Keynote / Analogue and Digital Vector Art in the New Tendencies (1961-1973)
Zagreb / 02.10.18 / 20:00
Dot and line are building blocks of a visual language since the very beginning of drawings made by humans. Today this vocabulary may be translated into ‘pixel’ and ‘vector’ resulting into raster or vector images. Lecture examines the histories of hand-made, electronic and digital vector art within the international art network the New Tendencies from 1961 to 1973. NT started as an international exhibition of in Zagreb 1961 presenting analogue instruction-based, algorithmic and generative art and developed into an international network of artist, critics, curators, art historians and gallery owners. In following editions NT inaugurated the participative art and arte programmata (nt2, 1963), immersive environments (nt3, 1965), visual research with computers (t4, 1968) and finally presenting both analogue and digital visual research next to conceptual art (t5,1973). (New) Tendencies amplified of the use of new technologies and new materials in art, through positive approach of using machines in in art process. NT was since beginning kind of umbrella network, concerning different art groups. Computer visual research was inagurated in NT after influence of information aesthetic theories by Max Bennse and Abraham Moles. Since 1968, NT presented and connected nodes of digital art practitioners form around the world, as artists groups ‘ars intermedia’ (Vienna), Compos 68 (Utrecht), Grupo de Arte y Cybernética (Buenos Aires), artists grouped at the university computer centre in Madrid and Paris (G Vincennes, scientific research centres (Boris Kidrič, Ruđer Bošković, Vinča) and corporate teams that produced art at Bell Laboratories, IBM, MBB Computer Graphics, CalComp and finally digital art networks as the Computer Arts Society London.
About / Darko Fritz
Since the late 1980s, the work of artist, curator and researcher Darko Fritz has revolved around a significant investigation into the use of technology in culture. His curatorial work and research on New Tendencies and early digital art has earned international acclaim with exhibitions at HDLU, Zagreb (2000), Neue Galerie, Graz (2007), ZKM, Karlsruhe (2008-09) and Akbank, Istanbul (2014). Fritz edited Media Art in Croatia at the portal Culturenet. The research “The beginning of digital arts in the Netherlands (1955 – 1980)”, was awarded by the grant by Mondriaan Foundation. Fritz is founder and programmer of the grey) (area – space for contemporary and media art since 2006.
Member of professional organizations HDLU (visual arts), ULUPUH (design), and AICA (art criticism).