. So I was really keen to explore what it meant for the public to come into the museum and not necessarily request to see work specifically in the Prints & Drawings Study Room, but to have a space where they could just encounter whether they intended to or whether it was a chance encounter, this kind of material, to show that this is something that's an art form that the museum sees the value and the creativity and the way in which artists practice.
And I thought it was really important. Beyond commissions, which definitely have a role to play, it was really nice to kind of have a dedicated space in the museum where people can encounter this work. How did I decide on a show, a solo show of Vera Molnár? I'd actually originally conceived of the display as one looking more generally at generative art, like thinking about it in that broader, in a broader kind of context. So I was actually thinking like the initial object list had works in the collection by Sol LeWitt and John Cage, as well as thinking about relationships to like the Systems Group. So work by Mary and Kenneth Martin and generative photography. So I think Gottfried Jäger was on that original list. And Vera Molnár's work was in the mix too, but I actually thought like the longer I thought about the proposal, the more it made sense to me to focus on an individual practice as a way in, a deeper dive into an individual's work and really see how she worked with algorithms by hand and with the computer. So that's kind of the genesis story.
That's how the show came to be. I should also say that in the spaces in which the display is shown, which is our Prints & Drawings Study Room, there's been some fantastic displays in the past. If you think back, it's been like Lucian Freud and Pugin. But very rarely has there been the work of an individual or primarily shown by an individual female artist. So that was actually also another impetus. I thought it was really important to kind of shine a light on, well, a lifespan. Like she had, there's so much work that she created, obviously had a very long and rich and creative life.
So I just, I think it was a combination of all these factors that led to this display taking place at this particular moment in time at the V&A.
Peter Bauman: And I think that's what a lot of this conversation will be is like kind of walking through her very long career discussing it, especially how it's presented by the V&A and the show. And I'm also curious, speaking of how it's presented, so you are also centering this idea of disruption. I wonder why did that seem pertinent today? There's a lot of things in Vera's career that you can look at and kind of pinpoint and highlight. Why this idea of disruption?
Melanie Lenz: Yeah, I think it was like, I think of it as her approach to life, really. Like she did talk really openly about liking order, but knowing that it was a bit boring and I don't know if she used that term. But definitely safe. She just introduced disruptions and increments, which I find really fascinating. I like that she didn't have all the answers, and she was constantly seeking and experimenting as a form of artistic research. And I think what attracted me or like what drew me to this idea of her idea of disruption was that she was unafraid to try things that others dismissed, whether that was taking the initiative to use the computer and like seeking out permission to use it at a time when it really was really uncommon. And she recollects like these, stories of people or the director of the computer center at the time saying, thinking that she was absolutely crazy for using the computer for visual art.
It just wasn't done. Of course there are other artists, but they are few and far between in the early, well, in the late '60s.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of people who were trying to access those computers during that time, they were either at a place like Bell Labs where it was kind of okay to do something wacky or, I don't know, it was like Charles Csuri where it was like kind of his own department's computer and, but Vera was definitely one where it was probably the most out of place and it maybe even took the most courage. And she really went out of her way to get regular access to one it seemed like after she got that first.
“I like that she didn't have all the answers, and she was constantly seeking and experimenting as a form of artistic research.” — Melanie Lenz 5:32
Melanie Lenz: I think it wasn't just necessarily, I mean Manfred Mohr is another artist who is kind of in a similar sort of situation, but I think with Vera it's also not just the researchers in the lab or that, kind of might have considered her out of place, but it was also the art scene in which she was like she was really well connected with other artists who also dismissed the use of the computer. So I think it's this like approach to both her art and her life to try things that others were dismissive of.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, and definitely. And speaking, that was also kind of her core group when, as far as I understand, obviously, I'm not her biographer or anything like that. But when she got to Paris, like she, would go to this cafe, Le Select, and that's where she met like Sonia Delaunay. She got connected to this like group of painters and I wonder what pressure they, what they even thought about her using computers in her work later. But, and so this was more, I guess in the '50s. That's when she started also, I think, going from her own probably realistic sketches and paintings and drawings to more abstract work. And she discovered the work of...
Dürer and then also Sonia when she met her in Paris. I guess, how do you think that her original sort of geometric and abstract painting work, what do you think that about maybe her later systematized practice? Or, what is it already sort of revealing about her later systematized practice?
