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thefunnyguys: Okay, let's get started. Hello everyone, thanks for joining us again for our next Twitter Space. As you guys probably know, we have been working on a timeline of generative art history for many months now, and today we will be discussing chapter number four, which focuses on the 1960s. It is the densest chapter so far, as the world sees the birth of digital generative art. It's our pleasure to discuss the chapter with Le Random's [inaudible], who is the writer of the timeline, and also our special guest, Michael Spalter.
And before I give the mic to our guests, please let me briefly introduce Michael Spalter. Together with Anne Spalter, he has been collecting generative art for over three decades now, which has resulted in one of the most comprehensive generative art collections in the world. Michael Spalter was also the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Rhode Island School of Design from 2011 to 2023. He was also on the inaugural advisory boards of Harvard University's Cultural Enterprise Initiatives, the Nantucket Project and the Whitney Museum of American Art's Digital Art Acquisition Committee. And he has served as a trustee of the International Council of the Louvre for seven years, co-chairing its first permanent endowment.
Michael, thanks for joining us. Could you tell us a bit more about your passion for art, where it came from and also how you started collecting generative art?
Michael Spalter: Well, it's a great pleasure, and it's lovely to see some names that I recognize. This is the first time I've done a Twitter Space, so kindly bear with me.
When I was in college, I had the great pleasure of studying art history. And one of the highlights of my art history experience was taking a course on Impressionism. And there was a young woman in the class who captured my imagination more than Monet or Renoir or Cézanne, and that was Anne Morgan, who would become Anne Morgan Spalter. And everything that I have done, I have done to be able to do that. And I think that the work that I've done with art has been infused by Anne, who to me is really a preeminent champion of generative art and advancing generative art.
So I spent a year writing an honors thesis on how the New York art dealers of the 1960s transformed New York into an epicenter of art. The new [inaudible] these internationally renowned institutions.
While she was doing this, she was contacted by one of the legends at Apple Computer and was asked whether she would consider writing a textbook on the field, which began a six-year odyssey for Anne in writing The Computer in the Visual Arts, which is now considered around the world a standard text. And at the time was a seminal contribution to the field.
Anne is an artist, writer, an educator and also a workaholic. So while Anne was writing this book, which really was a 12-plus hour a day journey, she worked extraordinarily closely with a gentleman named Andy van Dam, who founded Brown's Computer Science Department. Andy is famous for being the father of computer graphics. And those of you who have watched the movie Toy Story will make reference to the character Andy, which is a homage to Andy. He was the first person asked by Bill Gates to join his technical advisory board. And during that time, she also became friends with Alvy Ray Smith, who co-founded Pixar and also founded the New York Institute of Technology.
While she was researching the book, which was the first of its kind, we often would have conversations about the artists whom she was researching and had the great fortune to meet. While that was evolving, back to my own interest in art history, it seemed crystal clear to me that Anne was writing and covering a period of art that I can only describe as being a breakthrough movement.
And throughout art history, we've had these moments in time. It usually takes 50 years or so for a movement to be framed, contextualized and written about. But I said to Anne, because the artists that she was writing about were often marginalized, were absolutely reviled by the traditional art world, and the art market had no interest in showing or representing these artists. So I thought, well, we should go ahead and start collecting some of the works, really as a way to preserve the works, because some of the artists were just toiling at their craft out of passion, and it was unclear whether any of the works would survive.
So that was over 30 years ago. And fast forward today, since we rarely, if ever, sell works of art, especially the earliest works, we now have a collection that has over 1,200 of, I think, some of the most iconic works from the genesis of this movement. So artists that she began to interview and get to know are individuals who are covered by this extraordinary timeline.
And I would say that I haven't done Twitter Spaces because I don't like to promote any groups, but I think that the work that Peter and Jan and the Le Random team has done, as I tweeted out the other day, is truly a gift to the space and with time, I think, to art history itself. So anything that I have done, or Anne and I have done together, in terms of building what is now a collection that has loaned works to MoMA on several occasions, the Pompidou, the V&A, LACMA, the Venice Biennale and countless other museums, has been in the pursuit of advancing this movement, which really, thanks to on-chain generative art, blew up in the last three years.
And what I think is important to understand, and what Le Random has captured in their timeline, is if you were to take a time capsule back to this period of time, there were mainframe computers, which are the size of miniature football fields, with little computing power. Hard to even comprehend how little computer power was in these mainframes. But thanks to some really intrepid souls in different pockets of the world, artists and people that we refer to as tinkerers, which I think we still see today with the explosion in the interest of generative art, that you have true artists and then you have people that I would refer to as tinkerers.
In different pockets of the world, these individuals gained access to corporations, the military or universities, which were really the only people who had these kinds of computers. So I'm just going to pause for a second and have everyone contemplate that now there are over 14 billion different computers, tablets, smartphones. At this moment in history, there were only a few thousand mainframe computers.
And whether it was Hiroshi Kawano founding the Computer Technique Group in Japan, whether it was individuals involved in the New Tendencies movement, which was a gathering in Zagreb, Croatia, whether it was a collaboration in the United States of engineers and artists who founded a group called Experiments in Art and Technology, EAT, or in France, someone like our beloved Vera Molnár, who for 10 years before even gaining access to a computer, which has been covered by Le Random, worked on her Machine Imaginaire.
And the epiphany, I think, that occurred to Anne and I, and really Anne far more so than myself, was in history, we've only had a few universal languages. And I would suggest that the universal languages that we have witnessed as a species has been mathematics, music and code.
