fabric | rblg

By fabric | ch

-----

As we continue to lack a decent search engine on this blog and as we don't use a "tag cloud" ... This post could help navigate through the updated content on | rblg (as of 08.2021), via all its tags!

FIND BELOW ALL THE TAGS THAT CAN BE USED TO NAVIGATE IN THE CONTENTS OF | RBLG BLOG:

(to be seen just below if you're navigating on the blog's html pages or here for rss readers)

--

Note that we had to hit the "pause" button on our reblogging activities a while ago (mainly because we ran out of time, but also because we received complaints from a major image stock company about some images that were displayed on | rblg, an activity that we felt was still "fair use" - we never made any money or advertise on this site).

Nevertheless, we continue to publish from time to time information on the activities of fabric | ch, or content directly related to its work (documentation).

Note: a brief video documentation about one of fabric | ch's latest project – Atomized (Re)Staging – that was exhibited at ZKM during Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.

The exhibition was curated by Lívía Nolasco-Roszás and Felix Koberstein and took place ibn the context of the European research project Beyond Matter.

Via fabric | ch's Vimeo

-----

Note:

The exhibition related to the project and European research Beyond Matter - Past Exhibitions as Digital Experiences will open next week at ZKM, with the digital versions (or should I rather say "versioning"?) of two past and renowned exhibitions: Iconoclash, at ZKM in 2002 (with Bruno Latour among the multiple curators) and Les Immateriaux, at Beaubourg in 1985 (in this case with Jean-François Lyotard, not so long after the release of his Postmodern Condition). An unusual combination from two different times and perspectives.

The title of the exhibition will be Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter, with an amazing contemporary and historic lineup of works and artists, as well as documentation material from both past shows.

Working with digitized variants of iconic artworks from these past exhibitions (digitization work under the supervision of Matthias Heckel), fabric | ch has been invited by Livia Nolasco-Roszas, ZKM curator and head of the research, to present its own digital take in the form of a combination on these two historic shows, and by using the digital models produced by their research team and made available.

The result, a new fabric | ch project entitled Atomized (re-)Staging, will be presented at the ZKM in Karlsruhe from this Saturday on (03.12.2022 - 23.04.2023).

Via ZKM

-----

Opening: Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter. 

© ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Visual: AKU Collective / Mirjam Reili

Past exhibitions as Digital Experiences

Fri, December 02, 2022 7 pm CET, Opening

---

Atrium 1+2, 2nd floor

Free entry

---

When past exhibitions come to life digitally, the past becomes a virtual experience. What this novel experience can look like in concrete terms is shown by the exhibition »Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter«.

As part of the project »Beyond Matter. Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality«, the ZKM | Karlsruhe and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, use the case studies »Les Immatériaux« (Centre Pompidou, 1985) and »Iconoclash« (ZKM | Karlsruhe, 2002) to investigate the possibility of reviving exhibitions through experiential methods of digital and spatial modeling.

The digital model as an interactive presentation of exhibition concepts is a novel approach to exploring exhibition history, curatorial methods, and representation and mediation. The goal is not to create »digital twins«, that is, virtual copies of past assemblages of artifacts and their surrounding architecture, but to provide an independent sensory experience.

On view will be digital models of past exhibitions, artworks and artifacts from those exhibitions, and accompanying contemporary commentary integrated via augmented reality. The exhibition will be accompanied by a conference on virtualizing exhibition histories.

The exhibition will be accompanied by numerous events, such as specialist workshops, webinars, online and offline guided tours, and a conference.

---

Program

7 – 7:30 p.m. Media Theater
Short lectures by
Sybille Krämer, Professor (emer.) at the Free University of Berlin
Siegfried Zielinski, media theorist with a focus on archaeology and variantology of arts and media, curator, author

Moderation: Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, curator

7:30 – 8:15 p.m. Media Theater
Welcome
Olga Sismanidi, Representative Creative Europe Program of the European Commission (EACEA)
Arne Braun, State Secretary in the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg
Frank Mentrup, Lord Mayor of the City of Karlsruhe
Peter Weibel, Director of the ZKM | Karlsruhe
Xavier Rey, Director of the Centre Pompidou, Paris

8:15 – 8:30 p.m. Improvisation on the piano
Hymn Controversy by Bardo Henning

8:30 p.m.
Curator guided tour of the exhibition

---

The exhibition will be open from 8 to 10 p.m.

