Location: Art Talk Area
Language: English
Guest speaker: Margit Rosen (Art Historian and Curator)
Moderator: Sarah Beaumont (Assistant Curator of the exhibition Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 at Mudam. )
When the world learned of the existence of so-called 'thinking machines' in the late 1940s, it was not only science and industry that were fascinated. Although only a few people had direct access to computers, a wide range of artistic formats emerged from the 1950s onwards in the computer centers of universities, research centers and corporations – from images and sculptures to films and choreographies. The computer promised the arts a world of new forms, the rationality and plannability of creativity, and social relevance through participation in an invisible, all-encompassing technical revolution. The established art world, however, initially reacted cautiously. But in the early 1960s, art theorists such as Umberto Eco saw in these works “epistemic metaphors” that showed the beginning of a comprehensive technical and scientific transformation that would have an impact on all forms of reasoning and action. Also, the German philosopher Max Bense pointed to the possibility of “programming the beautiful” and the French sociologist Abraham A. Moles suggested that the high demand for art in industrial societies could only be met by automatically generated works. The presentation highlights the works and utopias of the early experimental use of computers in the arts and shows the many references to current debates, for example with regard to the use of artificial intelligence in art.
Biography
Margit Rosen is an art historian and curator, serving as Head of the Department of Collections, Archives & Research at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe since 2016. She has taught at several universities, including the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe (HfG), the Danube University Krems, the Academy of Fine Arts Münster, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the State University of Milan. In addition to her teaching, Rosen has delivered lectures at institutions such as Princeton University, the Louvre, the Deutsches Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
Her research and curatorial work center on 20th- and 21st-century art, with a particular focus on the intersections between art, technology and science. Her publications include A Little-Known Story About a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer’s Arrival in Art (MIT Press, 2011).
www.mudam.com
