Synopses & Reviews
and#147;The computer may now be seen as a and#145;universal machine,and#8217; but this has not always been the case. This substantial collection of essays and documents shows how artists, poets, musicians, filmmakers and other experimenters first discovered the computer, and began using it as their tool and medium.
Mainframe Experimentalism is essential reading for anyone who wants to penetrate behind superficial clichand#233;s about digital art and culture.and#8221;and#151;Erkki Huhtamo, author of
Illusions in Motion: A Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles.
and#147;Higginsand#8217; and Kahnand#8217;s anthology is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the impact of computer technology on creative production in the arts and literature in the 1960s and beyond. This superb collection presents the first truly international examination of this subject, demonstrating the fascinating collaborations and interchanges that occurred as artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers explored the potential for new, impersonal forms of expression offered by and#145;mainframe experimentalism.and#8217; Here is the prehistory of the digital arts of today in a volume that is equally essential to the histories of the individual fields involved as well as to scholarship on art and technology in general.and#8221;and#151;Linda Dalrymple Henderson, author of Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works.
Synopsis
Mainframe Experimentalism challenges the conventional wisdom that the digital arts arose out of Silicon Valleyand#8217;s technological revolutions in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1960s, a diverse array of artists, musicians, poets, writers, and filmmakers around the world were engaging with mainframe and mini-computers to create innovative new artworks that contradict the stereotypes of "computer art." Juxtaposing the original works alongside scholarly contributions by well-established and emerging scholars from several disciplines,
Mainframe Experimentalism demonstrates that the radical and experimental aesthetics and political and cultural engagements of early digital art stand as precursors for the mobility among technological platforms, artistic forms, and social sites that has become commonplace today.
About the Author
Hannah B Higgins is Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of
Fluxus Experience (UC Press).
Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation at the National Institute of Experimental Arts (NIEA) at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the coeditor of Source: Music of the Avant-garde (UC Press).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Hannah B Higgins and Douglas Kahn
Part I. Discourses
1. The Soulless Usurper: Reception and Criticism of Early Computer Art
Grant Taylor
2. Georges Perecand#8217;s Thinking Machines
David Bellos
3. In Forming Software: Software, Structuralism, Dematerialization
Edward A. Shanken
Part II. Centers
4. Information Aesthetics and the Stuttgart School
Christoph Kland#252;tsch
5. and#147;They Have All Dreamt of the Machinesand#151;and Now the Machines Have Arrivedand#8221;: New Tendenciesand#151;Computers and Visual Research, Zagreb, 1968and#150;1969
Margit Rosen
6. Minicomputer Experimentalism in the United Kingdom from the 1950s to 1980
Charlie Gere
Part III. Music
7. James Tenney at Bell Labs
Douglas Kahn
8. HPSCHDand#151;Ghost or Monster?
Branden W. Joseph
9. The Alien Voice: Alvin Lucierand#8217;s North American Time Capsule 1967
Christoph Cox
10. An Introduction to North American Time Capsule 1967
Robert A. Moog
11. North American Time Capsule 1967
Alvin Lucier
Part IV. Art and Intermedia
12. An Introduction to Alison Knowlesand#8217;s The House of Dust
Hannah B Higgins
13. The Book of the Future: Alison Knowlesand#8217;s The House of Dust
Benjamin H.{ths}D. Buchloh
14. Three Early Texts by Gustav Metzger on Computer Art
Compiled by Simon Ford
15. Computer Participator: Situating Nam June Paikand#8217;s Work in Computing
William Kaizen
Part V. Poetry
16. First-Generation Poetry Generators: Establishing Foundations in Form
Christopher Funkhouser
17. and#147;Tape Mark Iand#8221;
Nanni Balestrini
18. Letter to Ann Noand#235;l
Emmett Williams
19. The Computational Word Works of Eric Andersen and Dick Higgins
Hannah B Higgins
20. Opus 1966
Eric Andersen
21. and#147;Computers for the Artsand#8221; (May 1968)
Dick Higgins
22. The Role of the Machine in the Experiment of Egoless Poetry: Jackson Mac Low and the Programmable Film Reader
Mordecai-Mark Mac Low
Part VI. Film and Animation
23. Stan VanDerBeekand#8217;s Poemfields: The Interstice of Cinema and Computing
Gloria Sutton
24. From the Gun Controller to the Mandala: The Cybernetic Cinema of John and James Whitney
Zabet Patterson
Index