Melanie Lenz: So I think her early paintings show that she was really thinking about visual order and how we perceive images. She was using geometrical shapes like squares, I think she said because she just really enjoyed their visual rigidity and their simplicity. And she was creating, as you say, these combinatorial images by rearranging and combining simple shapes. So it kind of, to me, it follows that it reveals later that there was a kind of continuation the way in which she kind of thought about and approached the computer, but it did make a distinct change in the kind of volume of this, not just the speed at which she was able to work, but also the variation of the kinds of works of the series that she was able to produce. And that it, as she said, it was able to enable her to make images that she hadn't conceived of before. So I think there are, you can really trace this kind of, this line through from her early paintings to the way in which she used the computer later on, but there is this moment where it kind of really expands what is possible that she's able to do. But I think those initial ideas are there from the very get-go.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I don't know if this is how she felt, but I've talked to contemporary generative artists and they talk about their, if they, a lot of them started in painting and they talk about, wanting to see more of the output space and wanting to see different, oh, if I put that piece there instead of there, just what that would look like. And I feel like she had that spirit from the beginning with her paintings and just this kind of yearning for more of an output space as opposed to this singular object.
Melanie Lenz: Absolutely. And I think that's how she, how we can think about how she framed this idea of artistic research. It wasn't, it was kind of somewhat pseudo-scientific, but she described it as the epiphany of art, this idea of when does a work become a visual situation, it becomes kind of interesting, and to find that moment requires creating multiple outputs and comparing and contrasting. I often kind of find it quite interesting the way in which she numbered the work, because yes, she made a large variety of work, but then she comes in as a, the human eye to kind of identify at what point in time different works, kind of appeal to her. So she curated her own work so they weren't all sequenced. We have kind of quite a lot of works, in this, well, actually some of which are on display in Degrees of Disruption, where you can see the numbering. They don't necessarily run in number order. You know, she doesn't just number them in the order in which they have been outputted, but then she will make a decision about the sequence of orders in which they should be shown and hung. So yes, there's that interesting kind of, yes, I hand over this element to rules that I've curated, but I've created this.
And then see what the output is, but there's still this additional element of I've then come in and like curate that said output and make decisions as a human artist.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, and that process that she was going through, going from individual paintings to then curating this output space, it's also one of the ways you can sort of tell the story of the second half of the 20th century of art, especially in terms of, if you're looking at it from a systematic perspective, or if you're looking at it from an art and technology perspective, how around this time art dematerialized and conceptualized in the '50s and '60s and maybe late '40s and the emphasis on singular objects kind of, obviously didn't disappear. We still, there still was probably most valuable even today, but it at least became an alternative to like something like an output space or instruction-based art became an alternative to singular objects. And Vera's practice really mirrored these shifts. Like she was, what she was doing in her private practice was also in parallel to these major shifts that were happening in art history of the art object again not losing its importance but not becoming the only thing the artists had to engage with and then how rules also became more prioritized during this time and then that as technology shifted from human-executed rules to then automated rules. Do you see that parallel in art history and with Vera's career?
Melanie Lenz: Yes, to a certain extent. You've answered your own question to some extent. Yeah, So I agree with a lot of the sentiment of what you've just said, but I guess I am slightly wary sometimes of reading her work too much in that vein, because she didn't work in a really linear fashion. And yes, conceptually, what you said is absolutely true, but I think it's really important not to, and I've tried in the display to kind of make this point that it wasn't like this straightforward line. She didn't have a computer, she did have a computer, and then, end of story. She repeated ideas and concepts, obviously motifs throughout her career, and some of it she created it by hand and continued to paint, as well as kind of using the computer to create multiple outputs. But there are times when she did make individual work.
So, yes, to a certain extent, I do agree with you that it does, it is reflective of this kind of bigger broader picture. But as an aside, I think it's also important to mention that she didn't have gallery representation for many years. So yes, she might have been working like that, but wasn't accepted as part of the art world. Yes, it represents a shift, but post-fact it's easier to kind of map things onto things and see those parallels, but I think there are important differences as well.
