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thefunnyguys: Hey guys, thanks for joining us again. Hey Georg, thanks for joining us. I'm just giving you the mic.
Georg Bak: Hi everyone, thanks for having me.
thefunnyguys: Georg Bak is a digital art specialist, particularly known for his expertise in computer and generative arts, but also has a deep interest in digital photography and early NFT art. He's also an art advisor and curator with decades of experience in the fine art world and has assembled some iconic exhibitions, such as Automat und Mensch in collaboration with Jason Bailey. Does that sound right, Georg? Am I missing some important things?
Georg Bak: Yeah, I think that's pretty much right. I used to have a gallery as well and I was specialized on generative photography. Actually, I did a large exhibition with Jacquard tapestries that were created by digital artists. That was like 10 years ago or something. And yeah, I've been curating a few exhibitions with NFTs and digital art.
thefunnyguys: I didn't know that you had your own gallery, Georg. When was this?
Georg Bak: Oh, that's a good question. We closed, wait a minute, I think we closed 2017. From 2010 to 2017, I believe.
thefunnyguys: Okay.
Georg Bak: It was called Scheublein + Bak.
thefunnyguys: Interesting. And how did you get into, let's say, you have been at the intersection of art and technology for many, many years now. How did you get fascinated by this intersection?
Georg Bak: Well, I actually got fascinated in the 1990s. We had an institution in Basel which was showing internet art. And they had really amazing shows. It was just kind of like a little space, but they really showed all the major artists at that time. And I was always going to Basel and seeing the shows. And yeah, I was also interested in the early days of digital art. But that was kind of like an intersection. I didn't have many good interests, but it was professionally not really what I was involved with.
At that time it was probably a very, very small group of people who were interested in that field. So I was surprised that the art scene was never picking up on that. You never saw any. Well, there were a few exhibitions, I believe. It was very, very niche. And suddenly you didn't see anything in the art market. So I kind of, but that's where I started.
thefunnyguys: And when you started in the 90s, did you expect this digital art scene to grow exponentially? Or was it just out of, yeah, I'm just curious to hear, did you expect what happened in the last 30 years and where we are now?
Georg Bak: Well, you know, it's kind of funny. I remember that's when I met the creator of Communimage. His name is Johannes Gees. He's a Swiss artist. And he never dared to call himself artist at that time. But he was making an amazing artwork which is interactive on the internet. You could just add pictures and create a huge tapestry of pictures on the internet. It was a website. It's now a part of the HeK collection.
And yeah, I was having discussions with him. And I always said, well, this is the most important art movement of our time. And he was kind of laughing at me, I think. And I also thought he was a great artist. But he was not declaring himself as an artist. And it never took off. I was really surprised at that time.
But then we had this exhibition at Kate Vass Galerie called Perfect and Priceless. And I remember he showed up at the exhibition and I told him, now it's going to take off. I believe this is the right moment now. And he was just laughing at me.
And yeah, well, obviously there was not yet a market in 2018 for NFTs. I mean, the NFTs cost like 20, 30 bucks or something. We even had NFTs by Larva Labs on the platform which didn't sell at $30. So I think they don't exist anymore. But I felt, you know, later when the NFTs came, I felt now we have the right technology and this could take off.
“And I always said, well, this is the most important art movement of our time. And he was kind of laughing at me, I think.” — Georg Bak 4:08
So yeah, but a lot of the artists from the 90s, I think some of them also gave up. I don't think they believed that digital art would ever be successful.
thefunnyguys: It's interesting that you mentioned Perfect and Priceless, Georg, because I actually interviewed Kate Vass just a few weeks ago and we published the article this week, and she also mentions this exhibition. Yeah, it's very, very interesting how ahead of time it already was, with pieces by Rhea Myers, CryptoPunks and some other very important works.
Georg Bak: Yeah. I think that was certainly an interesting exhibition, also in terms of the topic that we explored, the idea of value systems. So we also had Kevin Abosch in the show. I think Kevin is probably one of the major artists who is always creating value systems. And that in particular I thought was very interesting in the early days of crypto art. All these coins and the idea of creating value. And we had Sarah Friend's piece. I don't remember the piece, what is it called? Where you could just mine a currency and it was just very inflationary. And yeah, obviously Rhea Myers, he created all kinds of interesting conceptual artworks at that time.
