03: Timeline Ch 3—Analog Era (1950s) with Georg Bak

Hey guys, thanks for joining us again. Hey, Garrick, thanks for joining us. I'm just giving you the mic. Hi everyone, thanks for having me. Garrick back is a digital art specialist, particularly known for his expertise in computer and charity arts, but also has a deep interest in digital photography and early NFD 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 Automotive Manch in collaboration with Jason Bailey. Does that sound right, Garrick? Am I missing some important things? Yeah, I think that's pretty much right. I mean, I started. I mean, I used to have a gallery as well and I was specialized on generative photography. Actually, I also did a large exhibition with Jacques-Card Tapestries. I were created by digital artists. I was like 10 years ago or something. Yeah, I mean, I've been curating a few exhibitions with NFTs and digital art. I didn't know that you had your own gallery, Garrick. When was this? Oh, that's a good question. We closed, wait a minute, I think we closed 2017. From 2010 to 2017, I believe. Okay. I was called a "Shoybline on Bach". 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? Well, actually, I got fascinated in 1990s. We had an institution in Basel, which was showing internet art. And that really amazed me, 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 see the shows. And I was also interested in the early days of digital art. But that was kind of like an interest, but it was professionally not really what I was involved with. At that time, there 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. But it was very, very niche. And certainly you didn't see anything in the art market. So I kind of. But that's where I started. And when you started in the '90s, like did you expect this like a digital art scene to grow exponentially? Or was it just out of. Yeah, I'm just curious to hear, like did you expect the. What happened in the last 30 years and where we are now? Well, you know, it's kind of funny. I remember I was. That's when I met the creator of Clay 02. His name is Jhon, this case. It's a Swiss artist and he never dared to call himself artist at that time. But he was making like an amazing artwork, which was 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 HEC collection. And yeah, I was having discussions with him. And I always say, "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. But it never took off. And I was really surprised at that time. But then we had this exhibition at K-2R Scallery called Perfect and Priceless. And I remember he showed up at the exhibition where 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. I mean, we even had NFTs by Loverlabs on the platform, which didn't sell at $30. So I think they don't exist anymore. But I mean, yeah, but I felt later when the NFTs came, I felt now we have the right technology and this could take off. But a lot of the artists from the '90s, I think they really, some of them also gave up. And I don't think they believed that the Jalard would ever be successful. It's interesting that you mentioned Perfect and Priceless, Girok. Because I actually interviewed Girok fast just a few weeks ago. And we published the article like this week. And she also mentions this exhibition. Yeah, it was very, very interesting, like how ahead of time it already was, like with pieces by Rian Meyers, CryptoPunks and some other, yeah, very important works. 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 Abbaus in the show. I think Kevin is probably one of the major artists who was always creating value systems. And, yeah, that in particular, I thought was very interesting in the early days of CryptoArt. You know, all these coins and the idea of creating value and that's how our friends, or the piece, remember the piece, where they scope this. But you could just mine a currency and it was just very inflationary. And, yeah, obviously Rian Meyers, he created all kinds of interesting conceptual artworks that time. Thanks for that introduction, Giorgana. Thanks for joining us. Obviously, it's an honor to have you on the space, especially for the 1950s. And thanks to the funny guys for the introduction and obviously Peter, Monk Anthony 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 kind of highlight ten of our favorite moments from the timeline chapter. Obviously, these ten 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.larandum.art to kind of explore along with us this chapter of the 1950s. I think I've just started out with asking Peter a quick question before we jump into these ten moments. I think a lot of people say that, "Generative and computer art" kind of has a history that goes back to the 60s. And Peter, why was it kind of important to also highlight the 1950s? Yeah, it's a good question. And a lot of people do say that the kind of the history of this movement goes back to the 60s. And even the very venerated Leslie Jones who curated the lack my exhibition earlier this year was 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 kind of like 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 a generative art and for digital art in general. So, so many of the advancements from this decade. So, we have the artistic advancements of analog computer graphics from Mary Ellen Butte and Ben Leposky, but they work with also graphs. There's also the birth of conceptualism with Alan Capro and happenings and John Cage and NeoData. Then we have the birth of generative music