So to grasp 30 years ago the significance of these different artists and some tinkerers, and the tinkerer I would categorize as engineers [inaudible] found their way to using the computer and realized that they could create images with the computer. And someone like Michael Noll, who's a dear friend, who Le Random did a beautiful interview with a couple of weeks ago, is someone who's been covered. But there were people at Bell Labs who were experimenting, but I wouldn't say that they were artists but were hybrids of the engineer segueing into the art world.
The first three universally recognized generative artists were Michael Noll, Georg Nees and Frieder Nake. Frieder Nake represents an incredible movement that was born in Stuttgart, Germany. And Frieder, Michael and Georg Nees, who's often considered the first digital generative artist, came onto the scene and people didn't really understand what to make of the work.
“And I would suggest that the universal languages that we have witnessed as a species has been mathematics, music and code.” — Michael Spalter 10:37
I think this was most manifest in Manfred Mohr's seminal show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, where he gave his artist's talk and was literally pelted by individuals with tomatoes because they were so offended. And again, contextualizing this period of time, the traditional art world and those involved in art considered the computer to be this often evil resource that was used by the military or by corporations for the most mundane of purposes. In thinking this... Go ahead.
thefunnyguys: Sorry, Michael, I was just going to say it's interesting to bring up these important exhibitions from 1965, because these are also moments that we, well, actually Peter has selected 10 moments that he believes are amongst the most significant from this decade in generative art history, and he also selected these exhibitions from 1965. So yeah, we'll come back to these in a few minutes.
Michael Spalter: Great. And Peter, interrupt any time you want to guide the conversation, because I'm happy to go any direction you like.
Peter Bauman: Thank you. No, I mean, yeah, that was an amazing introduction, thank you. And hi everybody. Yeah, this is Peter, or Monk Antony. I'm on the Le Random account. I think, yeah, we can go ahead and continue with maybe the rest of the intro, guys, and then yeah, start with some of those moments. But yeah, thank you so much, Michael, and great to have you.
Michael Spalter: Thank you so much. No, of course. So these moments today are now being revisited and reframed. And one of the joys of having this collection, which has been the true labor of love and has required a tremendous amount of resources... Anne and I, when we met, we had no resources. We spent two years debating whether we would buy a sofa or an artwork, and we opted to buy an artwork and use a futon as our sofa.
I like to call this kind of a slingshot theory. The more reviled, the more misunderstood and unappreciated the art movement has been, I think the more it is guaranteed to become a part of the canon of art history. And we're seeing that being played out month after month today, 55, 56, you know, 60 years later. Why don't we, Peter, dive into some of your moments so that we can discuss those, and I can give some flavor and talk about the evolution and revolution of generative art in the canon of art history.
Conrad House: Yeah, I just want to jump in real quickly. And thanks again, Michael, for joining us. It's really an honor to have you as a guest, especially since it's your first Twitter Space. Apologies if my voice is not too good. I'm out in Marfa at the moment and the connection out here may not be the best. But thanks again to Peter for hosting it from the Le Random account.
I just want to quickly ask Peter. I think a lot of people obviously always associate the start of generative art and the generative movement with the 1960s, but this comes nearly in the middle of our timeline at chapter four, and we also split it into two parts. I just want to quickly ask you, what was kind of the reasoning behind splitting this into two parts? And maybe talk a bit more on our chat with A. Michael Noll that we had, discussing some of the Bell Labs movements that happened there, and maybe why we're not highlighting them in this space.
“I like to call this kind of a slingshot theory. The more reviled, the more misunderstood and unappreciated the art movement has been, I think the more it is guaranteed to become a part of the canon of art history.” — Michael Spalter 14:56
Peter Bauman: Yeah, thanks, Conrad. So we did chat with Michael Noll and we talked about the first part of the 1960s, 1960 to 1964. We covered a lot of that material with Michael Noll. We recorded that and we have published that on Twitter, and he covered so much about his own life and his time at Bell Labs. So this talk today will be focused less on Bell Labs and some of those major moments just because we've covered them already with Michael Noll.
[inaudible] We'll talk about that throughout the course of this talk today. And then some of the hardware innovations. This is the first time you start seeing digital displays, operating systems that allow multiple users to share computers simultaneously, things like the General Motors DAC. So obviously, you're starting to see a lot of hardware innovations. And then software, where early in the decade you see John McCarthy with Lisp. You see John Kemeny and Kurtz with BASIC in 1964. So these are kind of some of the main things to just frame the decade. And yeah, maybe we can go ahead and get started with some of the actual moments themselves.
Conrad House: Yeah, that's perfect. I think starting off, we have 1961, where we have kind of the emergence of two massive movements, New Tendencies and Fluxus. And maybe, Peter, you can just expand on this first. What was the birth of these two moments and what was so significant about these? And what do they say about kind of the general direction that art was heading at this time?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, thanks, Conrad. So I think these are the perfect moments to kind of start off talking about this decade, because they both really typified the dematerialization of art that took place throughout this decade. And, you know, Lucy Lippard had this famous book with a very, very long title, [inaudible] from 1966 to 1972, and that's only like a very small part of the title. And it covers this kind of critical period of dematerialization that happens in art in the 1960s. But you know that book starts in 1966. I think this dematerialization started actually in the '50s with the Gutai movement in Japan, but I think it really starts in earnest and gets more globally popular around 1961 with New Tendencies and the beginning of Fluxus.
