Electric Dreams Exhibition

  • exhibition map connects things ‘roughly chronological’ and by theme very satisfyingly systematically
  • inspired by maths and the science of perception and systems science as much as by ‘tech’ and ‘media’
  • (Tanaka Electric Dress)
  • the danger is a part of it when working with electricity
  • ‘a painting that moves’
  • using physical forces of gravity and tension to dramatic effect
  • additional works inspired by the tech
  • strobing can produce animation, calming, hypnotism, signal break/overwhelm
  • early video art - Vasulka Matrix II, CRT matrix testing the limits of the tech, manipulated electron beams
  • ‘fluid motion resembling the behaviour of electronic signals’ - more than resembling, the medium made visible
  • relationships between art and consumer as the communication system
  • cybernetics - tech for war
  • ‘Metamic’ - early plotter made explicitly and deliberately from waste. Material and form of waste making visible the 2D projection, a creative work through the process of reconstructing the waste
  • the mathematic nature and limit testing that can bring rhythms (and dissonance eg with edge cases and outliers), making something semi-musical, bringing meaning, laying maths bare in audible forms
  • the way the highly visual/and sound exhibits take over a room and give a background hum
  • just like the electric hum of many spaces with electrics on standby, audible and irritating to autistics and other sensitive ears
  • Brantigan(?) utopian ‘watched over by machines of loving grace’
  • 60s Californian counter-culture publication by ‘community anarchist’ group Diggers, street theatre and activism
  • ‘mutually programming harmony’
  • mimeograph - portable low cost copying machine - low cost copying tech often central to these earlier anarchist movements, the ever-copyable internet text you’d have expected to increase insurgency but has it?? Web 1.0 activism
  • ‘Binary numbers can have equiprobability, but if symbols for music notes are grouped by concordant chords or symbols for chemical elements are grouped by compound, the pattern will be very divergent, and informative.’ - Metzger CAS articles on connecting between computing, warfare and tech of social control
  • Black Chip ‘86
  • ‘To cute technophobia you need illusions that work’ - a journal about computing for and by anarchists, using here a satirical AT&T ad, a method that is still very usable and effective esp in hyperconsumerist landscape
  • use of punchcards in modern art, punch cards for modern tech? easily spreadable somewhat-anonymous data?
  • glitch, echoes, burn-in, ruin
  • zero group working directly with light, from ‘base’
  • the movement in reference to viewer
  • deliberate use of simple tools as medium for quicker connection, familiar object
  • Bury ‘aesthetic of slowness’, barely perceptible motor movements - encourages you to stay through non-violence, encourages patience, gentle interaction
  • Vecker White Field ‘64
  • ‘vibration of light’ echoes my experience of visual snow well
  • a lot of these optical illusions are so normal to me
  • vibrations. static. optical disturbance.
  • ‘materialising the invisible’
  • the white walls of a gallery are static enough for me
  • through my eyes the invisible is already made visible
  • sometimes visual snow is referred to as ‘seeing air’
  • ‘participatory’ works of light and air and space
  • ‘generative patterns’ and whether i can procedurally capture/map what it is my eyes are doing. what is the scientific principle or mathematical formula or optical phenomenon that i can use to accurately represent it?
  • ‘Mercury rectifier’ Telelumiere as used in electric railways and industrial motors and radio transmitters. passing a current through mercury vapour to create light, and the electromagnet creates movement. example of early experiments in making magic and movement from unique combination and electrical discovery
  • analogue music, soft and earthy, reminds me to try the piezo spring resonator. this one sounded like maybe a sitar
  • ‘Electromagnetic Music’ ‘66, making audible the electromagnetism as musical collaborator
  • working explicitly with natural materials, their forms and affordances, but with motorised results
  • those interesting forms of obscuring through different ways of interacting with and forming glass - and how quickly those illusions are physically shattered
  • paper technologies, linguistic technologies, literary technologies
  • cut-up poems as remix
  • cut-out patterns, templates, building blocks of the world, abstractions, arrangements of verse and mechanical alignment
  • format, blueprint, automation, quiz, game, chance
  • ‘Third Mind’ by Burroughs and Gysin ‘79 - creative collaboration as emergent consciousness
  • script language and grids and patterns, glyphs of eastern scripts as ‘dense patterns of language’ - symbology etc
  • systematic play through words, changing letter one by one and similar small games/simple games/paper games
  • tweaking words gradually to form creative meaning - reminiscient of how people collect parts of text online, web-weaving, and the aimless way AI does it, AI generated ‘therapy’ and horoscopes. bereft of meaning, this is just systematic exploration of a limited space - takes longer to manually wade through AI’s linguistic slop - language is often formulaic but the meaning isn’t so, the meaning requires perspective - but what is perspective but a combination of experience? can computers with agency be truly personalised to take a perspective, that of creator or consumer or unique or combined?