Peter Bauman: That's perfect. I like to simplify things, so then adding that kind of color is really, it's perfect. But I think that's a good point, that we can look back in retrospect to fit her practice where we would like our arguments to go. But at the time, she was definitely not really part of any art world, and she was very much sort of on her own, which I think is, I think a more interesting way to look at her story, which is that, she was in many ways rejected by this art world. Like there was, like that argument implies some kind of like art world establishment that she was a part of, which yes, is certainly not the case, at least for many decades of her career. And I guess one of the things Vera also played with a lot in her career is this connection to agency. And then, you know, agency is also really tied to control and authorship. And these are things that I feel like Vera played with a lot in her practice, even going back to GRAV in the early '60s in Paris.
And then with François, they collaborated until the late '50s and they were like one artist basically until the late '50s, very early '60s. Basically when he had to get a job, I think, to support them and like he had to go get it, he became a researcher. And she continued her practice as an artist. She was always, she always had this really open-minded, really, I think for that time, especially radical approach to agency. How do you think that her approach speaks to how we're relating to technology today? And the fears of things like AI system, AI systems, because really similar to her engagement with computers and in terms of the societal reaction or where kind of, the societal recoiling, especially to early computers, seems similar to early AI. I wonder, how do you see this radical approach of Vera speaking to this moment today?
Melanie Lenz: I guess to start with her involvement with GRAV was this really interesting one because obviously she co-founded the group in July 1960, but then four months later she left it in solidarity both with François but also differences about ideas, about research, and artistic research but nonetheless as you say like she continued to remain like artistic peers with many of the GRAV members including François Morellet and Julio Le Parc. Side note here: anyone who hasn't seen it, I really recommend the Tate Modern show at the moment. So there's this really nice kind of moment in London when you can see some of the artistic networks through which Molnár was connected. They definitely informed each other's ideas and the notion that there isn't necessarily an artistic individual. And I think that kind of shows out in the way in which, I think the last canvas that she and her husband co-signed was in 1960. So yes, it really did, and they were referred to as the two-headed artists. It did really challenge this idea about, who's in control and who has agency and how, demystifying to a certain extent the idea of, up until now, the romantic notion of the artist. I guess the second part of your question was about her approach to, or her approach and our societal approach today about concerns around AI. I think there's a really fascinating interview that she did in 1981 on a French television program where she said that she dreamed of having, well, she described it as a robot, one that would do everything, that she, fulfill all her artistic directions and would sort of even be able to anticipate the things that she hadn't done yet.
I'm paraphrasing here terribly, but to many extents, I feel like she could be in that interview describing what AI is and could do, but importantly, she said that it could do anything, but also it didn't have any intuition or initiative. That for me is the crucial point, that she wasn't afraid, actually, to dream, she didn't describe it as a nightmare, she described it as a dream. So she continued to be unafraid of like exploring and experimenting and using different tools in different ways, but she was still very conscious of like the role that the artist, I say the artist's hand, but here I refer to like the, the human element of this still has a role to play, in the artistic production. So it was like a combination of the two and it was for that kind of reason that the display includes work, well, a work that is generative AI because I feel like those conversations, it's like the questions remain the same. She was interested in asking those questions.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I noticed that you put Entangled Others' piece as one of the contemporary artists that is juxtaposed with Molnár in the show, at the end of the show. That's something that I wrote about in my little, I guess, I don't know, preview piece or whatever about the show that came out on Friday. And it was, so was that a conscious decision to somewhat explicitly connect that or like that line from painting to human systems to automated systems to then like model systems. Was that a conscious choice or did that just kind of happen?
Melanie Lenz: No, absolutely. I took a nod to the, I kind of anticipated it being something that people would hopefully discuss and be, but yes, to go back, it's a nod to the title Degrees of Disruption. So yes, it's intentionally there to be like a talking point about how we now think about like the expanded term generative. I should also say displays and exhibitions at the V&A take a long time to come to fruition. When I first pitched this idea, which was many years ago, I did a kind of poll of staff and kind of pitched the idea and there was a real, fair enough, like I think it maybe is reflected in the general public who will see this display because it's important to kind of contextualize where it's taking place both within the V&A audiences but also within the Prints & Drawings galleries.