So New Tendencies was all about the mechanization of art and programmed painting of the François Morellet, and they were very inspired by this Constructivist style and had a very concrete art look. And it was this continuation of the lumino-kinetic sculpture style that we spoke a lot about in Chapter 3 that covered the 1950s.
And in 1961, all of this New Tendencies work was material work. And what I love about New Tendencies is they started in 1961, but you see them grow throughout the decade. And they have these exhibitions that are scattered throughout the decade. And by the time you get to Tendencies 4 in 1969, it's all about digital art and digital output. So we started in 1961 with all material work, and we end in 1969 with digital work. And so New Tendencies really, like Michael has already mentioned, really tells the story of this movement.
And then with Fluxus, it's also about this idea of art as a concept, art as an idea. Also, one of the things they revolutionized was art as intermedia. So this is a concept of art that is so common today, but it was a nascent concept back in 1961. So New Tendencies and Fluxus, they both wanted art to be available to the masses. They both wanted art for everyone and for everybody to be able to produce it. And so they started these things that are still so important today.
And Michael, I'd love to hear your thoughts on New Tendencies and Fluxus and their impact.
Michael Spalter: Absolutely. I would just note, if people are taking notes, there's a book that was written by an extraordinary curator named Margit Rosen. It's entitled A Little-Known Story About a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer's Arrival in Art, which is all about New Tendencies and Bit International. And it covers 1961 to 1973. And it's over 600 pages, incredibly well documented and beautiful images.
New Tendencies was really an intellectual festival where different folks would gather to explore the notion of visual research and what the computer might mean for it. And if you go through Spalter Digital, we have a lot of examples of artists that exhibited at New Tendencies. And there were people like... there are two Zajacs. One was Edward Zajec, who founded the first program in Trieste and then went on to start the Intermedia Department at Syracuse University. He has some exquisite early artworks that I think, you know, when I post, always get a tremendous feedback loop.
But there's a saying that when a nation goes down or society perishes, one condition may always be found: they forgot where they came from. And with so many people now interested in the space, the joy of what you're all doing is that there's such a rich history. And if you look at works like Autoglyphs, for example, and if you look at Vera Molnár's works, Interruptions, it's certainly a child of and almost a replica of what Vera was doing in 1968 when she actually first used output.
The Fluxus movement, which was really a group of incredible people, one being Dick Higgins, who was a poet, and his wife, Alison Knowles, a visual artist, who's still alive. Their daughter actually was my classmate for 13 years. Her name's Hannah Higgins. Hannah wrote a very comprehensive book called Mainframe Experimentalism. And Anne and I directed a number of the contributors to that book.
Fluxus remains vibrant. Fluxus, I think, was more accepted because the group was in New York. I think where you are located has a very critical role in art movements being advanced, up until now, thanks to the power of what we see online. Art has become anywhere, anytime, and invites hundreds of thousands of people to use this, really the most powerful, I think, tool ever in the history of art history.
So when Peter started talking about different tools, if you think about the birth of Impressionism, it was in no small measure due to two things. One was the French box easel, where the artist could strap on their backs an easel and go out into the outdoors and paint. And simultaneously was oil paint, which we take so for granted. But the kinds of paints that were being created at the time were also breakthrough revolutionary contributions to art history. And then finally, the brushes that the artists used.
And with the computer, and what we see with the Fluxus, with the New Tendencies, we're getting a glimpse of what I fervently believe, which is why this has been such an enduring passion and avocation. We're seeing the beginning of what will be something that will be looked at for hundreds and hundreds of years, that you had these men and women coming together.
Vera, who wasn't in New Tendencies but worked very closely with François Morellet and started the GRAV group with her husband, François Molnár, she didn't have access to a computer screen for several years. So when she gained access to a screen, it was, like she likes to say, she was given sight again.
Another interesting thing about the art itself, and the reason a lot of the works were Constructivist, is that when they were using the algorithms, you had to create code that would work with the systems that were available. And it also is taken for granted that a lot of the artists that were producing would have to wait two or three days to actually see their work. So at this time, I think it's very important to realize, again, the Renaissance minds that were grappling with this tool. They couldn't actually see their output for two to three days. And I find that to be extraordinary, and books will be written about that.
In terms of the history, there's so many, back to the artists, so many currents and flavors that resonate with the canon of art history. And Peter, you might just want to comment on that a little bit more.
Peter Bauman: Thank you. Yeah, you covered so much there, and it was such an interesting response. And maybe one way that we can frame it is to go on to the next moment. And the next moment from our kind of 10 moments that we're looking at is really looking at Frieder Nake and when he started making computer art in 1963.
And so Michael, you might know more about this, but as far as I know, Frieder was the first European to make computer art that, as far as we understand, is algorithmically generated. I know that A. Michael Noll was the first person, at least as I understand it, to make digital computer art globally, and the year before, in 1962, with Patterns by 7090 at Bell Labs. And then it seems like Georg Nees started in 1964, so a year after Frieder, when he started working with Max Bense in Stuttgart, which you've mentioned already, Michael. And then I believe some of those other well-known Europeans like Franke and Molnár and Mohr, they didn't really get started until 1968 or 1969.
So Michael, is that how you see it too? Do you see Frieder as the kind of beginning of computer art in Europe, or how do you see it?
Michael Spalter: I think that one of the joys about this period of art history is that it's still being written. So Frieder and Georg Nees, you know, a lot of people credit Georg Nees as being the first and then Frieder as a student. But in terms of the actual dates, I still think that's out for art historians to kind of nail.