The mint Café is also looking forward to your visit.

---

Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.

Past Exhibitions as Digital Experiences.

Sat, December 03, 2022 – Sun, April 23, 2023

The EU project »Beyond Matter: Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality« researches ways to reexperience past exhibitions using digital and spatial modeling methods. The exhibition »Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.« presents the current state of the research project at ZKM | Karlsruhe.

At the core of the event is the digital revival of the iconic exhibitions »Les Immatériaux« of the Centre Pompidou Paris in 1985 and »Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art« of the ZKM | Karlsruhe in 2002.

Based on the case studies of »Les Immatériaux« (Centre Pompidou, 1985) and »Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art« (ZKM, 2002), ZKM | Karlsruhe and the Centre Pompidou Paris investigate possibilities of reviving exhibitions through experiential methods of digital and spatial modeling. Central to this is also the question of the particular materiality of the digital.

At the heart of the Paris exhibition »Les Immatériaux« in the mid-1980s was the question of what impact new technologies and materials could have on artistic practice. When philosopher Jean-François Lyotard joined as cocurator, the project's focus eventually shifted to exploring the changes in the postmodern world that were driven by a flood of new technologies.

The exhibition »Iconoclash« at ZKM | Karlsruhe focused on the theme of representation and its multiple forms of expression, as well as the social turbulence it generates. As emphasized by curators Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, the exhibition was not intended to be iconoclastic in its approach, but rather to present a synopsis of scholarly exhibits, documents, and artworks about iconoclasms – a thought experiment that took the form of an exhibition – a so-called »thought exhibition.«

»Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.« now presents in the 21st century the digital models of the two projects on the Immaterial Display, hardware that has been specially developed for exploring virtual exhibitions. On view are artworks and artifacts from the past exhibitions, as well as contemporary reflections and artworks created or expanded for this exhibition. These include works by Jeremy Bailey, damjanski, fabric|ch, Geraldine Juárez, Carolyn Kirschner, and Anne Le Troter that echo the 3D models of the two landmark exhibitions. They bear witness to the current digitization trend in the production, collection, and presentation of art.

Case studies and examples of the application of digital curatorial reconstruction techniques that were created as part of the Beyond Matter project complement the presentation.

The exhibition »Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.« is accompanied by an extensive program of events: A webinar series aimed at museum professionals and cultural practitioners will present examples of work in digital or hybrid museums; two workshops, coorganized with Andreas Broeckmann from Leuphana University Lüneburg, will focus on interdisciplinary curating and methods for researching historical exhibitions; workshops on »Performance-Oriented Design Methods for Audience Studies and Exhibition Evaluation« (PORe) will be held by Lily Díaz-Kommonen and Cvijeta Miljak from Aalto University.

After the exhibition ends at the ZKM, a new edition of »Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.« will be on view at the Centre Pompidou in Paris from May to July 2023.

>>>

>>>

Further locations and dates:

Project

Cooperation partners

Supported by

Note:

An upcoming exhibition for fabric | ch, which will open next week at the ZKM in Karlsruhe.

We'll present a new work in this context (Atomized (re-)Staging), about which we'll hopefully find time to post some documentation on this blog later.

Via @beyondmatter

---

Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter delves into the significance of digitality and computer-generated environments in the context of the material understanding of art production and the showcasing of it.

The exhibition presents the digital models of Les Immatériaux (Centre Pompidou, 1985) and Iconoclash. Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art (ZKM, 2002) on the newly developed Immaterial Display.

Furthermore, a selection of artworks and artifacts, mainly from the collections of the @centrepompidou and @zkmkarlsruhe, attest to a conceptual dematerialization and digital re-materialization of artworks.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Beyond Matter (@beyondmattereu)

---

Via @ptrckkllr

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Patrick Keller (@ptrckkllr)

Note: We had the chance at fabric | ch to initiate a new research / project last Spring, in collaboration with the Nam June Paik Art Center (warning: long loading time!) in South Korea and ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO).