with John Cage and Max Matthews at Bell Labs and generative texts with Straitsy with the Mark I and then also analog computer generation with John Whitney Senior. So, we have all of those artistic advancements in the 50s and then there are the hardware advancements like whirlwind and sage, which were funded by the US military, and then software advancements like Grace Hopper inventing general program languages and then John Backness at IBM inventing Fortran. So it's just such a, so many of the, those artistic and hardware and technological and conceptual kind of 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. - You mentioned the whirlwind computer, Peter, and that actually brings us to the first moments we want to discuss more specifically like the MIT and the US Navy demonstrating the whirlwind computer for the first time in 1951. I was wondering, Giorg, if you could expand on the significance of this specific computer, but maybe also like while touching on the broader impact the military has had on generative art. - Well, the military was definitely always the driver for technology. And I mean, the first computer is the touring 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 to choose the Anyac. The Anyac is also, but I think they were all in the late 40s. I mean, 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. I actually kinda, by chance, I've found a really nice NFT on super rare 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 Barrett's code and data first AI work sold at Christie's a few years ago. So they became kinda famous for that. And 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 subtitle that you called it a proto, I think, proto computer art or proto digital art because it was really the proto digital art. As far as, I mean, if you look at these very early artworks by Ben Lephowski or Herbert Trunke and so forth, they were actually done on analog computers or still graph 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. Yeah, I think, thank you, Gerig. I mean, of course, coming from you, that means a lot and we are 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. If just to kind of jump into about the whirlwinds, so there isn't, I included it in the timeline and it's such an important part of kind of computer generated, a computer generated imagery history is, well, a couple of things and Gerig, you touched on it too, is it really gets home kind of the magnitude of US military impact on the development of computers and therefore, you know, computer art. So this whirlwind was funded by the US Navy and it was actually meant to be this kind of programmable flight simulator to kind of simulate this flight environment. And what was important about it is it was kind of, it was the first real, it was the first computer, digital computer that operated in real time. So it was this big evolution and computing technology where you could actually see on a display with a CRT display, you could see in real time graphics and tasks with this oscilloscope screen. And it was just a really interesting project because it was developed at MIT and it was funded by the US military, by the Navy. And it was actually so expensive that even the office of the Naval Research Budget was completely used on this project and it was basically forced to shut out. And because even the US military found it so expensive to kind of develop these computers back in the day. And eventually MIT kind of convinced the another branch of the US military to buy dozens of these whirlwind computers for another kind of military project called SAGE, which was semi-automatic ground environment. This was this air defense system. So one US branch of the military developed it and then basically sold it to another branch. So it really does kind of highlight how involved the military was in this kind of early development of computers and computer art, but also a genuine important advancement in computer generated imagery. Thanks for the additional information of the first programmer, Giorg, I think that's a really interesting highlight from kind of who first used the whirlwind machine. And I think it's really important that we also highlight kind of these military roots that kind of started these early prototype computers because I think this is where you see a lot of the early stigmas arise from computer art and not being accepted from kind of like 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 kind of as we jump into like our next moment from 1952, we start to talk about text-based systems and Christopher Stotchese, Love Letters, and then obviously Theo Let's's Stochastics text. Maybe Peter, you can expand maybe on like how these early form of text-based systems and kind of generative texts help lead to the likes of Noel, Nauke, and Knees and how they kind of influence them to create more computer art. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's a really interesting question. So I've actually read before that Noel, Nauke, and Knees were inspired by Strichey and Love Letters. And I'd be really-- it's very bizarrely enough, we're going to be actually kind of at UNI. We'll be speaking to A Michael Null tomorrow. So we can actually-- this is actually something that I'd be curious to ask him myself, is if he was aware of Strichey's Love Letters at the time and if it impacted him at all. But in terms of what I could say for myself, like this is arguably-- and I'd love to get Derek's take as well in his opinion-- but you could make the case that this is the first digital art. Because so Christopher Strichey's Love Letters, they were these randomly generated sentences that express love by a computer. Or it would be adverb, and it would be adorable, or beautiful. And it would choose a random one and create-- a sentence and these were created on the Mark 1 which was developed at Harvard and the 50s and that was a digital computer. So this was, you could make an argument that this is the first digital art and at the very least this is some of the very earliest forms, 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 kind of the birth of digital art and it obviously is a hugely impactful moment for generative text and generative poetry as well. As you know, this was the kind of the earliest obviously the earliest digital computer art as well. So I think it's just important to kind of take away 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. Gair, do you agree that this is the first digital art? 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 dies composition or in the ninth to 12th century there was a very interesting Arabic Islamic movement called 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 what I would agree with is that this is most probably the first generative poetry. I mean, the artwork was quite simple. I mean, there was basically a syntax, a 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. That was created by Joseph Reitzendbaum who it was basically a chat with the computer. So it was almost like a touring simulation. And finally again, there is NFT. I think it was an hiket nunk 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, you know, I mean, 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's also a German, there was a German poet, a very famous one, Hans Magnus, Hansensberger, who had his poetry out to Mart, the poetry, or Tomata. I've actually had this chance to see it once. I think it was created in 2000. That was creating a poetry that was more sophisticated, obviously, or robot lab. Robot lab is a group of from Karlsruhe, I believe. They have created this robot, which is writing artist manifestos and manifestos. How machines and people are living together, stuff like that. And obviously, this now with NFTs, we have a lot of great artists, like Sasha Stas, Versavers, and a lot of other ones, who are, there's actually, there was a great exhibition called Poem subject at La Vongalerie in Paris. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it, but it must have been a great show. There's also an important fluxes artist, Alison Knowles, she did the House of Dust in the 60s. There was also an important piece that has been shown recently, also at Art Basel. So I think that this whole history of Genitive poetry is super interesting, 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 Genitive poetry. Yeah, I think that, yeah, sorry, I kind of read that. Yeah, I think that that's, that was such a, I think interesting kind of overview of that history of Genitive poetry. And I think it right, I definitely think that this is all kind of debatable, especially when you get into like what is first for this, yeah, like 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 kind of 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, kicked off such a, or was part of such a rich history of Genitive texts of poetry. Yeah, and I think it's really important to highlight some of those more contemporary artists that are still working with Genitive texts that you're kind of mentioned like Sasha Styles and, and on all these kind of really vital artists that are kind of still progressing this space in like 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 kind of like the first artworks that were created with electrical machines or kind of oscilloscopes with an abstractions by Ben Lepaschi, which is really known throughout the kind of space that we are in. Georg, can you maybe kind of expand on the significance of these two artists and kind of what they created to these electrical machines? Yeah, I mean, Mary Ellen Boot, that's super interesting. Actually, you can also watch her films on YouTube. They're published also, Epistronic. I actually posted it even today, or yesterday I think. I mean, that Othello graph, which is kind of like, yeah, probably the first, yeah, kind of analog computer used for art. That was really inspiring a lot of the artists at that time. I mean, Mary Ellen Boot used it for films. So she was filming these movements. Ben Lepaschi 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 at Leonardo Magazine 1969 on the oscillons, electronic abstractions, and maybe I can read a sentence which I found really interesting. in the beginning it was writing they may be monochrome or multicolored 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 or kilograms they might be traced by electronic plotters I think that's quite interesting you know that he wrote this because I only know the photographs the the black and white and the color photographs and and they're really beautiful this this unfortunately I haven't seen many of them on the market I would love to achieve get one but but he must have produced quite a few at his time and and he also did a big exhibition that started at Samford Museum in Cherokee in 1953 and traveled through many places it was shown in like 150 places over more than 10 years but but then actually he kind of stopped I mean there's not much else that you can see by Ben Leposky as