Conrad House: Thanks for that introduction, Georg, and thanks for joining us. Obviously it's an honor to have you on the space, especially for the 1950s, and thanks to thefunnyguys for the introduction. And obviously Peter, Monk Antony, for being here, the writer behind the timeline.
And like we've been doing the past few weeks after every new chapter is released, we've been having these spaces to highlight 10 of our favorite moments from the timeline chapter. Obviously these 10 moments are only a small fraction of what the entire chapter includes. So if you always want to read more, you can always see timeline.lerandom.art to explore along with us this chapter of the 1950s.
I think I'll just start out with asking Peter a quick question before we jump into these 10 moments. I think a lot of people say that generative and computer art has a history that goes back to the 60s. Peter, why was it important to also highlight the 1950s?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it's a good question. And a lot of people do say that the history of this movement goes back to the 60s. And even the very venerated Leslie Jones, who curated the LACMA exhibition earlier this year, Coded. She had another exhibition in 2021 called Coded Art at the Dawn of the Computer Age, and it went from 1960 to 1980. So that's the period that I think a lot of people tend to focus on with this history.
But the 50s was such an important decade for generative art and for digital art in general. So many of the advancements from this decade. So we have the artistic advancements of analog computer graphics from Mary Ellen Bute and Ben Laposky with their work with oscillographs. There's also the birth of conceptualism with Alan Kaprow and happenings, and John Cage and Neo-Dada. Then we have the birth of generative music with John Cage and Max Mathews at Bell Labs, and generative text with Strachey with the Mark I. And then also analog computer generation.
There are the hardware advancements like Whirlwind and SAGE, which were funded by the U.S. military. And then software advancements like Grace Hopper inventing general program languages. And then John Backus at IBM inventing Fortran. So many of those artistic and hardware and technological and conceptual innovations emerged in the 1950s that were so important to how this actually developed in the 60s. So it would be really impossible not to include the 50s in the history of generative art.
thefunnyguys: You mentioned the Whirlwind computer, Peter. And that actually brings us to the first moment we want to discuss, more specifically MIT and the U.S. Navy demonstrating the Whirlwind computer for the first time in 1951. I was wondering, Georg, if you could expand on the significance of this specific computer, but maybe also while touching on the broader impact the military has had on generative art.
Georg Bak: Well, the military was definitely always the driver for technology. And the first computers, the Turing machine in the late or mid 40s, that was driven by military as well during the Second World War. And there were a few early computers like the UNIVAC, the Zuse. And the ENIAC. The ENIAC is also, but I think they were all in the late 40s.
The Whirlwind is certainly a very interesting and important computer. Although, to my knowledge, it was not really used for computer art. It is more important in the history of computers.
By chance, I found a really nice NFT on SuperRare where you can see the Whirlwind computer. And that NFT was made by Obvious, the artist trio from Paris, which is also quite well known because they copied Robbie Barrat's code and did the first AI work sold at Christie's a few years ago. So they became kind of famous for that. There is an NFT where you can see the Whirlwind computer and the first software programmer, a young Black guy, sitting in front of the computer. I even researched his name. He's called Joe Thompson. Joe Thompson, the first software programmer on the computer.
Yeah, I think certainly it's very interesting. I was reading through the timeline. And congratulations. It's great. I mean, it's really amazing what you guys have done. And also to contextualize the history of hardware and software that led actually to computer art.
I also liked this title, or yeah, or subtitle, that you called it proto. I think proto computer art or proto digital art. Because it was really the proto digital art. As far as, I mean, if we look at these very early artworks by Ben Laposky or Herbert Franke and so forth, they were actually done on analog computers. Oscillograph screens that were photographed or filmed. And they were not really computers yet. I mean, the plotted drawings, they came in the 60s. So I think that was really, really interesting, how you guys contextualized everything.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. Thank you. I mean, of course, coming from you, that means a lot. You're one of the people that we think is the most knowledgeable and most respected in this space. And so that means a lot. Thank you.
Just to jump into the Whirlwind. So the reason I included it in the timeline, and it's such an important part of computer generated imagery history, is, well, a couple of things. And, Georg, you touched on it too. It really hits home the magnitude of U.S. military impact on the development of computers and therefore computer art.
