Friday, July 13. 2018
Thinking Machines at MOMA | #computing #art&design&architecture #history #avantgarde
Note: following the exhibition Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 until last April at MOMA, images of the show appeared on the museum's website, with many references to projects. After Archeology of the Digital at CCA in Montreal between 2013-17, this is another good contribution to the history of the field and to the intricate relations between art, design, architecture and computing.
How cultural fields contributed to the shaping of this "mass stacked media" that is now built upon the combinations of computing machines, networks, interfaces, services, data, data centers, people, crowds, etc. is certainly largely underestimated.
Literature start to emerge, but it will take time to uncover what remained "out of the radars" for a very long period. They acted in fact as some sort of "avant-garde", not well estimated or identified enough, even by specialized institutions and at a time when the name "avant-garde" almost became a "s-word"... or was considered "dead".
Unfortunately, no publication seems to have been published in relation to the exhibition, on the contrary to the one at CCA, which is accompanied by two well documented books.
Via MOMA
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Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989
November 13, 2017–
Drawn primarily from MoMA's collection, Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 brings artworks produced using computers and computational thinking together with notable examples of computer and component design. The exhibition reveals how artists, architects, and designers operating at the vanguard of art and technology deployed computing as a means to reconsider artistic production. The artists featured in Thinking Machines exploited the potential of emerging technologies by inventing systems wholesale or by partnering with institutions and corporations that provided access to cutting-edge machines. They channeled the promise of computing into kinetic sculpture, plotter drawing, computer animation, and video installation. Photographers and architects likewise recognized these technologies' capacity to reconfigure human communities and the built environment.
Thinking Machines includes works by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, Waldemar Cordeiro, Charles Csuri, Richard Hamilton, Alison Knowles, Beryl Korot, Vera Molnár, Cedric Price, and Stan VanDerBeek, alongside computers designed by Tamiko Thiel and others at Thinking Machines Corporation, IBM, Olivetti, and Apple Computer. The exhibition combines artworks, design objects, and architectural proposals to trace how computers transformed aesthetics and hierarchies, revealing how these thinking machines reshaped art making, working life, and social connections.
Organized by Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Giampaolo Bianconi, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art.
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More images HERE.
Tuesday, March 07. 2017
Rosetta Code Project | #programming #language #babel
Note: I recently found out about this curious rosettacode.org projects that presents brief solutions of the same task in "as many languages as possible" (rem.: programming languages in this case). Therefore this name, Rosetta Code. Pointing of course to the Rosetta stone that was key to understand hieroglyphs.
The project presents itself as a "programming chrestomathy" site and counts 648 programing languages so far! (839 tasks done... and counting). Babelian (programming) task ... that could possibly help restore old coded pieces.
Via Rosetta Code
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(From the site:)
Rosetta Code
Rosetta Code is a programming chrestomathy site. The idea is to present solutions to the same task in as many different languages as possible, to demonstrate how languages are similar and different, and to aid a person with a grounding in one approach to a problem in learning another. Rosetta Code currently has 839 tasks, 202 draft tasks, and is aware of 648 languages, though we do not (and cannot) have solutions to every task in every language.
Tuesday, August 04. 2009
Map of Buried City Altinum - See it in Google Earth
Late last week I read about a scientific paper scheduled for publication which documented the findings of research on the ancient city of Altinum in Italy (near Venice). The city used to be a thriving Roman City until it was sacked multiple times because of its exposed location. The remains of Altinum have been buried in some fields north of the Venice airport. Rather than try to dig up the site, scientists jhave used satellite and aerial photography to map the locations of the buildings and roads of the city.
Since a brief description of the location and an aerial photo was published, I immediately went searching for the site in Google Earth. Unfortunately, I didn't find it right away, so I did a quick search and found the location had been shared at the GEC by 'jean_thie', and an overlay of the map 
was made available in the post.
Stefan Geens of OgleEarth.com has published an excellent GE overview of the Altinum findings and includes great tips on using Google Earth (and the historical imagery mode) to delve even further into this interesting archaeological site. Stefan also found more of the researchers material and has overlayed several of their maps in this KML file . I highly recommend reading Stefan's post.
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Personal comment:
D'un blog ŕ l'autre... Clin d'oeil en rapport au post ci-dessous.
Monday, August 03. 2009
Ancient Roman City Lost, Now Found
The lost Roman city of Altinum has been found in Italy. Sophisticated aerial images released this week reveal fascinating new details about Venice's predecessor, which was abandoned by its citizens and then sank into the lagoon.
After a long search, the ancient city of Altinum -- considered to be the predecessor of Venice -- has been discovered. In a report published this week in Science, archaeologists at the University of Padua also report that the most popular of Venetian tourist attractions, the Grand Canal, was flowing through the Roman trade town as long as 1,500 years ago.
Altinum plays a major role in Venice's history -- it was one of the richest Roman settlements but inhabitants fled before the advance of the armies of Attila the Hun. Then as water levels rose, the abandoned city sank into the lagoon. Its walls remain covered by fields today. And this is why the ancient city has remained undiscovered for such a long time.
On a modern map, Altinum is situated seven kilometers north of Venice, near the Marco Polo airport. It is the only large Roman city in northern Italy and one of the few in Europe that was not buried beneath medieval or modern towns.
The team of researchers, led by Andrea Ninfo, mapped the city in detail using aerial photography. They also used pictures taken in conjunction with a variety of infra-red filters. During a particularly dry period in the summer of 2007, when plants were stressed and more stonework appeared, the outlines of buildings in the ancient city became more visible. "Everything is just as it was. When we saw the picture we couldn't believe it," Italian archaeologist and co-author of the paper Alessandro Fontana, told Times of London.
According to archaeologists, Venice's ancestor was surrounded by rivers and canals, including one large canal that ran through the center of the city and connected it with the lagoon.
A digital reconstruction of the area shows that the city stood two to three meters above what was then the sea level. The structure of Altinum was complex and perfectly suited to the particular demands of the swampy environment. Researchers say that it looks like the Romans knew how best to build on this harsh, swampy landscape -- long before they began the construction of Venice in the middle of a lagoon.
ecb -- with wires
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Via Der Spiegel
fabric | rblg
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations.
This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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