opposed to another artist which is also very well known Habet Franke who actually moved on with his art and and always created new art with new technology so I would really put these two artists in the same you know the same room I mean Franke did his first or kilograms three years later so it was not as early as Leposky but he was also one of the 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 you know these oscillograms they are also Lisa Zhu figures created through light drawings there are two pioneers Peter Kaitman for example who started to do light drawings in the late 1940s and also Swiss artists called Rene Gerberlis 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 similar artworks as these 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 yeah I think there are so many of those artists from that time kind of doing something similar like another one is like Norman McLaren and and and I think they kind of use like Mary Ellen buttes and like laposky they kind of use the oscilloscope for like two two different kind of extents like some used 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 sort of creating these first graphic images by on an electronic machine with these analog computers but it's just it's interesting because Mary Ellen butte was creating such similar work you know at a similar time and like everybody gay org mentioned and Norman McLaren so it is interesting how kind of laposky ends up getting the credit especially compared to sort of butte I think he began his experiments in 50 which was before but I believe they both published their first works in the same year which was 1952 which is the year that we're we're highlighting here which is a electric electronic abstractions by Ben laposky and an abstract by Mary Ellen butte and I just wanted to highlight just kind of perhaps a forgotten woman pioneer and the contributions of somebody who is really important to kind of abstract animation and also some of the very earliest art made on maybe the electronic machines and analog computers before we jump to the next moment I also want to mention that we uh that actually replied with the YouTube link to Epistronic by Mary Ellen butte and yeah I really recommend watching it it's from 1952 but aesthetically it's yeah super impressive it's uh yeah still very very interesting um and the next moment we're going to discuss is the the birth of new data in 1952 and yeah maybe I can give this question to you Peter uh what does Nia Nia's data stand for and can you draw parallel parallel to contemporary generative arts? Yes so Nia data what's the important part and how it relates to generative art is it's kind of introduction of conceptualism to the art scene and also just using chance and randomness and art you know it was it was such an important movement in both of those things and it was you know happenings and in the birth of Nia data and the in the 50s you know they were important progenitors to you know new tendencies and to other conceptual movements like fluxes and in the coming decades so they they also played this really important role in dematerializing art uh so kind of you know that means freeing art from the confines of the canvas opening up the definition of what art is and dematerial uh the dematerialization of art is is really important to just NFTs I mean NFTs aren't possible but that this kind of without these this fabric being laid uh and this kind of early shift in uh conceptualism or towards conceptualism uh you know it was this is one of those earliest kind of shifts where we start to see this change and and the piece that really kicks it off is is in 1952 it's which was such a big year and I mean I've hit the last several moments have been about it but it was with John Cage's theater piece number one you know this was just a some a a some in all performance and a some in all piece of of art history uh and was such an important part to the development of of Nia data uh but this piece wasn't just Cage Cage composed the music uh but there it was this piece that had poetry and dance and music and it was all it all happened simultaneously and it was all unscripted so it was this piece of performance art that incorporated randomness and ingenuity and uh it was a really important part to again uh step in the de- materialization of art which is led to NFTs and just it's been so important to digital art in general and then this kind of rise of concept and and chance in art so that's kind of what I wanted to highlight with this moment Gareg was there anything you wanted to add there or should we move on to the next moment we got about 20 more minutes um I think it's very sensible that you put this um moment into the timeline because you absolutely right the de- materialization is a very important step towards NFTs and what's happening now uh maybe I I can only add that there's also the movement nouveau realism uh with Eiffkla and Jean-Taggley which which was also probably important I I don't know exactly when when this whole thing started maybe that was a little bit later than the 1950s um but yeah we can move on thanks for that information Peter about like the kind of the influence of neo-data like uh kind of adopting new kind of artistic practices and endeavors that have helped me to like this kind of NFT space of of non-physical art in other subjects um and as we move to the next year which is 1953 uh we talked about Grace Murray Hopper uh inherent invention of the flowmatic programming language which