So this Whirlwind was funded by the U.S. Navy. And it was actually meant to be this kind of programmable flight simulator to simulate this flight environment. And what was important about it is it was the first computer, digital computer, that operated in real time. So it was this big evolution in computing technology where you could actually see on a display, with a CRT display, you could see real time graphics and text with this oscilloscope screen.
And it was just a really interesting project because it was developed at MIT and it was funded by the U.S. military, by the Navy. And it was actually so expensive that even the Office of Naval Research budget was completely used on this project. And it was basically forced to shut down, because even the U.S. military found it so expensive to develop these computers back in the day. And eventually MIT convinced another branch of the U.S. military to buy dozens of these Whirlwind computers for another military project called SAGE, which was semi-automatic ground environment. This was this air defense system. So one U.S. branch of the military developed it and then basically sold it to another branch.
So it really does highlight how involved the military was in this early development of computers and computer art, but also a genuine, important advancement in computer generated imagery.
Conrad House: Thanks for that additional information about the first programmer, Georg. I think that's a really interesting highlight from who first used the Whirlwind machine. And I think it's really important that we also highlight these military roots that started these early prototype computers, because I think this is where you see a lot of the early stigmas arise from, computer art and art not being accepted from the broader public. I think it's something that Grant Taylor obviously touches on a lot in his book, When the Machine Made Art.
But as we jump into our next moment, from 1952, we start to talk about text based systems and Christopher Strachey's Love Letters. And then obviously Theo Lutz's Stochastic Texts. And then maybe Peter, you can expand on how these early forms of text based systems and generative texts helped lead to the likes of Noll, Nake and Nees, and how they influenced them to create more computer art.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, sure. It's a really interesting question. So I've actually read before that Noll, Nake and Nees were inspired by Strachey and Love Letters. And it's very bizarre. I mean, I think it's interesting. Bizarrely enough, Conrad, you and I will be speaking to A. Michael Noll tomorrow. So this is actually something that I'd be curious to ask him myself, if he was aware of Strachey's Love Letters at the time and if that impacted him at all.
But in terms of what I could say for myself, this is arguably, and I'd love to get Georg's take as well, his opinion, but you could make the case that this is the first digital art. So Christopher Strachey's Love Letters, they were these randomly generated sentences that express love by a computer, where it would be adverb and it would be like adorable or beautiful. And it would choose a random one and create a sentence. And these were created on the Mark I, which was developed at Harvard in the 50s. And that was a digital computer.
So you could make an argument that this is the first digital art. And at the very least, this is one of the very earliest forms of digital creativity. I think that's without question. Whether or not it's literally the first digital art or not is perhaps up for debate. But it's one of the very earliest creative programs and creative algorithms. And I think you can make a pretty strong case that this is the birth of digital art. And it obviously is a hugely impactful moment for generative text and generative poetry, as well as, obviously, the earliest digital computer art as well.
So I think the takeaways from this, I just think it's important to note that this is possibly the first generative art. And also that I think it's important to just keep in mind that text based art came before visual computer graphics, and also before music. So I think it's just a really interesting moment here.
Georg, do you agree that this is the first digital art?
Georg Bak: I don't know, it really depends what you would consider as art. I mean, actually, in your timeline, there's also moments before that, centuries before, which were kind of digital art forms. Talking about Mozart's dice composition, or in the ninth to 12th century, there was a very interesting Arabic Islamic movement called the Golden Age where they created these machines which were also hydraulic machines that were playing generative music. So the question is what you would call as art, or what is digital. But I mean, certainly it's not a digital thing.
Certainly, what I would agree with is that this is most probably the first generative poetry. I mean, the artwork was quite simple. There was basically a syntax sentence and there were some words that were exchanged, so that they were chosen randomly from a certain selection like verbs, or yeah.
So I think it's very interesting. I mean, probably a more sophisticated artwork, which is also very famous, but that's probably going to be the topic of the next discussion when we come to the 1960s. That was Eliza, which was the first chatbot. And that was created by Joseph Weizenbaum. You could basically chat with the computer. So it was almost like a Turing simulation. And finally, again, there is an NFT. I think it was on Hic et Nunc where you could buy this Eliza as an NFT. It was an edition of, I don't know, 10 or 20. And so you could have your own NFT that was chatting to you every day.
