Electric Dreams. Techno-optimism now and then
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet is open at Tate Modern, London until 1 June 2025.
We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. — Marshall McLuhan
Immediately to the right of the first room, a flow chart has been designed to resemble a computer chip. While its nodes and intersecting lines represent art movements and collectives from the 1950s to the early 1990s (the dawn of the Internet age), the increasingly entangled relationships between them are illustrated by an uninterrupted flow path. Even though, in the exhibition rooms, the connections between art movements may sometimes appear loose, their members’ interest in the creative potential offered by the new scientific breakthroughs and devices is beyond question.
The exponents of the 1960s Italian Arte Programmata movement, to which an entire room (Room 6) is dedicated, were among the early trailblazers who, using the language of mathematical and visual theories as a lingua franca, started to overlap patterns in order to create visual effects. With such an important ally as the theorist Umberto Eco who formulated the concept of “opera aperta” (“open artwork”) in his influential book The Open Work (which, by the way, stands as an isolated component in the flow chart mentioned above), it is no wonder that the work of these artists had a considerable influence on other international avant-garde movements.
Marina Apollonio (b. 1940), Dinamica Circolare 6S+S, 1968–70. Tate. Presented by the artist 2024
GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel), a collective active in Paris during the 1960s, adopted a similar scientific attitude towards the production of their artworks, some of which are on display in Room 7.
A corridor, wallpapered with a copy of François Morellet’s Random distribution of squares using the π number decimals, 50% odd digit blue, 50% even digit red (1963) aptly connects Arte Programmata to computer art.
In fact, as suggested by Darko Fritz in the catalogue, it was this pioneer French artist who sort of established a link between the two art movements when he included the computer program in the list of “programs” available to artists for the design and performance of their experiments.
Copy of François Morellet’s Random distribution of squares using the π number decimals, 50% odd digit blue, 50% even digit red, 1963. Image from ianVisits website
The organisers of the exhibition series Nove Tendencije (New Tendencies) that shared the name with the international and innovative art movement established in Zagreb in 1961, followed on with the incorporation of the computer as a medium of artistic work into the program of their fourth exhibition, in 1968. It is remarkable that for the exhibition Tendencies 5 in 1973, art historian Radoslav Putar was already describing conceptual art methods as “data processing”.
Although parallels with current forms of digital art are not drawn in the exhibition, it is from this point forward that it becomes impossible not to notice similarities between the early experiments with computers and the current ones with generative AI.
Besides the identical scientific approach to visual research in general, the movements and art networks of the 1960s and 70s share with contemporary digital artists a less romantic view of the artistic process. Having left behind the concept of individual genius, some digital artists continue to produce artworks whose authorship sometimes is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish.
Furthermore, the way opto-kinetic artists would not intervene after having set up precise rules for their experiments (as theorised by Morellet ) makes one think of AI artists who, prompting systems whose internal workings remain invisible, do not have control over the outputs and are free from predetermined outcomes.
Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923-2019), Environnement Chromointerférent, Paris 1974/2018 © Carlos Cruz-Diez / Bridgeman Images, Paris 2024
Similarly, whereas GRAV members were seeking interaction with passers-by on the streets of Paris inviting them to participate in their various kinetic activities, contemporary digital artists aim to engage their audiences by sharing their artworks on social media.
And what is Chromointerferent Environment by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez if not an early example of the ‘dematerialization’ of the artwork?
Designed as a new way not to entertain but interact with the spectators, this Immersive installation that fills Room 8, has found the definitive technical solution decades after its conception when its initial painted panels have been replaced by software generated patterns.
Charles Csuri, (1922-2022), Sine Curve Man, 1967. The Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection
Room 9: Dialogues with the machines exhibits the futuristic works of some of the first Artist-Programmers and Programmer-Artists. Considering that at the time artists didn’t enjoy the use of computer display devices (or keyboards for that matter) and had to make do with plotter printers in order to visualize their experiments, the artworks exhibited are quite extraordinary.
Moreover, computers were clunky tools. The computer model used by Charles Csuri for his self-portrait was so powerful that NASA employed it in the Apollo space program but also so big that it would occupy an entire room.
Csuri used it to process a geometrical function (the sine curve, hence the title) to transform a traditional drawing into punched cards that were then fed into a plotter which eventually would screen print it on acrylic plastic.
When British artist Harold Cohen moved to California in the late 1960s, he learned how to code in order to develop, from 1973, AARON, the first computer program capable of autonomously generating drawings.
Using the principles of symbolic AI (known also as rule-based AI or good old-fashioned AI), Cohen taught the computer to manipulate symbols—in other words, to follow a set of rules established by the artist—in order to make a series of marks and decide what to draw next.
Developing this innovative approach over the successive four decades, Cohen not only improved the computer’s ability to draw (from drawing figures to colouring in) but managed to investigate and formulate broader concepts that would eventually pave the way to contemporary digital artists.
Harold Cohen (1928-2016), AARON #1 Drawing, 1979. Tate. Purchased 2015
Room 11: Electronic DIY is crowded with fascinating, but not always straightforward, examples of the tinkering that informed the artistic culture of the 1960s and 1970s.
The sometimes whimsical experiments with the available tools can be seen as the forerunners of GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) artists’ experiments with code, parameters, and datasets. Even their relationships with big tech companies mirror AI artists’ dilemmas when negotiating the future of collaboration between technology and creativity.
Suzanne Treister (b.1958), Fictional Videogame Stills/Are You Dreaming?, 1991-2 © Suzanne Treister
Similarities can be identifying not only between early computer art and contemporary AI art but also between the debates that these art movements sparked off and present-day controversies.
The considerable hostility that computer and cybernetic art encountered by the mid-1970s recalls the one with which AI art has been met from the traditional art world and the worried general public alike.
Also, the problems that nowadays some artists encounter when trying to copyright AI-generated art are not new either. A. Michael Noll, one of the very first artists to produce computer-generated images as artworks, saw his request to copyright his Gaussian-Quadratic (1963) rejected at first because the random numbers, on which the work was based, were produced by a computer. Since the computer program had been created by the artist, the patent was eventually granted.
Finally, between the 60s and 70s, enthusiasm for computer devices diminished due to their limitations but also inaccessibility to artists. Likewise, from the late 1960s, waning interest in AI research led to funding cuts and the so-called first AI Winter.
Most of the works in the exhibition can appear at first glance naively optimistic about the solutions offered by technology. And yet, artists were critical.
Fully aware that technological research was financially controlled by military and corporate interests, they remained diffident but engaged.
For instance, the visionary artist Gustav Metzger, who had drawn attention to the destructive power of technology since the 1950s, kept stressing the necessity of engaging with technology.
Metsger’s ideas are still current, and not only because proactively getting involved in the use of AI technology, artists can provide scientists with invaluable insights, but because they can help to figure out what we don’t want AI to become.