was really significant to to it not really being a simple program language but something a lot lines of an English syntax and Peter maybe you want to expand on like why this program was so influential and what it helped lead to in terms of other computer programming developments. Yeah sure so this was the first general programming language so it was a language that could be that was portable so it could be used on different devices it wasn't only didn't only have to be used for a single device and programming languages before this so this and for Trin were both really influential and and kind of transitioning programming from this kind of it had to be done using only symbols and only with you know on just bespoke devices but what what Grace Hopper did she made program she helped transition programming from it being only symbolic to actually using language and and using human language so this was just such an important step and and democratizing programming and and making it more accessible but Grace Hopper just herself was an incredible person she she worked on the mark one which we spoke about earlier that's for Christopher Straichi's love letters the computer used to produce that work it was one of the very first digital computers you know she was also heavily involved with the US military so there was this other connection to to the the military and early computer art and the development of computer technology in the 1950s and and general computer languages you know they enabled this more diverse group of people to actually interact with computers and it significantly expanded the the universe of computer users and and and also just the applications and programs so it this was a really important moment and kind of the with along with the four try moment later with kind of these software developments and in the 1950s that I talked about at the very beginning yeah how about you Gare because anything you wanted to out here I think probably you're more competent to talk about this because I'm I am more an art historian than a programmer so I just have very basic knowledge about programming languages okay so that brings us to the next moments and maybe some of you were actually in bright moments Tokyo a Peter and I like we presented like the the top 10 like most important most significant moments in Gare and the art history according according to Peter of course like this is not a definitive top 10 but one of them was Victor Vesarelli's yellow yellow manifesto which lays the Garenti Vart's conceptual foundation in 1954 and I was wondering Gare do you agree that this might be one of the the most significant moments in Garenti Vart history can you explain why it's it's significant why it's relevant well the relevant 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 you know this zero group etc and and then they had this big show in the MoMA it was it was called expensive a responsive i responsive i I think as far as the theory for generative art is concerned I would say probably other theories were more relevant I would definitely mention Max Benzer he's a critical series that's also from 1950s he was a very influential theorist and philosopher from Stuttgart he was the teacher of Georg Nees and Frida Nacke and as you probably know Georg Nees had the first ever well not sure whether that's really still the case but I mean in many books they say that he had the first exhibition of computer art in 1965 in Stuttgart there's also Noam Shomsky with generative grammar Abraham Moll I mean these these are all very important theorists of that time and they were probably closer to the idea of generative aesthetics or they were the ones that define what generative aesthetics is I would say above MoMA Max Benzer and Noam Shomsky but certainly I mean there's no question that Victor Vasarelli's manifesto was a super important moment in art history and also there is a strong relevance of kinetic and op art for for the artists who later I mean like I mentioned Hein Grafenhorst or for example you did an op art as a generative photographer and a lot of a lot of artists also now you can see that you know kinetic art and op art is everywhere in in in digital art yeah now I got completely agree with you that you know those cybernetic theorists are just as influential so uh egg or probably more influential so we we spoke about a lot about moles and Benzer actually last chapter because in the 40s with moles I mean he was what you know one of the big inspirations for Benzer 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 it is uh those are very important kind of conceptual foundations for generative art as well and we we touched on them and we are going to touch on them in the next space but yeah I completely agree uh just to kind of give a small defense of uh why I think Victor Vasarelli and the yellow manifesto is so important so I kind of see uh this as being the sort of the 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 kind of listening to these spaces we've been talking a lot uh last week too about kinetic art and kind of the importance of electronic and digital art the importance of capturing movement in in art and and actually capturing something dynamic and uh Victor Vasarelli played such an important part of that with his yellow manifesto and uh kicking off kinetic art which kinetic art also was you know one of the early progenitors of cybernetic art which which is uh you know very influenced by you know moles and and Benzer and so also uh