*Well, the show's over, but that's really quite an erudite and interesting review about some very nice archival holdings of early computer art. And they're on paper, which is good, because maybe people a hundred years from now will be able to see and understand them.
Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers
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In the early days, it was an extraordinary idea to use equipment such as flatbed plotters with instructions written in languages such as Fortran, that were not designed for artistic or creative purposes. Outside the mainstream art world of the time, many struggled to gain recognition.
This survey is ideally timed to coincide with the anniversary celebrations of the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition, held 50 years ago this summer, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. This groundbreaking show was the first comprehensive international exhibition in Britain devoted to exploring the relationship between the arts and new technology and featured collaborations between artists and scientists. It laid the foundation for decades of advancement, how much so is apparent in the work of subsequent generations on view in this V&A homage, including Damien Borowik, Fabrizio A Poltronieri, Casey Reas and Esther Rolinson, all of whom are in their 40s.
The V&A acquired its first computer work in 1969 following Cybernetic Serendipity – a folio of the limited-edition prints published by Motif to coincide with the exhibition and William Fetter and Charles Csuri’s works are on view here. The title Chance and Control references Cybernetic Serendipity’s emphasis on discovering the serendipitous “happy accidents” that inspired curator Jasia Reichardt in 1968. An apparent dichotomy – control being the opposite of an accident, is a reference to the precise and logical nature of the process required by artists who write algorithms.