I do want to, you know, again reinforce that Vera was creating algorithms for computer art. She was creating algorithms for 10 years, but she just didn't have the access that Georg and Frieder did. So if we talk about physical output, I think that that's up for grabs as to, you know, what is the very first work, which I think you covered. But we have the very first analog computer work in history, which was done by Ben Laposky, his Oscillon number four, which is in the collection. We have several of his Oscillons. That seems pretty well documented.
But I think that, you know, whether it was Frieder, Nees or Noll, it's of historic interest. I think that the greater interest to people who are in the space is the artistic influence that these individuals had. And, you know, back to currents in art history, one of the things that I find interesting is that Nake has a very famous work, we have several different versions of it, which is a Homage to Paul Klee. And, of course, Vera Molnár has several homages to Paul Klee as well. So Klee's influence on these artists was quite profound.
So I think that Hiroshi Kawano, who we don't hear as much about because his work is, I don't think, exhibited as much, but back to, again, people not accepting the work. Michael Noll and Hiroshi Kawano also were deeply influenced by Piet Mondrian. Michael Noll more as an experiment, where he created a work that, there's a famous story, which you probably already covered, but he created an iconic work by Mondrian. People at Bell Labs couldn't tell which was the Mondrian versus the computer output that Michael generated. Kawano made a whole series of artistic works influenced and inspired by Mondrian.
And, again, when we have scholars coming out of Japan, I think playing a more fulsome historical analysis will have a better sense of the timing there. I met one of Kawano's protégés, Yoshiyuki Abe. I actually went to Japan twice to meet with him. In Japan, back to Kawano, the average Japanese person, I think, is about three or four years old. But Kawano's protégé, who's still alive, Yoshiyuki Abe, he built his own computer and software to create art. So that, to me, is even a more interesting question. Was he one of the first people to ever create a personal computer, which may predate the Mac? And I think that there will be a tremendous amount of research around that question.
There's also a lovely family, the Beckmann family. And Otto Beckmann was also using the computer in the early '60s. He and his son, Oskar, who's still alive, it's called the Beckmann Archive. And we have a lot of examples of his work on our site. His son built his computer. So I think, you know, to comprehend creating and building your own computer to create is kind of staggering.
The artistic question, which Anne has covered, you know, throughout her own art and throughout her writings and lectures around the world, is what's evolutionary and what's revolutionary? And I think that one of the joyous things that we see is the universal acceptance that the revolutionary aspects of generative art, that up until these people came on the scene, and certainly today, artists have never been able to do certain things, thanks to the power of the computer, thanks to the power of the tools at their disposal.
And again, just historically, people thought Anne and I were nuts, you know, for collecting these works. And we, you know, have a home in New York City, very involved with New York cultural institutions. As I said, Anne founded the programs at Brown and RISD. I was the chair of the board of RISD, which is one of the preeminent art and design schools in the world.
What started taking place in the last decade is RISD has the third largest university art museum in the United States. It's Harvard, Yale, RISD. We started having all these curators come to visit our home, and they wouldn't go to the RISD Museum. So it was really kind of embarrassing, because the RISD Museum is a jewel. But we would have these people from MoMA or the V&A showing up in Rhode Island to come to our house, traipsing through our daughters' toys, to come look at this stuff.
And one of the big light bulbs came off for us was when a guy named Doug Dodds from the V&A contacted us and asked if he could come see our collection. And because he had a British accent, I, of course, was impressed and said, yeah, come on over and you can stay with us. And for those who may know Doug, he's a very elegant gentleman who spent his career at the V&A. And he came into our home and he literally took like a thousand photos and I was getting nervous. I was telling Anne, it's like kind of weird how he was photographing every single thing in our house, you know, like just hundreds and hundreds of photos.
And that, thanks to Doug and the V&A, was another seismic movement after Patric Prince, who was a curator at SIGGRAPH, which was one of the important forums, donated her collection to the V&A. Again, I'm going to pause because I go in different directions, Peter and Jan. Stay on track.
Peter Bauman: No, thank you. I mean, these nuggets, I guarantee we are all enjoying them. And just speaking very briefly of some of those tools that you were talking about during this period, I think it's so interesting that Nake made this work on an ER56, which is this room-sized mainframe computer. And so I still think it's so interesting that, you know, this early plotted work, like you were talking about, Michael, it took days until they could actually see the outputs. But Frieder was working with this computer the size of a room. I mean, obviously something that would not be recognizable as a computer as we know it today. So I just think that that is super fascinating.
And then what you talked about with Paul Klee, I mean, what I think is so important there is that Klee's work really highlights the genealogy and the importance of Bauhaus. And it shows how that Bauhaus influence really made it to these computer artists and really ties together some of those strings of art history.
But I think now we're going to maybe move on to the next moment. Is that right, Jan?
thefunnyguys: Yes, yes. We can move to the next one. One last thing on Paul Klee I also want to mention is that his influence seems to continue, as William Mapan just recently also released a collection inspired by Paul Klee. So that has been going on since 1965 all the way through 2023. It's quite interesting.
But the next moment that we have listed and we would love to discuss is from 1966. And more specifically, it's about a movement that started in Asia. In 1966, the CTG, which stands for Computer Technique Group, was founded in Tokyo. And this is a group that intended to function not only as a design office, but also as a think tank, and is widely credited for the pioneering concept of the artist as a system creator. And Michael, I want to ask you, as you have collected work by many CTG artists, what important contributions do you think that these artists made to the generative art space?