Many people and staff at that time just didn't necessarily have a clear understanding of what generative was and actually most people thought I was talking about generative AI. So one of the key messages with the display is that actually generative has a much broader, longer history and it isn't all generative AI. But that said, it is a part, I believe, of that narrative. And I think the thing about the display is there's like five different doors through which you can enter. So although it's a broadly chronological display with different sections and themes, you could enter from anywhere. So the first thing that you might see actually is Entangled Others and generative AI. And actually it's a way of working, so you can work across and backwards and make these kind of connections. But there it's very much a work that is intended for us as an audience to think about what does agency and creativity and authorship mean in the context of artists working both in the past like Vera and also today. The other reason I should say that I entered or included Entangled Others' work along with the other contemporary practitioners in the show was because traditionally these spaces show works that are in the collection. Although there are a few loaned works in the Vera Molnár section. This is really, really, really unusual. These are spaces where we show works that have been acquired by the V&A. So that also informed which works were on display.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, that's, it's funny you said that about, I think maybe when curators get interviewed, it's not always taken into account that these shows have taken years to prepare for, because usually the first question is always like, you know, why this show today or some variation of that when, it should be, which you can always find or like come up with an answer for that question. But like really the question is, you know, why the show a few years ago when you first conceived of it or something like that. But so it's 50 pieces from Molnár, like can you say what the breakdown is from what's in your collection to what was on loan or do you have any idea about that?
Melanie Lenz: I'm quickly doing the arithmetic in my head. So all the contemporary works are in the collection. The first of which, like in terms of the contemporary practitioners, Casey's work I think was probably the first work that we acquired. Obviously there's also his other Process 18 work, I'm trying to draw or encourage visitors to see other parts of generative practice across the museum. So Process 18, Software 3, which is in the Learning Centre, is one work that I kind of encourage people to go down and see. And yes, that was I think acquired in 2018, followed by Harm van den Dorpel's work, which is, I was really keen for that I have just talked about the relationship between works on paper and it being a print gallery, but obviously Harm's work as well as Entangled Others are an occasion in order to see and experience and engage with generative in a dynamic moving form. There's also, if anyone is going in, I would encourage them to like, there's also a QR code of hybrid vigor, which people can actually have a go at creating their own generative forms.
“One of the key messages with the display is that actually generative has a much broader, longer history and it isn't all generative AI.” — Melanie Lenz 19:55
It takes you through to his website for that as well. So there are different ways. I feel like I've I wanted to mention that because although I've talked about the emphasis on prints and drawings, there are these other kinds of ways you can see generative. But in terms of the breakdown, no, I don't have specific figures, but we were really honoured to make a number of acquisitions as a result of the display. So that included a fantastic series of Molnár as well as the self-portraits, so they're new acquisitions. Other works came from, I mentioned at the very beginning, that some of the earliest works in the collection, not from 1969, but in 1981, the print curator acquired Microcosms, which is part of a collector's set. This is a classic case of the curators acquiring it as an example of print with no mention of the computer in the mix, but then it was wonderful to be able to find V. Molnár's name, yes, when researching, what's actually in the collection. So, but the majority of works are either from the Patric Prince or the Computer Arts Society. And there are a number of private loans as well.
Peter Bauman: It's, well, what you've mentioned and then what you kind of keep referring to about the sort of broader, looking at generativity from, not from the narrow perspective of generative AI, but from this broader context of, Molnár and Cage. Even going back, there have been generative machines and automata, yeah, going back hundreds of years. And of course, that's sort of like the, the thesis of Le Random. Yeah, like that's also why the show is especially interesting to us. And then, yeah, like which, I guess, our timeline demonstrates that argument. One thing that, you've talked about before is that museums often, if something even is made by a computer, then they often try to hide it or they just talk about the material that it's printed on or something like that instead of the process itself. Was that something that you were conscious of with the show and was that something, did you consider that and then how did you respond to that with the show in any way?
Melanie Lenz: Always. It's always, I'm not going to use the word battle, but it is always a constant conversation with colleagues in interpretation, understanding that people come to the show in many different ways. And it's not even specific to this particular display. It's also whenever we acquire works that kind of, where you have to have an understanding of the process. I was really keen, one of the things I wanted to avoid is with everyone, were for people to come along and just see an individual output and think that is the sole work we're actually, generative to my mind anyway. You have to take into account the like the bigger broader process in this case or in some works print might be an output but it isn't solely one like the only way in which to understand the work so I think I thought about it in different ways of course I should emphasize the constraints. Museum labels are like 50 words. It's incredibly difficult at the best of times to kind of summarize or like encapsulate some of the key messaging in so few number of words, let alone kind of just go into more kind of ekphrastic writing about the, you've got the concept, you've got the way in which the work is made, which is a really important part to convey.
