Electronic Visions: Chronology, Themes and Artists
Outline
Over the past sixty years, artists have increasingly engaged with modern technology to create entirely new classes of art. This is partly due to the widespread availability of advanced techniques since the end of the Second World War, and partly because these technologies have become integral to our society as a whole. Even though the time period is quite brief, several generations of technological art have developed their own areas of practice and theory.
This course presents a survey of the whole area of postwar Art and Technology and attempts to cover its major practitioners. Because the field has rapidly diversified and is so closely connected to the development of specific technologies, the area seems initially bewildering. Although it links into several areas of twentieth century art, notably late Modernism and Post-Modernism, it has distinct features that arise from its technological basis.
It is very much a living field of art that is constantly in transition, like most of the artworks it produces. Its artists have a variety of rationales for using complex technologies and have not formed schools or movements, but tend towards looser groupings within broad areas of practice. Moreover, historians of Art and Technology tend to focus on these areas of practice and rarely try to encompass the whole field, meaning that at present there is no over-arching historical study. We must assemble the history from a number of sources, including first-hand accounts by the artists themselves, and see what picture of the area emerges.
Fortunately, many technology-using artists acknowledge a shared source of inspiration in the early twentieth century movements of Futurism, Dada and
Constructivism. These led to the three main currents in Art and Technology which I have labelled:
1. “The machine as centrepiece” from Futurism;
2. “The automatic performance” from Dada;
3. “Process in art” from Constructivism.
All postwar technological artists owe some debt to these movements, and also to the seminal figure of Marcel Duchamp. His early kinetic sculptures, use of readymades, and his Large Glass have each inspired quite different forms of technological art.
Moreover he helped to make it possible for machines to be exhibited in gallery settings, an essential aspect of later Art and Technology exhibitions.
With these origins in mind, we can more easily understand the development of Art and Technology along a timeline that spans the twentieth century. Many of the artistic concepts were established before the Second World War, but the aftermath of that conflict brought together the necessary elements for Art and Technology to flourish.
Technology and Society after World War II
These elements came from wider trends in the postwar industrial countries, mainly the USA, Western Europe and Japan. Art and Technology was actually produced across the world, including the Soviet block, but the main impetus came from
America’s leading economic and cultural position. The convergence of several aspects made Art and Technology possible.
Firstly, there was a tremendous growth in new technologies that resulted in computers, global telecommunications, broadcast media and space exploration.

These gave a visibility and dynamism to the technological sector from the 1950s onwards that entered popular culture on many levels. The general relief at the end of
World War II and the more subdued hostilities of the Cold War resulted in a very optimistic current of progressive thought, exemplified in the futuristic visions of the twenty-first century. Bold predictions about a technological society, buoyed up by the
Moon landings and the Space Race, also boosted the status of Art and Technology.
Throughout the 1960s, technological art was the most contemporary artform and this ensured its widespread visibility.
Secondly, due to the expansion of wartime industries and the increasing technological level of the military, a broad section of the public had direct experience with advanced technology including several influential artists who passed through the aviation industry. This ensured an element of familiarity with technology amongst artists and their audiences. The permeation of post-war society by advanced consumer technologies, especially television, also assisted in the reception of technological art. It reflected an increasingly mechanised society.
Thirdly, technology also enabled the boom in the American economy after the War, and later in European and other economies. This encouraged the support and patronage of technological art by various corporations and state bodies during the
1960s. The development and increased support for galleries of contemporary art
(e.g. MOMA and the Guggenheim) also resulted in a plethora of venues. The exhibition of contemporary works in museums was quite a recent innovation in itself, so Art and Technology benefitted from this supportive climate.
Fourthly, the destructive aspect of technology was symbolised by the atomic bomb and the threat of total annihilation. The effects of mass industrialisation, including pollution and environmental problems, became more widely discussed in the late
1960s and were an important element in the “counterculture” of student protests that emerged at that time. By the mid-1970s, technological art was increasingly associated with the military-industrial system. The economic downturn of the 1970s, combined with increasingly unpopular debacle of Vietnam and social unrest in major countries, plus the end of the Apollo moon programme, all resulted in a change in attitude towards this art form. Even so, artists continued to engage with new technologies such as video. Also, many Art and Technology artists had always used their art to critique industrial society and were always conscious of the dystopian element inherent in their work.
Finally, the development of the “information economy” based on the personal computer and the Internet, a period running from roughly 1980-2000, saw the emergence of new digital artforms. At this point, Art and Technology became dominated by computer-based art, as artists colonised the virtual space of digital imagery and computer networks. Other areas like video art began to adopt digital editing and other computer techniques. Because it could now handle images and sound, the computer became the underlying platform for most instances of technological art. The period was marked by an improving economy and political optimism as the Cold War ended and market-driven liberalisation led to a general embrace of free trade. In some instances, the Art and Technology of this period accommodated itself to the new conditions; in others it produced critiques of the globalised economy. New organisations such as Ars Electronica established themselves as international centres of “New Media” art, the term that came to supersede Art and Technology as a general phrase for this area.