Michael Spalter: Well, I think, again, we won't do justice to any of these people in such a short time, but I think it's important to say that the Computer Technique Group and Kawano was really the father of that movement. And as I mentioned, Abe was one of his protégés.
One of the interesting things they did, and there was a gentleman named William Fetter at the Boeing Corporation, they were some of the first to make representational artwork. So there's some very famous works that they've made of important historic figures. One would be John Fitzgerald Kennedy as an example. And then, of course, more of the abstract, rich, deep, beautiful colors that Kawano played with and worked with, which were quite exceptional.
There's a portfolio from Cybernetic Serendipity that includes work by members of that group. I can't recall the name, Peter. You might know.
Peter Bauman: I think it's called Running Cola.
Michael Spalter: Yeah, Running Cola Is Africa, maybe. Yeah, but it's done by some Japanese artists who show the kind of evolution of man. But it's a very powerful, iconic work. And that came out of Tokyo.
Again, this all is taking place because individuals at different pockets in the world who eventually would get to know each other but initially wouldn't. And that I find, you know, so staggeringly beautiful, that you had the creative mind at play in different centers and in different places, and the world getting access.
And again, one of the big focuses of what we've done, thanks to Anne, is we never want to underestimate how marginalized women were in the history of art and in the history of generative art, which is why we have probably the largest private collection in the world of Frieder Nake, Vera Molnár, a lot of these artists, because we've been doing this for so long. But for Vera, she had to go to the university where her husband taught and log in under his name at night, or when there were strikes in France, to gain access.
So a lot of the early individuals that we're discussing are men. I know we're going to move to Chuck Csuri at some point, but the role of women in the birth of generative art cannot be in any way, shape or form underestimated. And it has been.
And just as a side note, because it's, again, a personal, deep affront to me, having watched Anne for 35 years really pioneer so much, to see how this patriarchy continues in the space. And I think that what you're doing is helping to break that. And there are some other pockets. But yesterday, you know, I saw some person, I don't know who they were, list their 10 top generative artists. There wasn't a single woman, a single BIPOC artist, there wasn't a member of the LGBTQI community, which can cover all of those in that list.
And I think that has been a great disservice today, that we've had people who are not art lovers but are speculators, who... we have never thought about our works in terms of monetary value. But the monetary value has attracted a lot of people who I think would be trading, you know, bucks if they could make a buck. And that has unfortunately, I think, taken away from some of the current extraordinary artists who traditionally in the history of art have not been included. And I hope that what you're doing, what some of the people on this, some of the listeners are doing, will help break that.
You know, one of the great joys for me personally was meeting Sasha. I think I was talking to Sasha Stiles as an example, and introducing her to Alison Knowles, who, again, is one of the founders of Fluxus. And we arranged for Sasha to be in the exhibition with Alison, which I think is a great moment for her. So I'll pause there.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, thank you. And it's such a good point, of course. And not only is there some gender imbalance, but I think there's also regional imbalance, which is why it's important to highlight massively important contributions from artists in places like Japan, which you have mentioned Kawano several times.
And with CTG, what I'll just quickly add on about CTG, they're one of my favorite groups. You know, they were so critical to the 1960s. They were eventually showed at Cybernetic Serendipity, like a lot of these artists that we're talking about today. But what was important about them was that they were really some of the first to think about the artist using the computer to create a system. And by that, I kind of mean basically the idea of long-form generative art today, as we think about it, where you make one system that has, you know, a lot of different variations as outputs for that system. And CTG were some of the first people to think about that.
If you look at some of Frieder's work from before this, and Noll's work, they all seem to use different algorithms that weren't necessarily related or a single system. And you can kind of see that by just looking at a lot of the work from Frieder at that time. So that's what I think is especially important about CTG, and what I wanted to go ahead and highlight there.
We are, I know we're getting just a few minutes left, I guess, in the space. I don't know how people are feeling. I'm having a great time, especially listening to Michael. But I think we'll go on and move to the next moment if possible.
Conrad House: Yeah, we'll move on to moment number five. And obviously, Michael, if you are happy to stay on for more than the hour, we're more than happy to continue the space. I think there's so many kind of anecdotal references and connections that you're making that are super insightful and I think stuff that we've never heard before. So always great to have you continue speaking. We're moving on to the next moment.
Michael Spalter: Since Regina joined the call, I'll stay on as long as we want. Regina will keep us here as long as she wants us here.
Conrad House: So, moving on to our next moment. In 1966, we have kind of what Michael has already mentioned, Experiments in Art and Technology forming, and kind of one of the most influential shows, Nine Evenings, that was put on. And maybe we can ask Peter firstly, can you kind of talk about the impact that the Nine Evenings kind of had on the generative art movement, and kind of the big influence that Experiments in Art and Technology kind of had in the next coming decades?
Peter Bauman: Sure. And I love how I kicked off the space talking about how we won't talk about Bell Labs, and here we go with the Nine Evenings. But yeah, you can't avoid it. And also Noll wasn't necessarily involved with this. But you know, Nine Evenings and Experiments in Art and Technology was all about collaboration. And this event in particular, it was the very well-known Neo-Dada artist Robert Rauschenberg collaborating with Billy Klüver from Bell Labs, and they worked together pairing different engineers and scientists and programmers with different artists of that day, pairing them together for a show that featured, you know, some of the most avant-garde and intrepid artists, including, you know, Deborah Hay and Lucinda Childs and, you know, some of these really important conceptual artists that Michael has mentioned. You know, a lot of them were women and a lot of them haven't gotten the due that they deserve here.