But I think it's about understanding where to position that information. Maybe it's on the online data collection database. As long as there is a way of finding out that information, I don't think to have that as the sole information that's on like a museum label, but it has to be visible. I think the other way in which we attempt to do this is through the actual way in which the work itself is displayed. So you'll see some work in the display. You can quite clearly see job from Molnár written on the top with the date and the time and the sprocket holes visible, making the ways in which the work's been displayed very visible. You can understand the computational process by seeing, I don't know, Benson plotter paper like written, artwork has been like by Molnár, I should emphasize, like it's been cut down.
So that's not always visible. And I think whether that was just because the paper was wonky or whether that was because there was this kind of moment where artists certainly other artists have recollected to me that they were encouraged to sort of hide those aspects of computational process and just look at the artwork that for me with Molnár is unclear, but in the display, you'll see both kinds of works plotted drawings that have been cut blotters that kind of show the process through which they were made.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it's funny. I would imagine, again, I'm no expert, but I would imagine that the work with the holes still intact with the job from Molnár still visible are more valuable or will hold more value in the future, if I had to guess. It's funny that what was, disdained and hidden is, now today is, the revered part. And yeah, I guess, was there anything you wanted to say? I kind of thought we'd go through the sort of major sections of Molnár's practice, but that's already sort of not quite happened. But if we do sort of think about those major, the major chronology, and again, it's not, it's, these are, fractal, coastal, these are not straight lines in terms of just divisions, but she's started off in probably realistic painting, late '40s, and then she, in Paris, she started becoming more interested in abstraction, then machine imaginaire. I wonder what you had to say about the machine imaginaire. I find it so interesting.
She came up with it around '59, so about around '59 to '60. This was around that GRAV period, around when François, her husband, started his research career. It was the almost maybe the first time that she was on her own as an artist and she creates this machine imaginaire. I wonder how did you what do you think about that period and then how did you reflect that in the show?
Melanie Lenz: Yeah, so the machine imaginaire, she was still working with her husband. I think the last co-signed canvas was like 1960 and obviously the machine imaginaire, she kind of dates to 1959. So that she does start thinking about it before. Or I do, I don't necessarily see it as a progression of what collaborating with her husband, collaborating with the machine, of course, at this point in time, anyway, it's a concept. But I think for me that this is a second section of the second theme of the display. I did actually it's the next. Yeah, I did really want to kind of draw on works that kind of demonstrate her thinking through this idea.
So we've got a couple of pieces where she's kind of, you can see one, for example, I think it's eight letter Ts where she's like rotating and you can see her almost sort of playing and moving with the individual elements in the said painting to kind of see what happens if I apply this rule, what happens if I like take these incremental steps in order to kind of produce a finished artwork and so yeah this was a key moment in the display but she had multiple ideas and concepts across her life so visual dialogue was another one and conversational methods the way in which she kind of thought about her relationship with what she was seeing and then her back and forth process so yeah, the machine imaginaire is a really important one I think it's something that people often sort of will talk about when they think about Molnár's work but it was just one of many different concepts and way in which she approached her... But that said, it is actually a key moment in the display.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it reminds me again of some of the other early artists that were working with these like hyper emerging tools at the time. Like they had this, these rules or they had this rule-based practice that they wanted to come out, but they, they didn't have the machines yet and they didn't have a way to automate it. Like another example is Charles Csuri, who, in the early 60s, he altered his drawings with these analog machines. And that reminds me, that that's always reminded me of Molnár's machine imaginaire, how, so These artists that would go on to work with digital computers, even before that, they were already showing signs that rules were really important to them and making art with rules is really important. Then the next major section of the show after the machine imaginaire is when she does get access to digital computers and, that is, that happens, I believe for the first time, like informally in 1968, just with her friend. And then earnestly maybe the next year and then throughout the '70s, well basically throughout the rest of her life after that. How do you, how did you frame that transition from these human executed rules to then automated rules?