In this context, we're having the opportunity to work with some of the amazing material of the museum's collection and archive. It contains some of Paik's major works (single & multi-channel video in particular), that have been difficult to see since the passing of the artist, and most of its archives.

The museum indeed has the largest collection Paik's video, as well as some important installations and a large primary and secondary material about the production of the artworks themselves. The research undertaken is looking to give access to this material in new ways and forms, out of the physical museum and through digital means. For this task, we're planning to further dig into the archives and look at works that were realized, or not, during the Fluxus period ("Symphony for 20 Rooms", "Exhibition of Music, Electronic Television").

The aim of this research is to work on automated curating and digital display (likely AR) of exhibitions at anybody's place (home, appartment, office, warehouse, "garage", etc.), resonating with the concept of "Viewing Rooms" and therefore the title of this first phase of the research: (Re-)Viewing Paik. We are seeking forms of personal exhibitions, for specific spatial configurations and in which the artworks organize their presence themselves, according to an objective understanding of the space.  

To achieve these research objectives, we'll work with fabric | ch's software and ongoing project that allows us to automate the creation of environments, based on sensors inputs: Atomized (*) Functioning (pdf), which is based on customizable/scriptable algorithmic and AI procedures. In the specific case of (Re-)Viewing Paik, it is used for curation and exhibition design purposes, therefore Atomized (curatorial) Functioning (pdf). Like we already did for this exhibition at HeK, in 2019.

-----

By fabric | ch

Below are early tests with a digital transposition/reconstruction of TV Buddha (literally), the zen media buddha in between a glitched and mirrored digital environment containing other artworks (video and photographies of the famous 1963 exhibition: Exposition of Music - Electronic Television).

This early phase of the work will see us work with the pieces selected by Nam June Paik Art Center curator and archivst Sans Ae Park. These pieces were selected mainly to test different artwork types and durations into their new display setup.

...

Note: As part of my teaching at ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO), I've had the opportunity to dig into the history of the relationship between art and science (ongoing process, especially regarding a material history of the same period). Or rather the links between creative processes (in art, architecture and design) and the information sciences (the computer especially, or the "Universal Machine" as formulated by A.Turing, as a more evocative name, hence the title of the graphs below and of this post).

I also had the occasion, through my practice at fabric | ch, and before that as an assistant at EPFL and then as a professor at ECAL, to experience first hand some of these massive transformations in society and culture.

Thus, for my theory courses, I've sought to assemble "maps" of sorts that help me understand, visualize and explain the fluxes and timelines of interactions between people, artifacts and disciplines. These maps are by no means perfect... nor do they pretend to be. They remain a bit hazy (by intention, as well as constraints of sizes) and could be indefinitely "unfolded" and completed, according to various interests and points of view, beyond mine. I edit them regularly as a matter of fact.

However, in the absence of a good written, visual and/or sensitive history of these techno-cultural phenomena taken as a whole, these maps remain a good approximation tool to apprehend the flows and exchanges that unite or divide them, to start build a personal knowledge about them and eventually dig deeper...

This is the main reason why, despite their obvious fuzziness - or perhaps because of it - I share them on this blog (fabric | rblg), in an informal way. It's so that other artists/designers/researchers/teachers/students/... can start building on them, show different fluxes, develop before and after or, more interestingly, branching out from them (if so, I'd be interested in sharing new developments on this site. Feel free to contact me to do so, for suggestions or comments as well btw).

...

Its also worth noting that the maps are structured horizontally on a linear timeline (late 18th century towards mid 21st, mainly the industrial period), and vertically approximately around disciplines (bottom would be related to engineering, middle to art and design, and top towards humanities, social events or movements).

This linear timeline could certainly be questioned, to paraphrase writer B. Latour, what about a spiral timeline for instance? One that would still show a past and a future, but also historical proximities of topics between them, connecting in its circular developments past centuries and topics with our contemporaneity? But for now and while aknowledging it is limitations, I stick to the linear simplicity...

Countless narratives can then be built as emergent proprieties of the graphs (and I emphasize, not as their origin).

...

The choice of topics (code, scores-instructions, countercultural, network related, interaction) are for now related to the matters of my teaching but are likely to expand. Possibly toward an underlying layer that would show the material conditions that supported the whole process and also made it possible.

