Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet features over 70 pioneering artists from the 1950s to the early 1990s, including Atsuko Tanaka, Harold Cohen, Rebecca Allen, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Vera Molnár, Nam June Paik, Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss. Collaborating internationally, they experimented with cutting-edge media and hybrid methods to expand their collective creative horizons. Many believed technology should be a communal resource, working together to steer its development towards creative and social uses.
Some artists in the exhibition used electronics to shape light and sound. Others introduced mathematical principles and algorithms as creative partners. New fields of study, such as cybernetics, encouraged artists to think about the relationship between artworks and their audience as a ‘communication system’. Viewers became active participants. Applying emerging technologies and scientific principles to art made it possible to interact with it in new ways.
Breakthroughs in telecommunications allowed artists to collaborate across international boundaries, forming networks and communities. Computers went from the size of a room to discreet boxes sitting on a desk, transforming how people could work. For some, engaging with technology was a way of reclaiming it from the military and corporate interests that had driven its development. Many artists tinkered in high-tech research labs or with consumer electronics, often sharing access to expensive equipment with each other and their communities.
Electric Dreams is roughly chronological. Immersive installations of large-scale works combine with rooms exploring artists’ shared interests and collaborations. It contains a wide range of ideas and technologies, from paintings inspired by mathematics and the science of perception to the earliest experiments with virtual reality. As technology continues to shape the world in ways we can’t yet imagine, this exhibition presents how earlier artists coupled scientific thinking with human creativity.
The exhibition will run until 1 June. Plan your visit here