A chronology of Art and Technology
As the historical snapshot suggests, there is a rough chronology to the emergence of the societal trends after World War II, each of which dominated a different decade.
The most straightforward way of studying Art and Technology is to build a similar chronology and then look at when certain practices began to emerge.
The following timeline shows this:
Decade
1900s
1910s
Art form / organisation / technology
Colour organs and Scriabin’s orchestrated light performances
The Futurist Manifesto
Dadaism
Duchamp’s 1917 exhibition
Suprematism and Constructivism in Russia
1920s
1950s
Bauhaus founded in Weimar Germany
MoholyNagy’s Telephone Paintings and Light Prop
Abstract Animators working in Europe and USA
Duchamp’s Large Glass and optical experiments
1930s Calder’s mobiles
Naum Gabo’s kinetic works
Television broadcasts begin
Walter Benjamin publishes
Reproduction
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
1940s Norbert Wiener publishes his cybernetic theories in 1948
Gyorgy Kepes publishes Language of Vision
Abstract Animators use oscilloscopes to create images
Victor Pasmore develops Bauhaus-like foundation course
Institute for Contemporary Art founded
Electronic musical instruments appear
Digital computers developed
Richard Hamilton et al create Pop Art
Cybernetic ideas enter art and architecture
Independent Group founded
Nicholas Schoeffer builds cybernetic sculptures
Jean Tinguely creates self-destructing machines
CP Snow publishes essay on “The Two Cultures”
1960s
John Cage composes and performs chance-based music
First computer graphics systems developed.
Marshall McLuhan’s media theories widely disseminated
Gustav Metzger proposes Auto-Destructive Art
Fluxus founded
Roy Ascott develops Ground Course
Nam June Paik makes first video art
First exhibitions of computer art
“Nine Evenings” at the New York Armory
Experiments in Art and Technology founded
Leonardo magazine founded by Frank Malina

1990s
1970s
1980s
“The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age” at MOMA
“Cybernetic Serendipity” at the ICA
Computer Arts Society founded
Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, founded
Global satellite TV broadcasts begin
ARPANET, forerunner of Internet, developed
Hypertext and graphical interfaces developed
Jack Burnham’s “Software” exhibition
Holographic art widespread
Video art widespread as video technology improves
Video synthesisers produced
Edward Ihnatowicz’s Senster installed
Concept of telematic art developed by Roy Ascott
SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference founded
Computer arts courses at Slade, RCA, etc.
Ars Electronica in Linz started as media arts festival
Personal computers become ubiquitous
New digital technologies enter publishing, design, etc.
Digital video editing introduced
SIGGRAPH becomes principal computer art venue
Artists such as Warhol and Hockney use computers
Theorists look to computer as a post-modernist device
Major video art retrospectives
Artistic use of computer networks, e.g. bulletin boards
Emergence of Internet as online graphical environment
Net Art becomes distinct from Computer Art
Institutions (e.g. the Whitney) appoint curators of Net Art
Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts founded
Virtual reality becomes widespread in popular culture
Immersive digital artworks appear

Course Structure
The Electronic Visions course has been structured along broad thematic lines that reflect the successive emergence of different areas of practice within Art and
Technology.
1 - Introduction
2 - Kinetic Art
3 - Light Art and Holographics
4 - Cybernetics and Telematics
5 - Collaborative Art and Video
6 - Installations & Sound
7 - Computer-based art
8 - Net Art
The lectures in the first term serve as general introductions to each area, along with suggested further readings for more in-depth study. In the second term, we will examine specific exemplars from each field to look at particular artists’ work in that area.