In any case, this could be a good starting point for some summer readings (or a new "Where's Wallie" kind of game...)! 

Via fabric | ch

-----

By Patrick Keller

Rem.: By clicking on the thumbnails below you'll get access to HD versions.

"Universal Machine", main map (late 18th to mid 21st centuries):

Flows in the map > "Code":

Flows in the map > "Scores, Partitions, ...":

 Flows in the map > "Countercultural, Subcultural, ...":

Flows in the map >  "Network Related":

Flows in the map > "Interaction":

...

To be continued (& completed) ...

Note: Yet another dive into history of computer programming and algorithms, used for visual outputs ...

Via The New York Times (on Medium)

-----

By Siobhan Roberts

Donald Knuth at his home in Stanford, Calif. He is a notorious perfectionist and has offered to pay a reward to anyone who finds a mistake in any of his books. Photo: Brian Flaherty

For half a century, the Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, who bears a slight resemblance to Yoda — albeit standing 6-foot-4 and wearing glasses — has reigned as the spirit-guide of the algorithmic realm.

He is the author of “The Art of Computer Programming,” a continuing four-volume opus that is his life’s work. The first volume debuted in 1968, and the collected volumes (sold as a boxed set for about $250) were included by American Scientist in 2013 on its list of books that shaped the last century of science — alongside a special edition of “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin,” Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff,” Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and monographs by Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and Richard Feynman.

With more than one million copies in print, “The Art of Computer Programming” is the Bible of its field. “Like an actual bible, it is long and comprehensive; no other book is as comprehensive,” said Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google. After 652 pages, volume one closes with a blurb on the back cover from Bill Gates: “You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.”

The volume opens with an excerpt from “McCall’s Cookbook”:

Here is your book, the one your thousands of letters have asked us to publish. It has taken us years to do, checking and rechecking countless recipes to bring you only the best, only the interesting, only the perfect.

Inside are algorithms, the recipes that feed the digital age — although, as Dr.Knuth likes to point out, algorithms can also be found on Babylonian tablets from 3,800 years ago. He is an esteemed algorithmist; his name is attached to some of the field’s most important specimens, such as the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string-searching algorithm. Devised in 1970, it finds all occurrences of a given word or pattern of letters in a text — for instance, when you hit Command+F to search for a keyword in a document.

Now 80, Dr. Knuth usually dresses like the youthful geek he was when he embarked on this odyssey: long-sleeved T-shirt under a short-sleeved T-shirt, with jeans, at least at this time of year. In those early days, he worked close to the machine, writing “in the raw,” tinkering with the zeros and ones.

“Knuth made it clear that the system could actually be understood all the way down to the machine code level,” said Dr. Norvig. Nowadays, of course, with algorithms masterminding (and undermining) our very existence, the average programmer no longer has time to manipulate the binary muck, and works instead with hierarchies of abstraction, layers upon layers of code — and often with chains of code borrowed from code libraries. But an elite class of engineers occasionally still does the deep dive.

“Here at Google, sometimes we just throw stuff together,” Dr. Norvig said, during a meeting of the Google Trips team, in Mountain View, Calif. “But other times, if you’re serving billions of users, it’s important to do that efficiently. A 10-per-cent improvement in efficiency can work out to billions of dollars, and in order to get that last level of efficiency, you have to understand what’s going on all the way down.”

Dr. Knuth at the California Institute of Technology, where he received his Ph.D. in 1963. Photo: Jill Knuth

Or, as Andrei Broder, a distinguished scientist at Google and one of Dr. Knuth’s former graduate students, explained during the meeting: “We want to have some theoretical basis for what we’re doing. We don’t want a frivolous or sloppy or second-rate algorithm. We don’t want some other algorithmist to say, ‘You guys are morons.’”

The Google Trips app, created in 2016, is an “orienteering algorithm” that maps out a day’s worth of recommended touristy activities. The team was working on “maximizing the quality of the worst day” — for instance, avoiding sending the user back to the same neighborhood to see different sites. They drew inspiration from a 300-year-old algorithm by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who wanted to map a route through the Prussian city of Königsberg that would cross each of its seven bridges only once. Dr. Knuth addresses Euler’s classic problem in the first volume of his treatise. (He once applied Euler’s method in coding a computer-controlled sewing machine.)