Frank Popper is you know one of the best art historians about you know electronic and digital art you know he considered kinetic art to be one of the you know seven kind of foundational uh touchstones for for electronic art and you know I think since this kicked it off you know this means it's also an important moment and then also like you said it it also kicked off op art too so not only did it kind of uh did it spur kinetic art but also op art the op art movement which we also know in the next decade is going to play such an important role in uh in in the history of this movement like you mentioned with uh you know the responsive eye and then finally I think one of the less known but one of the big reasons why I included Vasarelli is because they were the predecessors of grab and new tendencies and uh you know so verimelnar was in grab which would start next year so I really see uh Victor Vasarelli is kind of this thread that unites constructivism in the Bauhaus so I kind of see it as constructivism Bauhaus to Victor Vasarelli and then to grab and then from grab you go to the cybernetic art of Nicolas Schoffer you know the art and technology movement of next decade and you know verimelnar and and generative art as we know it so that's kind of my brief well maybe to not brief enough defense of Vasarelli is uh is uh its connection to new tendencies op art and and then also Kinetic Art. - And also his art, you know, 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, you know, a lot of this op art and Kinetic Art that was laid out by Lazarale. I see some, also some reference sometime. - I think you briefly mentioned the work of Nicolas Schofer, Peter, that actually brings us to the next moment. In 1956 he created this Kinetic sculpture called CYSP, which stands for Cybernetic Spatial Dynamic. And this made him the founder of Cybernetic Art. I think you're familiar with the work of this artist. Could you expand on the influence of their work and also of the Cybernetic's movements? - Yeah, I'm totally fascinated by, and it goes Schofer, I also had the chance to visit his studio when his video was still alive. It is one of the most spectacular studio visits that I ever had. You just enter into a completely, you know, like a world full of machines that were moving and everything was just, you know, light everywhere, different colors. And it was almost like going to Disneyland or something. He was such a visionary artist. I actually showed CYSP one, a photograph of CYSP one. I mean, CYSP was actually an interactive, kind of robotic sculpture that was also used, for example, in Ballets and Dance performances to some famous pictures where you see the sculpture is a ballet dancer. And I showed a picture in Outer Mountain Manche, where you can see the CYSP with in Paris, interacting with people in the street. I mean, for me also, actually I'm working on an exhibition which I hopefully be able to launch next January called the Cybernetic City, the Cubanatius Chichot, which is based on an artwork by Nicolas Schuffer and also a book that he wrote. It's called the Cubanatius Chichot. It was an amazing vision of the artist in the 1970s. That was a bit later where he kind of had this utopian vision that like a tower in Paris would kind of control everything in the city, everything would be connected. It would be like, you know, like a, I don't know, a decentralized feedback system or something. And also in the '70s, you know, they had this Cybersen project in Chile, which was a real, real project where they connected like 200 companies and with a centralized control system. And unfortunately that project was then going down after a short time. But there were this utopian visions at that time. I mean, Cybernetics is a steering system actually. I mean, and what we are experiencing now is also kind of like a Cybernetic, you know, like these dowels and all these organizations which are kind of controlled in some way through Cybernetics. So I think Schuffer was really one of the major most important artists at that time, I think. - Yeah, I think there's no question. And just a really, really quickly tie up Schuffer with kinetic art, you know, I do think that there's, you can tie this line from kinetic art to this kind of Cybernetic sculpture of Schuffer. And you know, because these Cybernetic sculptures were like they were, I was talking about, you know, they were kind of, they were in involved kind of the automation of the creative process through these feedback loops and audience interaction. And, and, you know, I think that's what's also so important about Vazarelli is, you know, he was all about interaction and body, audience participation as well. So we are just about running out of time. So how are we gonna handle these next few questions, guys? - I think I can maybe squeeze moment eight and nine into one kind of 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 Matthews developing music which was one of like the first turn of music systems at Bell Labs and maybe clear you can just quickly touch on maybe how Fortran made turn of systems more accessible or programming more accessible and then maybe touch on the environment around IBM and Bell Labs and how those two kind of institutions helped progress the computing space so much. - Yeah, sure. So I'll try to keep it brief and, you know, allow also Gary to jump in here. But in terms of the importance of Fortran's release in 1957. So, you know, Backus started working at that at IBM in 1954. So, you