  • ‘Electronic Revolution’ by Burroughs and Gysin ‘70 stamps and rollers, ‘construct fake news broadcasts’, ‘tape recorder experiments’, remix
  • paper is still a very versatile and effective medium!
  • digital works displayed projected on walls
  • dense meaning, abstraction, opposites that circle round to meet each other
  • a person as the ultimate ‘dense meaning’, brain and body, experience trapped in moment
  • Yamaguchi, concerned with persuasive advertising.
  • warped forms - broken down billboards as decay of economic activity but now with cheaper methods the oversaturation is more decay. decay now looking more like a blooming fungi. where are the decomposers, and why is this destruction blindingly beautiful, set against literal concurrent brutality and war
  • ‘planet discover’ as material discovery, nuclear as restart, utopias and dystopias combined
  • ‘high-pitched, oppressive music’ as the caption - theremin - whose meaning does this convey. built-in subtitles crucial?
  • auto-slide projector as medium. reminds me i want to use OHP
  • new forms and new fabrication, material cultured and what appears as futuristic to one place and time
  • experimental ballet based on the sci-fi that first popularised the term ‘android’, from 1886! the ballet Mirai no Eve (Future Eve) 1955, Otsuji
  • experimentsl music from Germany and France -> Japan
  • ‘concrete music’, where sounds are raw materials
  • modular interior design and lighting fixture, meaning through light arrangement and projection, distortion of corrugated glass
  • screen for information - display vs abstracted forms, obscuring and warping the glass to provide experimental vibes of something - eg I could distort the screens used to project advertisements to denaturalise them and show them as alien, uncomfortable
  • partial forms, burn-in, cascading
  • ‘Image Modulator’ originally ‘69 and reconstructed in ‘24, Yamaguchi
  • Las Meninas ‘implicated viewers as both participants and observers of multiple artworks at once’
  • on the gallery experience in general and the other visitors dropping in and out of your own flow and experience and thought process
  • ‘Programmed Art’ of the ’60s
  • ‘The Open Work’ from ‘62, fundamental to many kinetic arts
  • Picelj - New Tendencies ‘active’, art which should permeate society
  • ‘should direct creative forces to positive social action’ ‘it should be present everywhere. It is imperceptible, it is international and universal. It will transform our visual habits in the direction of perceiving structure, order and wholeness in relations’ - on how to get ordinary people to understand that what they see and hear and feel is art in and of itself. Your perspective taken seriously and with curiosity in your art
  • ‘geometry of the unknown’
  • Marigner ‘64, ‘occurrencs of intersection’
  • ‘points that collect and absorb dynamic energy’
  • like in life and experience and journey and trajectory and communication
  • meaning, like energy, not created or destroyed?
  • weaving mathematics and mathematics of weaving
  • train tracks woven. above and below ground tracks
  • bent metal, the hardness and force required from humans or machinery to produce such soft curved forms, like bodies
  • a curved mirror reminds me of my lover
  • multiples, casting, a series, iteration, artistic process, drawing meaning in combination and recombination and modularity
  • ‘embracing the format of the multiple as a way of making their art more accessible, inspired by processes of mass production’
  • printmaking, linocuts etc
  • does the response to this change now with the oversaturation of poorly-made goods?