Following Dr. Knuth’s doctrine helps to ward off moronry. He is known for introducing the notion of “literate programming,” emphasizing the importance of writing code that is readable by humans as well as computers — a notion that nowadays seems almost twee. Dr. Knuth has gone so far as to argue that some computer programs are, like Elizabeth Bishop’s poems and Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral,” works of literature worthy of a Pulitzer.

He is also a notorious perfectionist. Randall Munroe, the xkcd cartoonist and author of “Thing Explainer,” first learned about Dr. Knuth from computer-science people who mentioned the reward money Dr. Knuth pays to anyone who finds a mistake in any of his books. As Mr. Munroe recalled, “People talked about getting one of those checks as if it was computer science’s Nobel Prize.”

Dr. Knuth’s exacting standards, literary and otherwise, may explain why his life’s work is nowhere near done. He has a wager with Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google and a former student (to use the term loosely), over whether Mr. Brin will finish his Ph.D. before Dr. Knuth concludes his opus.

The dawn of the algorithm

At age 19, Dr. Knuth published his first technical paper, “The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad magazine. He became a computer scientist before the discipline existed, studying mathematics at what is now Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He looked at sample programs for the school’s IBM 650 mainframe, a decimal computer, and, noticing some inadequacies, rewrote the software as well as the textbook used in class. As a side project, he ran stats for the basketball team, writing a computer program that helped them win their league — and earned a segment by Walter Cronkite called “The Electronic Coach.”

During summer vacations, Dr. Knuth made more money than professors earned in a year by writing compilers. A compiler is like a translator, converting a high-level programming language (resembling algebra) to a lower-level one (sometimes arcane binary) and, ideally, improving it in the process. In computer science, “optimization” is truly an art, and this is articulated in another Knuthian proverb: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

Eventually Dr. Knuth became a compiler himself, inadvertently founding a new field that he came to call the “analysis of algorithms.” A publisher hired him to write a book about compilers, but it evolved into a book collecting everything he knew about how to write for computers — a book about algorithms.

Left: Dr. Knuth in 1981, looking at the 1957 Mad magazine issue that contained his first technical article. He was 19 when it was published. Photo: Jill Knuth. Right: “The Art of Computer Programming,” volumes 1–4. “Send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing,” Bill Gates wrote in a blurb. Photo: Brian Flaherty

“By the time of the Renaissance, the origin of this word was in doubt,” it began. “And early linguists attempted to guess at its derivation by making combinations like algiros [painful] + arithmos [number].’” In fact, Dr. Knuth continued, the namesake is the 9th-century Persian textbook author Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, Latinized as Algorithmi. Never one for half measures, Dr. Knuth went on a pilgrimage in 1979 to al-Khwārizmī’s ancestral homeland in Uzbekistan.

When Dr. Knuth started out, he intended to write a single work. Soon after, computer science underwent its Big Bang, so he reimagined and recast the project in seven volumes. Now he metes out sub-volumes, called fascicles. The next installation, “Volume 4, Fascicle 5,” covering, among other things, “backtracking” and “dancing links,” was meant to be published in time for Christmas. It is delayed until next April because he keeps finding more and more irresistible problems that he wants to present.

In order to optimize his chances of getting to the end, Dr. Knuth has long guarded his time. He retired at 55, restricted his public engagements and quit email (officially, at least). Andrei Broder recalled that time management was his professor’s defining characteristic even in the early 1980s.

Dr. Knuth typically held student appointments on Friday mornings, until he started spending his nights in the lab of John McCarthy, a founder of artificial intelligence, to get access to the computers when they were free. Horrified by what his beloved book looked like on the page with the advent of digital publishing, Dr. Knuth had gone on a mission to create the TeX computer typesetting system, which remains the gold standard for all forms of scientific communication and publication. Some consider it Dr. Knuth’s greatest contribution to the world, and the greatest contribution to typography since Gutenberg.