Melanie Lenz: Yes. So in this section, this is where, yes, you're right, for her friend who was not just a friend, but also an algorithmic composer. So it's like ideas that, very, being discussed amongst the kind of network and the peers that she has. So Pierre Barbaud was the composer at Bull General Electric in France, but actually she recollects that this was actually really, she wasn't very happy with the results. She kind of was disenchanted with what she was able to produce there, but thankfully kind of continued to explore this elsewhere at the Sorbonne Computing Centre. But yes, there is this moment of going from something that's imaginary to being able to have access and all the kind of challenges that go with it. And the different kind of collaborations, yes, she taught herself Fortran and BASIC programming, but also had to work very, and chose to work very closely with the researchers at the lab.
In the section that I've deemed or called Inconceivable Images, kind of a quote that she attributed to one of the traits of what working with the actual machine enabled her to do, I was still keen to show, yes, computer plotted drawings in this section, but also there you can see some of the hand annotated notes that she made, which was like one of, like a work I'm really pleased we were able to include in this section, as well as painting. So that, again, going back to this idea that it's not this linear display, that her life wasn't just, one thing that followed the others, but actually you can thread different ways in which she worked across her lifetime. So, yes, the section on the computer and the display does include paintings that she did as well and her hand annotation to show not just to kind of show how and why working with the computer informed her thinking as well as the output.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it's the challenge of putting an artist's career, having to actually physically place them into these rooms and sections and formally divide them. Yeah, of course, in reality, they weren't, typically they're not so distinct. And even what I was saying earlier about how she ended her collaboration with François Molnár in, I said, in the early 60s, when he became a researcher. But then in the '70s, they collaborated again with her plotter work. It's always more complicated and complex, details. But yeah, at some point as a curator and then, me as a writer or whatever, we have to some point simplify these stories. But they're always more complex.
And I wonder also, we've talked about the contemporary artists that you juxtaposed. And that is the, I think the final section is after the computerized section is you now you we kind of move more to the about and placing her legacy in a contemporary context. I guess what is, what are some of the what was some of the thinking that you had with the artists that were chosen for that room and for that juxtaposition because there was only a handful, I think there was only seven or eight and then yeah, how did that, how does that sort of wrap up any arguments you had about the show and we've sort of talked about this already but you want to add anything more?
Melanie Lenz: Yeah, so I guess yes, the last theme of the display is Generative Principles and it includes 10 contemporary practitioners and eight artworks. And I think this was a moment to sort of out the, not exactly an argument, but kind of really kind of put Molnár's work in context of the way in which contemporary practitioners relate or resonate with some of the ideas that she explored. So we used or I used works that were in the collection and I selected artists that at different points had either referenced influence or impact. And it's not necessarily a direct as in you know I've used red because red was an imprimony or you know it's more like the ideas that she embraced and then it's a dialogue so there are many differences as much as there are similarities but it's also when I've spoken to different practitioners Molnár's name is often one that crops up as someone being you know influential I think I really wanted to make that case because many of the audience the V&A public that will come to see this display perhaps unlike many of the people that are familiar with your work and that of Le Random, just won't have heard of Vera Molnár before, and so it's really making the case that the ideas stay really pertinent and relevant to 2026 and onwards.
For example, I was looking at the, we recently had the London Design Festival, and I thought it was so striking that their poster was like, I think their theme was order and disorder, and they'd used the red circle, and it like was jostling and like had slightly, it was slightly a lot, it was started off as very symmetrical and then it disintegrated into like a regular shape. And to my mind, whether the designer of that poster was conscious of Molnár's work or not, I don't know. But, the motifs immediately stood straight out. So I feel like there's still today so much of what she, the ideas that she was embracing, ideas about like order and structure and chaos and randomness and working with systems and algorithms is just really, really relevant, and I think that kind of resonates with many practitioners today so the selection of artists in this last section which included Casey Reas, Harm van den Dorpel, Licia He, William Mapan and others kind of spoke to that and kind of helped to tell that narrative and story.