know, he'd been working on it for three years. And, you know, it was built around the idea that you could express kind of numerical formulas and programming languages. And it was so different from, you know, Hopper who was using English, this is back to using more mathematics and symbols. And why Fortran was had this kind of, you know, lasting impact is it added this higher level of abstraction to programming languages. So like before this, you know, you had to, if you wanted to program something, you had to have this really deep understanding of the computer's architecture and memory organization. And, you know, it's really time-consuming and error-prone and you really had to, you really had to kind of create based instructions just for the machine that you were using. But Fortran kind of allowed for this portability where you could create one program and then wasn't too difficult to use it from one device to another. So it was just another step in this kind of, you know, with Hopper of making, you know, computer programming more accessible in the '50s. And I'll like Gay or Jump in with anything else if he wants to add something. - Yeah, there's not much to add. I mean, I mean, I can maybe just add that really most of the artists were using that programming language, like Baramolna or Friedenlake. And for more, Aaron Marcus, Michael Null, they all used it. So, yeah, keep it short. - And then with Max Matthews, you know, this was a computer, he developed a music one. At, you know, this was developed on the 704 IBM computer. And, but he did it actually at Bell Labs. And this was, he was the first person to kind of capture and synthesize sound from a live instrument and from a computer composition. And, you know, this was basically the first computer music program. So again, I just think it's really interesting to know how the first generative music and the first generative text actually proceeded, you know, computer graphics. - Also important to mention, I would say, is as far as music is concerned, the Iliac suite by Hilar and Isaacson. That is probably also one of the early musical pieces. That's also a piece that you can probably download on YouTube. - Thanks for the additional context, Garek. I think we're now at the last moments. from from these decades. This moment is actually from 1958 and it's John Whitney who created the the first computer animation for the film film vertigo and Peter I know that you recently tweeted about like how a computer animation for films is something that's like very like under highlights in Geraint Vart history. I would love if you could expand briefly on this and maybe also use this moment to introduce the next chapter over timeline the 60s that's possible. Sorry what John Whitney made for vertigo in 1958 is considered the the first computer animation but it was actually created on an analog computer so what Whitney did was he he got this bold word to military anti-aircraft anti-aircraft gun so again we see from the very first moment that we spoke about today to the last the kind of the influence of the military on this on this decade and you could really see kind of how that must have impacted people mentally when they thought about computers I mean these were these devices that they had never seen before and that were associated with war in the military and so it really kind of explains why people why it really took decades really until like the early 80s late 70s for people to kind of for the general public to embrace computers and not I think in general think of them as kind of scary you know when PCs and video game consoles started coming out like Atari in the C64 in the early 80s so I think it really did take like you know 30 years to kind of get over the kind of you know I don't know know what you want to call it the stink or some the the impact of the military on computing technology and computer art and with John Whitney so he used this this giant you know multiple ton military anti aircraft controller called an N5 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 that's kind of he attached a camera onto that and then used that spinning camera to record the that first computer animation for the film for it ago I know we're 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 you know the pioneers of animation is there anything you wanted to add there and Georg? I think you said it pretty well I think it's not much to add I mean it's it's maybe something interesting that that Hitchcock in Vertigo there was also Salvador Dali he was using always artworks he was collaborating with a lot of love the artists that time so it's kind of interesting how how the film industry was always integrating artworks yeah and then that will wrap it up for this week's space covering the 10 moments from 1960s it's one of the people you already begin for joining us and giving us these valuable resources and information and helping contextualize some of these moments a bit better light obviously just another reminder that if you want to explore more of this timeline you can visit timeline.larandom.art to kind of 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 some of these moments and just thanks again for everybody listening thanks again for the funny guys for helping host this and Peter obviously for for writing this and obviously speaking more in depth on each of these moments so thank you everybody thanks everyone thanks garrick for trying this was an art and thank you for doing this great timeline as well you