And I think if you look at the whole history of generative poetry, this is super interesting, how many things have happened over the past decades. There's a lot of great works. There was also a German poet, a very famous one, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who had his Poesie Automat, the poetry automata. I've actually had the chance to see it once. I think it was created in 2000. That was creating a poetry that was more sophisticated, obviously.
Or robotlab. Robotlab is a group from Karlsruhe, I believe. They have created this robot which is writing artist manifestos. And manifestos are very, very interesting. And I think it's a really interesting work. Machines and people are living together. Stuff like that.
And obviously, there's now with NFTs, we have a lot of great artists like Sasha Stiles and a lot of other ones who are. There was a great exhibition called Poem Subject at L'Avant Galerie in Paris. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it. But it must have been a great show. There's also an important Fluxus artist, Alison Knowles. She did House of Dust in the 60s. That was also an important piece that has been shown recently, also at Art Basel.
So I think that this whole history of generative poetry is super interesting. It would be a great topic for a show. But I totally agree that, or as to my knowledge, it's also the first piece of generative poetry.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I think that, yeah, sorry, Conrad there. Yeah, I mean, I think that that was such an interesting overview of that history of generative poetry. And I think you're right. I definitely think that this is all debatable, especially when you get into what is first.
For this, how we define digital would just be made on a digital computer. And so this was made on the Mark I, and it was one of the very first digital computers and just one of the first instances of a program that was using these early digital computers in a creative way. So I'm not aware of a digital, especially one that has an output associated with it that involved creativity. But it is certainly one of the most fascinating moments. And like you said, it kicked off such a, or was part of such a rich history of generative texts and poetry.
Conrad House: Yeah, and I think it's really important to highlight some of those more contemporary artists that are still working with generative texts, like you mentioned, like Sasha Stiles and Ana and all these really vital artists that are still progressing this space in new contemporary ways.
And I think as we move on to our next moment, which also happened during the same year as Love Letters, 1952, we talk about the first artworks that were created with electrical machines or oscilloscopes, with Abstronic by Mary Ellen Bute and Electronic Abstractions by Ben Laposky, which is really known throughout the space that we are in. But Georg, can you maybe expand on the significance of these two artists and what they created through these electrical machines?
Georg Bak: Yeah. I mean, Mary Ellen Bute, that's super interesting. Actually, you can also watch her films on YouTube. They're published also. Abstronic, I actually posted it even today or yesterday, I think.
I mean, that oscillograph, which is probably the first kind of analog computer used for art, that was really inspiring a lot of the artists at that time. Mary Ellen Bute used it for films. So she was filming these movements.
Ben Laposky is the most well known artist as the father of these oscillograms, or he called them oscillons. I actually have an essay in front of me which was published in Leonardo magazine in 1969, "Oscillons: Electronic Abstractions." And maybe I can read a sentence which I found really interesting. In the beginning he was writing: "They may be monochrome or multi-colored, in motion or static on the cathode ray screen, and they may be so displayed as art either on an oscilloscope or on a television screen. They may be recorded as photographs in black and white or in color, or as motion pictures. They may also be shown as drawings or paintings. In the case of computer-derived oscillograms they might be traced by electronic plotters."
I think that's quite interesting, that he wrote this, because I only know the photographs, the black and white and the color photographs. And they're really beautiful. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many of them on the market. I would love to get one. But he must have produced quite a few at his time. And he also did a big exhibition that started at the Sanford Museum in Cherokee in 1953 and traveled through many places. It was shown in like 150 places over more than 10 years.
But then actually he kind of stopped. I mean, there's not much else that you can see by Ben Laposky, as opposed to another artist which is also very well known, Herbert Franke, who actually moved on with his art and always created new art with new technology. So I would really put these two artists in the same room. I mean, Franke did his first oscillograms three years later. So it was not as early as Laposky. He was also one of the major fathers of this early proto computer art.