  • many things we still need mass-produced, just need it to be better, but other things never needed to be mass-produced and could/should still be bespoke eg clothing
  • is rarification and exclusivity made valuable again? i guess for the rich this never went away, and for thrifty and handmade we can recirculate and recombine and create still, just not the norm anymore to have unique possessions, not widely practical or accessible. homogenous ‘personalised’ and ‘customised’ mass produced objects the ironic result of this. our material cultures are degrading
  • NFTs and bad ethics of artificial scarcity
  • often in mass-production the replications aren’t and shouldn’t be identical -often in art specifically the singular iteration is part of the value - but that doesn’t mean a copy of digital art isn’t valuable in the same way a picture of a painting has value - we are talking personal value and meaning here rather than arbitrary monetary value
  • ‘Light Prism, Spectral Kinetic Mesh’ Biasi
  • reminds me of fireboy and watergirl game with light prisms, and also that shadow based island game
    • physics based game engines, sandbox and simulation, interesting way to explore material properties and possibilities and combinations as well as use physical properties for play in virtual spaces.
    • i’m reminded of the Eve VR (?) maths experiments
    • which in turn reminds me of embodied tech, body as control mechanisms, AR for body-situated recursive space for storage and interaction
  • prisms to seperate combined elements. is it possible to perform computations in a prism-like manner for decryption
  • prism-based private-key for data, adding the esoteric back into tech again through physical crystals, powerful imagery with physical use, techgnosis
  • or more metaphorically by de-engineering AI with ‘prism’ abstraction
  • using bits of old machines for their moving elements, screen elements, lighting elements, other components
  • obscuring in a dark box. gallery space within gallery space, present as you’d like.
  • optical illusions and 3D vision, cognitive optics
  • exhibition design - technical concepts underlying the exhibits written out on the walls!
  • visualised interactions, traffic intersection, art and flow and natural organic mechanisms, algorithms of road and transport
  • spinning thread or light forming 3D shapes, actual holograms from semi-physical stuffs. material and immaterial. shifting
  • 2D to 3D and 3D to 2D
  • the ‘artifact’ you get between red and blue on screen, visible in life. pure contrast.
  • interactive works, straight through and designed interactions vs choice vs illusion of choice. affordances, schemas, playing on what interactions you’re familiar with.
  • tunnelled through the underground, herd behaviours.
  • ‘We want them to be aware of their participation’ GRAV ‘63
  • fundamentally rethinking the role of the artist in society. Labyrinths ‘activated’ by presence. how do you design for such individuated experience?
  • again, how can i affect when that feels like an intrusion? am i just reaching for shared feeling?
  • the way pixelation can be adjusted through interaction. mirrors place us quite clearly as part of the work
  • format of space - a hallway without two rooms to connect is just a room, moving through it from one space to the next (and what spaces are there) change the experience of the hallway. interactions and moments of pause or change make it less of a hallway and more of a room
  • museums and galleries as play space
  • what other play space do adults have? gyms, barely. arcades and casinos and pubs. sporting facilities.
  • projections easily take over a very large space. the visual movement of this is like a travellator. helps me walk, comforts me.
  • the strobing room is, crucially, a space occupied by people. this is nothing without the people in it. something maybe with just one or two. something else entirely with people even more situated and engaged and open to the space, but something specific with roaming visitors of mixed demographic
  • hypermediation, immersion
  • does this encourage or discourage communication? encourages playful contact with the walls, the objects, but people here are even less sure of themselves in space, even more sheepish like there’s a wrong way to interact with the art. the extreme takeover of the optics can feel somewhat like a spotlight. the room feels both huge and intimate. discomfort due to new feeling. but it is still a pleasurable space. are we in here together or are we in here alone? when there is no one focus, the room is the art, people focus on each other, and that makes each other uncomfortable. are we strangers?
  • ‘Aaron Cohen ‘79 ‘the minimum conditions under which a set of marks […] functions as an image’ - ‘turtle’ drawing machines
  • ‘electric dreams fm’, a small library of related media, audio interviews with artists etc - exhibitions in digital, distanced format, curation for online spaces
  • who can run actual radio these days
  • social media equivalency to local radio stations but with different organisational/structural principles
  • ‘visual research’, science vs art?