And so Nine Evenings was this collaboration, and it was this really special moment in the combination of technology and art history. It would be radical even for this day. I mean, there was dance, there was music, it was very interactive and collaborative. And I encourage you to YouTube it or watch some of the old videos from the event, because it's better to see it than for me to explain it. And it was such an important event that EAT basically formed as an ongoing organization after Nine Evenings.
And yeah, Michael, go ahead, please. What would you like to add about Nine Evenings? And why was it such an impactful event for this decade?
Michael Spalter: Well, I'd say that Experiments in Art and Technology has had, you know, this incredible happening with the Nine Evenings, but they were chapters across the United States. And they, just like their British companions, had these chapters and newsletters. And, you know, at some point we'll put online our ephemera, which is over 3,000 books and brochures. And we have every single newsletter that Experiments in Art and Technology ever put out.
I think one of the reasons it gained so much notoriety was because Rauschenberg was already, you know, very known in the digital world. He was known in the traditional art world. And Billy Klüver was his lover at the time. So they together really fostered this.
To me, of equal, if not greater, importance was the work of Jasia Reichardt, who... I don't know if this is on the timeline, but I'm sure you've discussed Cybernetic Serendipity, which she held in London at the ICA. And it was the same concept of bringing together the arts, not just the visual arts, but all different kinds of art forms married with the computer. And those two different pockets of activity, again, in the Western part of the world, in the European continent and in the United States, has been documented and will continue to be documented. And I think it speaks to, again, the very rich history that today we can look back upon and learn from.
And there will be many, and I know this, again, because we're often a first stop for scholars. The great Leslie Jones of LACMA, you know, wanted to do her exhibition. She came to visit us three, four times. It's fascinating to see traditional curators who were not, you know, of the generation that knew only personal computers come into the space and look at it with their art historical lens.
But one of the reasons I did flag Regina is that the understanding of the hardware and software and the requirements to actually use these different tools throughout history will be the subject of tremendous scholarship in museum exhibitions.
So I think that what will be of equal interest to me is when we talk about New Tendencies in Zagreb, these people getting together, including Umberto Eco, by the way, which is kind of fascinating. We're going to hear more and more about other groups that are organically formed that are in the literature but may not be fully known.
There's a book which I know Le Random is aware of. It's written by a person that reached out to Anne. Anne was one of his thesis advisors. His name's Grant Taylor. He wrote When the Machine Made Art, I think, which he graciously dedicated part of the book to us. That's a very thorough contribution for people interested in the origins of the machine. And I think that's a very important part of the digital arts. That's worth reading for anyone who's interested. I would strongly recommend it.
thefunnyguys: That's indeed a great recommendation, Michael. It's a mandatory reading at Le Random, this book. The next moment we would like to discuss is from 1967, and it's focused on Sol LeWitt. Because in 1967, Sol wrote his Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. And two years later, he started his iconic series of wall drawings.
And Peter, I would like to ask you the following question. Why does a generative art fan have to be familiar with Sol LeWitt's conceptual work? And how would you explain the relationship with contemporary generative art? Because at the first sight, there doesn't seem to be any technology involved. Why is it still related to generative art movements?
Peter Bauman: Yeah, it's a great question. And it goes back to that seriality of CTG's work and starting to think about generative work in terms of systems. So in 1967, the other major theme that this ties into is the dematerialization of art, which is perhaps maybe just, you know, one of the main themes of this decade in general for art history. And Sol LeWitt really plays a major role in that. And he plays a major role in this by coining the phrase conceptual art in this essay from 1967. This is where he gives the movement its name. And also, this is where the very famous quote, the idea becomes a machine that makes the art, comes from. And it's where he talks about the idea being the most important aspect of a work.
And that's such an important element of generative art to this day, where because process is such a critical element, it means that concept as well, the idea and then the execution, the process of the system, is very important. And so he does this in 1967, he kind of coins conceptual art. And then in 1969 is when he begins his wall drawings. [inaudible] art and instruction-based art that, again, is still so influential to this day.
And, yeah, I'd love for Michael to jump in and add anything about...
Michael Spalter: Well, I would say a couple of quick things. One is that Manfred Mohr, early on when we were describing or trying to explain to people our interest, if you look at some of LeWitt's work and some of Manfred's work, they're almost indistinguishable. And, in fact, I believe we'd have to confirm this with Manfred, I think Manfred actually drew some of the LeWitt wall drawings at one point. But Manfred, because, again, he was using this new tool that was particularly in the late '60s, because of the Vietnam War, associated with the military-industrial complex, he was just not given the time of day. So I think that we'll see some very interesting push and pull around this. Their use... You know, LeWitt definitely was creating his own algorithms. They were just executed by human beings. And Manfred was, of course, creating it with code.
There's also a very seminal figure whose name is Sonia Sheridan. I don't know if you've covered Sonia or you will. But she was an American artist who, in 1969, founded the Generative Systems group at the Art Institute of Chicago and has a very important role, and I would urge you to delve into her life and work. She was an honorary editor of Leonardo. Leonardo, for decades, was a go-to place for artists interested in the space and is just another very rich, extraordinary resource for anyone interested in the history of generative art and digital art. And that is a still-going concern, and their influence cannot be, again, overstated.
Peter Bauman: Yeah, that's a really good point, and Sonia will play a big part in the next chapter of the '70s with her role in Chicago there with generative systems. But yeah, do we want to try to squeeze in another question or two, guys? How are we feeling here?