I think one thing has to be mentioned here as well, which is actually not in the timeline, but it's also not very well known. There have been also photographic experiments which are very close to these oscillograms. There are also Lissajous figures created through light drawings. There are two pioneers, Peter Keetman, for example, who started to do light drawings in the late 1940s, and also a Swiss artist called René Groebli, who created light drawings. But most famously and most sophisticated light drawings were created by Heinrich Heidersberger, who made the rhythmograms. So he constructed a whole machine, which is quite spectacular. It's huge. And he could draw with this machine and create very, very similar artworks as these early oscillograms in the 1950s. So these were all artists that were creating similar works in the early 50s and some of them even earlier in the late 1940s.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I think there are so many of those artists from that time doing something similar. Another one is Norman McLaren. And I think Mary Ellen Bute and Laposky, they use the oscilloscope to two different extents. Some use it a bit more, some focused on it more, some focused on it less.
Laposky is such an interesting person. I mean, yeah, he is credited with creating these first graphic images by an electronic machine, with these analog computers. But it's interesting because Mary Ellen Bute was creating such similar work at a similar time. And like everybody Georg mentioned, and Norman McLaren. So it is interesting how Laposky ends up getting the credit, especially compared to Bute.
I think he began his experiments in '50, which was before Bute, but I believe they both published their first works in the same year, which was 1952, which is the year that we're highlighting here, which is Electronic Abstractions by Ben Laposky and Abstronic by Mary Ellen Bute. And I just wanted to highlight perhaps a forgotten woman pioneer and the contributions of somebody who is really important to abstract animation and also some of the very earliest art made on electronic machines.
thefunnyguys: That actually replied with the YouTube link to Abstronic by Mary Ellen Bute. And yeah, I really recommend watching it. It's from 1952, but aesthetically, it's super impressive. It's still very, very interesting.
And the next moment we're going to discuss is the birth of Neo-Dada in 1952. And yeah, maybe I can give this question to you, Peter. What does Neo-Dada stand for? And can you draw a parallel to contemporary generative arts?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, so Neo-Dada, what's the important part and how it relates to generative art is its introduction of conceptualism to the art scene and also just using chance and randomness in art. It was such an important movement in both of those things. And happenings and the birth of Neo-Dada in the 50s, they were important progenitors to New Tendencies and to other conceptual movements like Fluxus in the coming decades.
So they also played this really important role in dematerializing art. So that means freeing art from the confines of the canvas, opening up the definition of what art is. And the dematerialization of art is really important to NFTs. I mean, NFTs aren't possible without this groundwork being laid.
And this early shift towards conceptualism, this is one of those earliest shifts where we start to see this change. And the piece that really kicks it off is 1952, which was such a big year. I mean, the last several moments have been about it. It was with John Cage's Theatre Piece No. 1. This was just a seminal performance and a seminal piece of art history and was such an important part of the development of Neo-Dada.
But this piece wasn't just Cage. Cage composed the music. But it was this piece that had poetry and dance and music. And it all happened simultaneously. And it was all unscripted. So it was this piece of performance art that incorporated randomness and generativity. And it was a really important step in the dematerialization of art, which has led to NFTs and just has been so important to digital art in general. And then this rise of concept and chance in art. So that's what I wanted to highlight with this moment.
Georg, was there anything you wanted to add there, or should we move on to the next moment? We've got about 20 more minutes.
Georg Bak: I think it's very sensible that you put this moment into the timeline, because you're absolutely right. The dematerialization is a very important step towards NFTs and what's happening now. Maybe I can only add that there's also the movement Nouveau Réalisme with Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely, which was also probably important. I don't know exactly when this whole thing started. Maybe that was a little bit later than the 1950s. But yeah, we can move on.
Conrad House: Thanks for that information, Peter, about the influence of Neo-Dada, adopting new artistic practices and endeavors that have helped lead to this NFT space of non-physical art in other subjects.
And as we move to the next year, which is 1953, we talk about Grace Murray Hopper and her invention of the FLOW-MATIC programming language, which was really significant to it not really being a symbol programming language, but something a lot more along the lines of an English syntax. And Peter, maybe you want to expand on why this program was so influential and what it helped lead to in terms of other computer programming developments?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, sure. So this was the first general programming language. So it was a language that was portable, so it could be used on different devices. It didn't only have to be used for a single device.
And programming languages before this, so this and Fortran were both really influential in transitioning programming from this kind of, it had to be done using only symbols and only on bespoke devices. But what Grace Hopper did, she helped transition programming from it being only symbolic to actually using language and using human language. So this was just such an important step in democratizing programming and making it more accessible.