  • computer generated image can serve many purposes on the science - design - art spectrum
  • Schoffer ‘cybernetic art tower’ - a piece abandoned due to cost - resembling a telephone pole/electricity pilon but kinetic and sensing its environment - interesting that a piece of this inspiration was actively commissioned, deemed skyline-worthy
  • ‘auto-destruction’, Metzger screens actively destructed, constructed, garbled, greebled
  • even proposed installations are displayed here alongside those realised - a good concept well-communicated is still valuable in this context
  • science for war tech for war tech for good
  • how many of these war-mathematicians that were art-creators were actually pacifist, how much control did they have over their destiny, how many could be said to contribute to the war machine? passively or actively? do these distinctions matter?
  • imagined futures by only a select few is always worse than collective future-building but under different societal conditions were there frightened people hiding in labs trying to build better with the machines of war? the masters tools
  • Phillips commissioned sound sculptures. Always interesting where funding comes from. blood money, money laundering, techwashing, wokewashing, art-as-ad, sponsored content, can revolutionary art be made with the funding of oppressors, poor artists and rich artists and taking whatever you can get, expensive materials and methods
  • those flow-chart-system-machine programs i played with as a kid - systems! i’ve always been like this actually. marble runs and rube goldberg machines. wallace and gromit and the ‘inventing’ exhibition at the science museum
  • sound sculptures, air-conditioning architecture, wind sculptures - large public artworks that are also functional, and you can observe the function clearly. no obfuscated ‘invisible’ tech.
  • Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts: A Studio International Special Issue (1969) Reprinted 2018 - a catalogue for the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition
  • On the human predicament - Bruce Lacey
    • Given a brain, man has the possibility of developing into a sublime, happy, creative, and unique creature, but he is prevented from realising this potential by the severe limitations imposed in him by the environment he has created for himself in order to survive physically. Having to adapt psychologically to his environment, and if the environment has been too hostile, religions have stepped in to offer a pleasanter one after death. If man has resisted external pressures, he has either been put to death, put into prison, or put into a mental home. To survive in the future, he must rebuild his cities, rewrite his laws, and re-educate himself and his children. He must do all these things to suit his emotional, sexual and psychological needs. In other words, he must change his environment and his society to suit himself and not change himself to suit his environment or society. In my robots and humanoids I attempt to present this predicament. In my events I attempt to ask questions. And in my simulations and environments I attempt to point direction towards the answer. In attempting to solve these problems I use all advances in technology, electronics, psychology, market research, medicine and mathematics at my disposal. Using, in fact, the very hardware that has brought about these problems in the first place.
  • Radical Software, Volume II, N. 5 - 1972 This issue of Radical Software was dedicated to the relationship between electronic media abs the environment. Chilean artist Juan Downey presents a utopian vision where ‘Cybernetic technology operating in synchronised with our nervous systems is the alternative life gor a disoriented humanity … Ironically, the man-nature chasm can only be closed by technology. The process of reweaving ourselves into natural energy patterns is Invisible Architecture, an attitude of total communication [that] re-explains electronic circuitry as a bio-feedback tool in evolving the collectivity of human brains … Human/electronics interaction sets humanity on a global interconnective level where technology becomes less and less necessary’ - Peter Harrington

from the smaller one

  • Shared visuals texture of surface to moving line and shape
  • New ways to experience culture
  • Make the institutional lens clear
  • Given more artists would it be less synthesised?
  • Is machine learning necessary to tell the picture? Is it just for infinite loop?
  • ‘A search for kinship’- as in, each track plays multi instrumental across in one synchronisation
  • ‘recieved narratives’ and contested heritage
  • Circumambulating objects
  • Museums and galleries as third places and how the arrangement, the included works, surrounding security etc determines what it can be
  • ‘security’ staff and how their role varies across institutions and public spaces, in particular in art spaces too