Conrad House: Yeah. It's kind of up to Michael. Do you want to cover a couple more moments? Maybe just at least two more we can cover quickly?
Michael Spalter: Sure.
Conrad House: Great. All right. Sounds good. Yeah, I think we'll skip over number seven, which was regarding Charles Csuri's early work, but I think a lot of people here are all familiar with Charles Csuri and kind of the large Renaissance man he was, with his... I mean, he wasn't just like a veteran and an all-American football star, but he kind of helped a lot of kind of 3D computer graphics contributions and helped kind of...
Michael Spalter: He was born on July 4th, 1922 or '23. He was just about to be 100 years old when he passed about a year and a half ago. And he also, you know, again, back to these different characters who have such rich histories. He was the captain of the Ohio State football team, which when he was captain, he led them to a national championship. And then went to World War II, where he actually fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was given a bronze medal for valor.
He created at Ohio State, again, back to these pockets, their group. And Tina Rivers Ryan speaks very eloquently and writes eloquently about his work Sine Curve Man, which is one of the only works. And I owe this to listening to and reading, you know, Tina's struggling and heartfelt emotions about this work, which we acquired at auction.
And if you look at his work and you look at Tyler Hobbs, there are a lot of parallels between some of Tyler's works and Chuck Csuri, specifically around Tyler's iterations of birds. Csuri did animations. The Museum of Modern Art has in their permanent collection his Hummingbird animation, as well as in a couple of shows that we loaned works to MoMA. That's regularly shown. But he was certainly one of the key figures in advancing the field.
Just a historical footnote. His roommate in college was Roy Lichtenstein, which is, you know, [inaudible]
Peter Bauman: ...great display of Random War, which is probably one of his most influential pieces. And yeah, just kind of a huge legacy.
Michael Spalter: We were fortunate to acquire the original Random War, which is in the Spalter Digital Collection, from Caroline. It's such an incredible piece. You know, again, the period of time and great agita in the country around the Vietnam War. And I'm not seeing many works that speak to the existential crisis that the United States is undergoing with the last hellish president of the United States. And I'm not seeing works addressing that, but hopefully there'll be some.
Peter Bauman: And I can't wait for a conversation that I have with Caroline about her father. And, you know, she was also so involved with his work. So I can't wait to speak to her and release that conversation coming up on our editorial section. But yeah, I did want to...
Michael Spalter: I did. I did arrange an interview with Caroline and, you know, that wonderful Alex from Right Click Save. And it was Caroline paired with Desmond Paul Henry's daughter, who wrote a PhD on her father, who is really one of the first British artists to use not a digital computer but an analog computer. You might want to read that.
Conrad House: Yeah, I think Paul Henry's kind of analog system that he made from an old bombsight machine that he got from a military surplus store is super fascinating and also was exhibited at the LACMA exhibition too. So those are great to see.
And as we kind of jump onto our next moment, this is something that we've all talked about a few times already during the spaces. But it's 1968 and it's Cybernetic Serendipity. And obviously in 1968, Jasia Reichardt curated Cybernetic Serendipity. This was kind of the first international computer art exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. And when we kind of asked around to advisers and a lot of the generative artists that we admire what kind of the top three most important moments in the history of computer art are... [inaudible]
Michael Spalter: ...Reichardt, who's still alive, and you should definitely, more than getting me to speak, get her to speak. And she was and is a brilliant visionary curator who saw the potential and acted on it and brought together, you know, so many extraordinary men and women who are in the space from all over the world. And I think over a hundred thousand people went through the exhibition. There's a book called Cybernetic Serendipity which one can still purchase, you know, from rare books dealers. And it brought to the fore that something really unique was happening in the world of art thanks to, again, probably the most powerful tool ever created in humanity, which was the computer. And again, it was not just visual art, it encompassed many different forms of art and the artist's interaction with the tools.
Peter Bauman: And yeah, this is what I tell people. If you kind of just want like the CliffsNotes of generative art history, to study Cybernetic Serendipity, it's that important and it's that comprehensive, which is, I think, really what's important, what's critical about it. And Michael, yeah, if you know Jasia, or if anybody listening does, I mean, she's probably my number one idol and the number one person that I'd love to speak to and have a conversation with and contribute to the timeline. And so if you are interested in that, and if anybody else knows her, I would absolutely be more than thrilled to speak to her.
Michael Spalter: It would be beyond a thrill. I'll ask Anne, because I'm pretty sure that she has interacted with her on several occasions. And there was, you know, yeah, again, this is back to the misunderstood role of women in this incredible ecosystem. And again, [inaudible] for decades. I actually went to school with the head of it. He's the son of the founder of the gallery. He decided to enter this space and did a partnership with another major group all familiar to us. And his description of the space was so nauseating to me because it was all about, again, just men.
And I think that the incentive, since this has been around for 50 years, was watching some people in this space two years ago become extraordinarily wealthy. And it's unfortunate because you've had a number of extraordinary people devoted to this who have never seen economic fortune but have played such a seminal role.
You know, there's a woman, Kelani Nichole, who has the Transfer Gallery that celebrated its 10th anniversary. Just a number of people who've done this really with less than nothing but their love for and advancement of this period of art history, whether generative or digital. But there are a number of folks like that in the world who have not been properly championed and celebrated in a way that they could have been. And I hope you all will do that.
thefunnyguys: I think, Michael, this is a good bridge to our last moment from 1968, which is a year in which Vera Molnár starts producing generative art with her Interruptions series. I believe she's also one of these people we're talking about that have been working on their art for many, many decades and had to wait a very long time to be celebrated across the globe. And I also believe you have one of the most comprehensive, if not the most comprehensive, Vera Molnár collections in existence. Is it safe to say that she's one of your favorite generative artists? And would you be able to expand on her significance within the story?