But Grace Hopper just herself was an incredible person. She worked on the Mark I, which we spoke about earlier. That's where Christopher Strachey's Love Letters, the computer used to produce that work. It was one of the very first digital computers. She was also heavily involved with the U.S. military. So there's this other connection to the military and early computer art and the development of computer technology in the 1950s.
And general computer languages, they enabled this more diverse group of people to actually interact with computers. And it significantly expanded the universe of computer users and also just the applications and programs. So this was a really important moment, along with the Fortran moment later, with these software developments in the 1950s that I talked about at the very beginning.
Yeah. How about you, Georg? Is there anything you wanted to add here?
Georg Bak: I think probably the most important thing is that we're not just talking about the computer. Probably you're more competent to talk about this, because I am more an art historian than a programmer. I just have very basic knowledge about programming languages.
thefunnyguys: Okay, so that brings us to the next moment. And maybe some of you were actually in Bright Moments Tokyo. Peter and I presented some of the most important things that we talked about, the top 10 most important, most significant moments in generative art history. According to Peter, of course. This is not a definitive top 10. But one of them was Victor Vasarely's Yellow Manifesto, which lays generative art's conceptual foundation in 1954. And I was wondering, do you agree that this might be one of the most significant moments in generative art history? Can you explain why it's relevant?
Georg Bak: Well, the relevance is definitely there. I mean, he was very relevant for op art and kinetic art. And in the early days of the New Tendencies movement, this was the major topic. I don't remember, I think maybe 1963 or something, they had a very strong selection of kinetic art. And also with the Zero group, etcetera. And then they had this big show in the MoMA. It was called The Responsive Eye.
I think as far as the theory for generative art is concerned, I would say probably other theorists were more relevant. I would definitely mention Max Bense. His Aesthetica series, that's also from the 1950s. He was a very influential theorist and philosopher from Stuttgart. He was the teacher of Georg Nees and Frieder Nake. And as you probably know, Georg Nees had the first ever, well, not sure whether that's really still the case, but in many books they say that he had the first exhibition of computer art in 1965 in Stuttgart.
There's also Noam Chomsky with generative grammar, Abraham Moles. I mean, these are all very important. And I think it's really important that you are involved in the work of the theorists of that time. And they were probably closer to the idea of generative aesthetics, or they were the ones that defined what generative aesthetics is. I would say Abraham Moles, Max Bense and Noam Chomsky.
No question that Victor Vasarely's manifesto was a super important moment in art history, and also there is a strong relevance of kinetic and op art for the artists who later, I mean, like I mentioned Hein Gravenhorst, for example, who did op art as a generative photographer. And a lot of artists also now, you can see that kinetic art and op art is everywhere in digital art.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, Georg, I completely agree with you that those cybernetic theorists are just as influential, or probably more influential. So we spoke a lot about Moles and Bense actually last chapter, because in the 40s with Moles, he was one of the big inspirations for Bense. And so we did touch on that last chapter, and then we'll again touch on it next week, or sorry, next chapter with the 60s as well. So those are very important conceptual foundations for generative art as well. And we touched on them and we are going to touch on them in the next space. But yeah, I completely agree.
“And they were probably closer to the idea of generative aesthetics, or they were the ones that defined what generative aesthetics is. I would say Abraham Moles, Max Bense and Noam Chomsky.” — Georg Bak 45:11
Just to give a small defense of why I think Victor Vasarely and the Yellow Manifesto is so important. So I see this as being the sort of natural, like Georg said, what this movement is really known for is kicking off kinetic art and op art. And also if you've been listening to these spaces, we've been talking a lot last week too about kinetic art and the importance of electronic and digital art, the importance of capturing movement in art and actually capturing something dynamic. And Victor Vasarely played such an important part of that with his Yellow Manifesto and kicking off kinetic art, which kinetic art also was one of the early progenitors of cybernetic art, which is very influenced by Moles and Bense.
And so also Frank Popper is one of the best art historians about electronic and digital art. He considered kinetic art to be one of the seven foundational touchstones for electronic art. And I think since this kicked it off, this means it's also an important moment. And then also, like you said, it also kicked off op art too. So not only did it spur kinetic art, but also the op art movement, which we also know in the next decade is going to play such an important role in the history of this movement, like you mentioned with The Responsive Eye.