Peter Bauman: And I think there's also the stigma that artists who can who are doing this can be i don't know untrue to art because they're giving up you know human elements of their art to machines. And they ascribe that to kind of a recent turn in art or our engagement with technology. But I think it's so important to show examples like Molnár who were experimenting with agency and authorship and control for a very long time before computers, before digital computers, not before they existed, but before she ever even got her, her hands on them. She was even making up machines to give control to because that is what she, that was her choice. It was one of the many choices she made as an artist was to give herself some kind of restrictions, which lots of artists do, especially lots of artists that work with systems. And like showing that legacy, I think, was really important. And then, I also, again, we've sort of touched on that, but I wonder how you see Molnár with kind of AI-related work might raise some eyebrows, like with Entangled Others' work.
But do you see this relationship between coded or hard-coded rules, like explicit rules-based work and work that is modeled or learned or based on, learned data? Do you see a connection or would you try to separate those two things?
Melanie Lenz: I guess I see a connection in the way in which we as like the audience ask the same questions of the work. I think for me, yes, it's there as a point of, like what, how we understand work, the process, our response, our reaction to understanding what it is, what it does, how it's made. And that kind of criticality around the artwork remains the same. But of course, acknowledging that there are differences between, hand-coded and model-based practices. I mean I think one of the things that really struck me when making this display was an interview I read with Molnár where she kind of talked a lot about endlessly asking what if and I think for me that gave me this kind of degree of freedom to kind of pose within the display some of the questions that she herself kind of thought about like what if we do this, what if we like try and experiment and do slightly different things. So obviously it was first and foremost an opportunity to kind of share with audiences her practices and the different ways in which she worked.
But I wasn't afraid to kind of put in that work by Entangled Others at the end, they say, because the work, the title of the display is Degrees of Disruption: Vera Molnár and Generative Art, and it's putting her work in context as well as putting others in context to her. So it works both ways. It's for me, it's kind of a continuation of her idea of what, what if, what if we try this?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, and I think it opens up broader conversations about what even AI art is and that it isn't just recent phenomenon of artists making slop with image generators, that it's a lot more complex and it's a lot more historically complex, but it's a lot more contemporaneously complex. Artists are engaging with AI systems in a lot of different ways and in terms of the precision in which they give control or exhibit control themselves, I think is fascinating. Artists Mat and Holly and Entangled Others and, Sougwen Chung, I mean artists that are engaging with AI systems and really and like even Casey other artists that you had in the display has used a lot of GANs in his work before so yeah I think it shows that yeah just what people flatness of what people consider to be AI art is not.
Melanie Lenz: Yeah, I can't emphasize that enough because I should say this is not an AI show. That may be something that's a different show for a different time. It's, yes, I guess that was one of the one thing I was super conscious of. I didn't want this to be kind of framed in that way. So to go back to your question, it is really important that people understand this is predominantly hand coded, but it's just there as a kind of a nod to that there are these different kinds of ways in which artists work. That said, at V&A East at the moment, you can also see Vera Molnár's show and it's hung in conjunction or it's hung in relation to Sougwen Chung's work, whose work we have in the collection as well.
So that kind of case is made in that display over there. That's not so much the case in Degrees of Disruption, but it is. They're kind of as one small part of a much larger show.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. Yeah. And AI also used to be, GOFAI, good old fashioned AI was hard coded, was, wasn't learned models. Like it, it's, I think it helps to, muddy the waters and all this discussion and especially with critique AI art as much as you can, but, or as much as you want, I encourage you, but maybe don't flatten it to just, AI image generation from, Midjourney or whatever. But yeah, I guess, so I think just even that subtle presentation of Entangled Others, I think opens that kind of discussion, which I think is important. And I suppose we can probably wrap up pretty soon. I think we've ended up covering a lot.
One thing that's really interesting that I agree with you, is your aversion to the word, the P word, pioneer. It's also something that I try to avoid or, I don't use. I'm sure there are examples of using it, but do you dislike this word and what are some better words we can use instead?
Melanie Lenz: Yeah, it's a great question. And historically, we have used it in the museum, but then we've used lots of words in the past that we don't continue to necessarily continue. There is obviously a case to be made that it is, like, has political implications in relation to ex-, the kind of Western Front and kind of, exactly. But I think it's also problematic in this sense of over fixating on the earliest person who did this, the first person who did this, but it's super important to kind of understand the context in which people made. But I think just pinpointing somebody as the first is part of a story, but not all of it. For me, I'm really interested in those networks and those communities and those connections and understanding the broader picture in which, yes, you might have been one of those early practitioners or, understanding at what point in time things changed, but I think just kind of trying to identify that very first start and seeing as that as the beginning and the end of the story is, yeah, does sort of flatten it. And I think how to understand it in the broader picture and like can make those connections between different people working in different times kind of for me gives a much richer understanding of like multiple narratives happening.