Michael Spalter: Well, I first would say I love Vera Molnár. I love her as a human being. I love her as an artist. And I love what she represents in terms of human potentiality. And I'm also pleased to share, which is probably not known by anyone, but the Centre Pompidou will be launching an exhibition starting November 15th through February 15th to mark and celebrate Vera's centennial birthday, which is January 5th of 2024.
[inaudible] written about, has been written about, and then just kind of bowed out for a number of decades and has resurfaced. Vera has never swayed from her love of art. And if you go back to the arc of her interests and systems in the Machine Imaginaire in the '50s till today, you have someone who for 73 years has been producing work daily. I think maybe there are a few weeks because of injury that she's not been creating. So she is someone that we revere.
It's clear that the traditional art world is increasingly revering Vera and it will be no surprise to me that when we fast forward, which has already begun, Vera will be in every major museum collection in the world. I'm delighted that our friends at MoMA have begun to acquire her work. The National Gallery of Art has acquired her work. The Morgan Library, which is interesting, was donated a work by Agnes Gund. Agnes Gund is really one of the grand stewards of modern art and was president of the Museum of Modern Art for many years and has done a tremendous amount. But Aggie gave the Interruptions piece to the Morgan.
And I think that anyone who wants to be, you know, inspired and empowered would be well served to look at Vera. There are also people who are less known like Colette Bangert, who's in Kansas. Colette's 94 years old. She and her husband, Charles Bangert. Also there's just, again, such richness here, and what you're doing, helping to memorialize it, is really glorious. And you continuing to learn about scholars like Margit, Darko Fritz and others. And to me, again, I cannot speak highly enough about Tina Rivers Ryan, Regina, who's on the call, Charlotte Kent and others who are taking a real scholarly approach and have been trained in a way that few have to frame, contextualize and share with the larger world what we're all celebrating today and through your work.
Peter Bauman: Yeah. Thank you, Michael, so much. And I mean, we are trying to do a small bit, and you highlighted some of the other voices in the space that are contributing massively. And, you know, we are standing on the shoulders of giants, including yourself, but also including names you've mentioned like Lucy Lippard and Copper Giloth.
And just to really wrap up and talk about Molnár. I just love the story of how she started working with computers back in 1968, how she had to, you know, she was at the University of Paris in Orsay, and she was at the computer center there and had to beg the attendant to actually let her in and use it. And when she explained that she was trying to use the computers to make art, I mean, they thought that, you know, she might need medication is what she said. So it's such a beautiful story that, you know, after this Machine Imaginaire, which we ended the last chapter with at the 1950s, chapter three, now we're ending chapter four and this space with [inaudible]
Michael Spalter: In the past year, she did her first on-chain generative work, which was done with the help of another incredible woman, Sofia Garcia, and Michael Bouhanna at Sotheby's. We connected them. And she also did this incredible AI project with Paul Mouginot in Paris. And so here she is, she was 99, she was experimenting with AI and on-chain generative art with Martin Grasser. And the works were just breathtaking.
So I think that that spirit, that innocence, and for, again, the space, which those artists who are struggling and trying to see a future, I think that Vera is, to me, the North Star for everyone. If you are persistent and determined and you want to stay true to your vision, eventually the world will come to you. It's just never, never give up. And that's what Vera embodies.
thefunnyguys: Yeah, it's beautifully put. Sorry, I was just going to mention that I also wanted to restate that our name, Le Random, or le random in French, is also inspired by Vera Molnár, who pointed to randomness, or le random in French, as the key creative force in generative art. So yeah, I think it's an amazing, amazing message to close the conversation at. And I really want to thank you, Michael, for taking the time and having this amazing chat with us. It was very insightful and a real honor to have you on, to have you for your first Twitter Space. Thank you so much.
Michael Spalter: Well, I'm very, you know, I don't want to sound old, but as I told you, Jan, from our first contact, I'm very proud of what you're doing and excited that you all are doing this from what I can see with the right spirit. And it's lovely. And in real contrast to some of the individuals in this space who I'm beginning to myself revile, because they don't care about the space. They care about money and just money. So I love that we have passionate people who see the beauty of this movement, which I think will be on par with the Impressionists or any other great art movement. And we're all playing a role in it.
“If you are persistent and determined and you want to stay true to your vision, eventually the world will come to you. It's just never, never give up.” — Michael Spalter 1:13:28
And I would just finalize by saying, if it were not for Anne Spalter, I wouldn't be on this call. So I want to, you know, I'm much more loud. I'm more loud than Anne, but Anne has played such a role in the history of this space, advancing others. So I don't think she's on this call, but she's the person to shout out, not me. Thank you.
Peter Bauman: Thank you, Michael, so much. And yes, thank you to Anne. She's one of our advisors and one of the people we respect the most in this space. And Michael, it was, yeah, such a pleasure to speak to you. We've been DMing back and forth for forever, but, you know, you're somebody that's been there for a long time. You're somebody that I look up to so much. And it's been a pleasure to speak to you. And I hope that we can talk about this more because I feel like we could go on all day. So thank you so much, Michael. It's been a real pleasure. And thank you, everybody, for listening.
thefunnyguys: Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Hope to see you guys soon.