And then finally, I think one of the less known but one of the big reasons why I included Vasarely is because they were the predecessors of GRAV and New Tendencies. And they were the first to create New Tendencies. And Vera Molnár was in GRAV, which would start next year. So I really see Victor Vasarely as kind of this thread that unites constructivism and the Bauhaus. So I see it as constructivism, Bauhaus to Victor Vasarely, and then to GRAV, and then from GRAV you go to the cybernetic art of Nicolas Schöffer, the art and technology movement of next decade, and Vera Molnár and generative art as we know it.
So that's my brief, well, maybe not brief enough, defense of Vasarely. It's its connection to New Tendencies, op art and then also kinetic art.
And also his art, not just the theory, but his art, I think, is hugely influential. I mean, sometimes when I look at Zach Lieberman's work, I see a lot of this op art and kinetic art that was laid out by Vasarely. I see some references sometimes.
thefunnyguys: I think you briefly mentioned the work of Nicolas Schöffer, Peter. That actually brings us to the next moment. In 1956, he created this kinetic sculpture called CYSP, which stands for cybernetic spatiodynamic. And this made him the founder of cybernetic art. Georg, I think you're familiar with the work of these artists. Could you expand on the influence of their work and also of the cybernetics movements?
Georg Bak: Yeah, I'm totally fascinated by Nicolas Schöffer. I also had the chance to visit his studio when his widow was still alive. It is one of the most spectacular studio visits that I ever had. You just entered into a completely, you know, like a world full of machines that were moving and everything was just light everywhere, different colors. And it was almost like going to Disneyland or something. He was such a visionary artist.
I actually showed one photograph of CYSP. I mean, CYSP was actually an interactive kind of robotic sculpture that was also used, for example, in ballets and dance performances. There are some famous pictures where you see the sculpture with a ballet dancer. And I showed a picture in Automat und Mensch where you can see the CYSP in Paris, interacting with people in the street.
And yeah, I mean, for me also, actually, I'm working on an exhibition which I hopefully will be able to launch next January, called the Cybernetic City, Die kybernetische Stadt, which is based on an artwork by Nicolas Schöffer and also a book that he wrote. It's called, yeah, Die kybernetische Stadt. It was an amazing vision of the artist in the 1970s. That was a bit later, where he had this utopian vision that like a tower in Paris would control everything in the city. Everything would be connected. It would be like, I don't know, a decentralized feedback system or something.
And also in the 70s, they had this Cybersyn project in Chile, which was a real project, where they connected like 200 companies with a centralized control system. And unfortunately, that project was then going down after a short time. But there were these utopian visions at that time.
And I mean, cybernetics is a steering system, actually. And what we're experiencing now is also kind of like a cybernetic, you know, like these DAOs and all these organizations which are controlled in some way through cybernetics. So I think Schöffer was really one of the major, most important artists of that time, I think.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, I think there's no question. And just to really, really quickly tie up Schöffer with kinetic art, I do think that you can tie this line from kinetic art to this cybernetic sculpture of Schöffer. Because these cybernetic sculptures, like Georg was talking about, they involved the automation of the creative process through these feedback loops and audience interaction. And I think that's what's also so important about Vasarely. He was all about interaction and body audience participation as well.
So we are just about running out of time. So how are we going to handle these next few questions, guys?
“And what we're experiencing now is also kind of like a cybernetic, you know, like these DAOs and all these organizations which are controlled in some way through cybernetics.” — Georg Bak 54:25
Conrad House: I think I can maybe squeeze moment eight and nine into one moment so we can quickly cover it. Obviously both happening in 1957. We have John Backus releasing Fortran, which was done through IBM. And then obviously Max Mathews developing MUSIC, which was one of the first computer music systems at Bell Labs. And maybe Peter, you can just quickly touch on maybe how Fortran made generative systems more accessible or programming more accessible, and then maybe touch on the environment around IBM and Bell Labs. How did IBM and Bell Labs, how did those two kinds of institutions help progress the computing space so much?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, sure. So I'll try to keep it brief and allow also Georg to jump in here. But in terms of the importance of Fortran's release in '57, Backus started working on that at IBM in 1954. So he'd been working on it for three years. And it was built around the idea that you could express numerical formulas in programming languages. And it was so different from Hopper, who was using English. This is back to using more mathematics and symbols.