So I think that, so how do we find other terms? It's a great question. It's something I constantly grapple with. I guess I sort of by talking about early practitioners, but then expanding into, you know, what were the ideas they were exploring and who were they connected to and what kind of lineage did they come from and where did they go, moving forward to and how does that resonate with say, like artists today, but also speculating about what does that mean for the future? I think that could be the only way in which I can kind of think about answering that question.
“I think just pinpointing somebody as the first is part of a story, but not all of it.” — Melanie Lenz 42:10
Peter Bauman: Yeah, so the term itself is a bit problematic. It's a bit, it echoes like colonialism. But then just that way of thinking is also a bit problematic of trying to, I can sort of flatten history to starts and stops and yeah, like thing or one challenge of making the timeline was, well, when do you start this thing? And that's why it starts, 70,000 years ago with cave paintings or whatever, because, I wanted for it to be as comprehensive as possible. And again, like that isn't also my original thinking on my part. That's from Philip Galanter. But I think it's an appropriate place to start if you have to start somewhere, start from the actual beginning or at least from how we understand the beginning. I guess, is there any, is there anything else you wanted to say about the show, but then also just to wrap up, something I sort of alluded to at the beginning the V&A's collection. I'm sure there are lots of stories to tell from your collection and what are some of the stories you might be already thinking about and like I guess just how, what stories do you still want to tell when you get the opportunity, at the V&A collection?
Melanie Lenz: Okay, so, things left to say about the display, just please go see it. Let me know what you think. I'd love for people to kind of experience and reflect on it for themselves. I'm all here for like dialogue and critical discussion about it. In terms of what the computer, the V&A's computer collection, the narratives, it still has to tell. There are so many stories yet to be surfaced that I'm really excited about. Traditionally, the works were collections on paper, dating from the 1960s onwards, but that's just one of many ways in which early practitioners worked, and I'm really interested in exploring those many different ways.
We only need to like to go back to your very first question about Cybernetic Serendipity, look at the kind of practices, and you know the list is the kind of ways and the types of artists that are included in that to kind of understand that computer art was so much broader than, wasn't just prints. So I'm really interested in thinking about the relationship between computer art and performance, poetry and choreography. I'm also really interested in the relationship between the early computer art and textiles. And that doesn't even, I'm also, there's just so many different ways in which contemporary practitioners work in like contemporary ideas. So, yeah, there's an awful lot more to explore and I'm really excited to kind of get thinking about them.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I'm really excited to see where all that ends up. The Digital Art Season, is it going to continue to be sort of a biannual thing? Is that the right word? Biennial? Every two years.
Melanie Lenz: Yes. I think we need that amount of time to recover. But yes, it will be back. It's still going strong now. So people can, upcoming events include special screening of Generative the Film, which is a special cut, including lots of dialogue with Vera Molnár, As well as others. We have operators, special live streaming of their part three coming up. What else is coming up?
I should have memorized this, but there's lots. It's all on the V&A What's On website. There's a lot of exciting things coming our way. So yes, the Digital Art Season represents an exciting opportunity to kind of engage with lots of different kind of practitioners, both drawing on the collection, but also embracing new and different kind of ways of working.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I hope to. Well, I'm definitely going to see the show at some point. When does it end, or it runs until March or...?
Melanie Lenz: It goes until May 2027, so plenty of time for people to come and see.
Peter Bauman: Okay, amazing. Yeah, so I'll definitely be in London at some point. Well, I'll be there pretty soon. But it would be... Yeah, I'd love to make it to some of the Digital Art Season events specifically, like the screening, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. Yeah, thank you so much for this talk and for taking the time. Yeah, this was really amazing.
It's been a pleasure. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it.
Melanie Lenz: Always great talking to you.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, and so great to talk about Vera and so great to talk to you, Melanie. And thank you so much.
Melanie Lenz: Okay, thanks.
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