And why Fortran had this lasting impact is it added this higher level of abstraction to programming languages. So before this, if you wanted to program something, you had to have this really deep understanding of the computer's architecture and memory organization. And it was really time consuming and error prone. And you really had to create base instructions just for the machine that you were using. But Fortran allowed for this portability where you could create one program and then it wasn't too difficult to use it from one device to another. So it was just another step, with Hopper, of making computer programming more accessible in the 50s.
And I'll let Georg jump in with anything else if he wants.
Georg Bak: Yeah, there's not much to add. I can maybe just add that really most of the artists were using that programming language, like Vera Molnár, Frieder Nake, Manfred Mohr, Aaron Marcus, Michael Noll. They all used it. So, yeah, keep it short.
Peter Bauman: And then with Max Mathews, this was a computer. He developed MUSIC I. This was developed on the IBM 704 computer. But he did it actually at Bell Labs. And he was the first person to capture and synthesize sound from a live instrument and from a computer composition. And this was basically the first computer music program. Yeah. So, again, I think it's really interesting to note how the first generative music and the first generative text actually preceded computer graphics.
Georg Bak: Also important to mention, I would say, as far as music is concerned, is the Illiac Suite by Hiller and Isaacson. That is probably also one of the early musical pieces. That's also a piece that you can probably download on YouTube.
Conrad House: Thanks for the additional context, Georg. I think we're now at the last moment from this decade. This moment is actually from 1958 and it's John Whitney, who created the first computer animation for the film Vertigo. And Peter, I know that you recently tweeted about how computer animation for films is something that's very under-highlighted in generative art history. I would love it if you could expand briefly on this and maybe also use this moment to introduce the next chapter of our timeline, the 60s, if it's possible.
Peter Bauman: Sorry. What John Whitney made for Vertigo in 1958 is considered the first computer animation, but it was actually created on an analog computer. So what Whitney did was he created a computer and he got this World War II military anti-aircraft gun. So again, we see from the very first moment that we spoke about today to the last, the influence of the military on this decade.
And you can really see how that must have impacted people mentally when they thought about computers. These were these devices that they had never seen before and that were associated with war and the military. And so it really explains why it took decades, really until like the early 80s, late 70s, for the general public to embrace computers and not, I think, in general, think of them as scary. That's when PCs and video game consoles started coming out, like Atari and the C64 in the early 80s. So I think it really did take like 30 years to get over the, I don't know what you want to call it, the stink or the impact of the military on computing technology and computer art.
And with John Whitney, so he used this giant multiple ton military anti-aircraft controller called an M5. And it took five people to operate this machine. And he needed this specific analog computer. And it was considered a computer because it could spin continuously without stopping. And so he attached a camera onto that and then used that spinning camera to record that first computer animation for the film Vertigo.
I know we're over time here, and thank you, everybody, for still listening. Is there anything you wanted to add on to that about Whitney, who's obviously one of the pioneers of animation? Is there anything you want to add to that?
Georg Bak: I think you said it pretty well. I think there's not much to add. I mean, it's maybe something interesting that Hitchcock in Vertigo, that was also Salvador Dalí. He was using always artworks. He was collaborating with a lot of the artists at that time. So it's kind of interesting how the film industry was always integrating artworks.
Conrad House: Yeah, and then that will wrap it up for this week's space covering the 10 moments from the 1950s. I just want to thank Georg again for joining us and giving us these valuable resources and information and helping contextualize some of these moments in a bit better light.
Obviously, just another reminder that if you want to explore more of this timeline, you can visit timeline.lerandom.art to explore each of the chapters more in depth. And then as these next coming weeks come out and more chapters are released, we'll continue to have these spaces to highlight 10 of these moments.
And just thanks again for everybody listening. Thanks again to thefunnyguys for helping host this, and Peter, obviously, for writing this and obviously speaking more in depth on each of these moments. So thank you, everybody.
Peter Bauman: Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Georg, for joining us. It was an honor.
Georg Bak: Bye, guys. And thank you for doing this great timeline as well.
thefunnyguys: Bye.