This decade-long detour took place back in the age when computers were shared among users and ran faster at night while most humans slept. So Dr. Knuth switched day into night, shifted his schedule by 12 hours and mapped his student appointments to Fridays from 8 p.m. to midnight. Dr. Broder recalled, “When I told my girlfriend that we can’t do anything Friday night because Friday night at 10 I have to meet with my adviser, she thought, ‘This is something that is so stupid it must be true.’”

When Knuth chooses to be physically present, however, he is 100-per-cent there in the moment. “It just makes you happy to be around him,” said Jennifer Chayes, a managing director of Microsoft Research. “He’s a maximum in the community. If you had an optimization function that was in some way a combination of warmth and depth, Don would be it.”

Dr. Knuth discussing typefaces with Hermann Zapf, the type designer. Many consider Dr. Knuth’s work on the TeX computer typesetting system to be the greatest contribution to typography since Gutenberg. Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

Sunday with the algorithmist

Dr. Knuth lives in Stanford, and allowed for a Sunday visitor. That he spared an entire day was exceptional — usually his availability is “modulo nap time,” a sacred daily ritual from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. He started early, at Palo Alto’s First Lutheran Church, where he delivered a Sunday school lesson to a standing-room-only crowd. Driving home, he got philosophical about mathematics.

“I’ll never know everything,” he said. “My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about, and if there was nothing I didn’t know the answers about.” Then he offered a tour of his “California modern” house, which he and his wife, Jill, built in 1970. His office is littered with piles of U.S.B. sticks and adorned with Valentine’s Day heart art from Jill, a graphic designer. Most impressive is the music room, built around his custom-made, 812-pipe pipe organ. The day ended over beer at a puzzle party.

Puzzles and games — and penning a novella about surreal numbers, and composing a 90-minute multimedia musical pipe-dream, “Fantasia Apocalyptica” — are the sorts of things that really tickle him. One section of his book is titled, “Puzzles Versus the Real World.” He emailed an excerpt to the father-son team of Martin Demaine, an artist, and Erik Demaine, a computer scientist, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, because Dr. Knuth had included their “algorithmic puzzle fonts.”

“I was thrilled,” said Erik Demaine. “It’s an honor to be in the book.” He mentioned another Knuth quotation, which serves as the inspirational motto for the biannual “FUN with Algorithms” conference: “Pleasure has probably been the main goal all along.”

But then, Dr. Demaine said, the field went and got practical. Engineers and scientists and artists are teaming up to solve real-world problems — protein folding, robotics, airbags — using the Demaines’s mathematical origami designs for how to fold paper and linkages into different shapes.

Of course, all the algorithmic rigmarole is also causing real-world problems. Algorithms written by humans — tackling harder and harder problems, but producing code embedded with bugs and biases — are troubling enough. More worrisome, perhaps, are the algorithms that are not written by humans, algorithms written by the machine, as it learns.

Programmers still train the machine, and, crucially, feed it data. (Data is the new domain of biases and bugs, and here the bugs and biases are harder to find and fix). However, as Kevin Slavin, a research affiliate at M.I.T.’s Media Lab said, “We are now writing algorithms we cannot read. That makes this a unique moment in history, in that we are subject to ideas and actions and efforts by a set of physics that have human origins without human comprehension.” As Slavin has often noted, “It’s a bright future, if you’re an algorithm.”

Dr. Knuth at his desk at home in 1999. Photo: Jill Knuth

A few notes. Photo: Brian Flaherty

All the more so if you’re an algorithm versed in Knuth. “Today, programmers use stuff that Knuth, and others, have done as components of their algorithms, and then they combine that together with all the other stuff they need,” said Google’s Dr. Norvig.

“With A.I., we have the same thing. It’s just that the combining-together part will be done automatically, based on the data, rather than based on a programmer’s work. You want A.I. to be able to combine components to get a good answer based on the data. But you have to decide what those components are. It could happen that each component is a page or chapter out of Knuth, because that’s the best possible way to do some task.”

Lucky, then, Dr. Knuth keeps at it. He figures it will take another 25 years to finish “The Art of Computer Programming,” although that time frame has been a constant since about 1980. Might the algorithm-writing algorithms get their own chapter, or maybe a page in the epilogue? “Definitely not,” said Dr. Knuth.

“I am worried that algorithms are getting too prominent in the world,” he added. “It started out that computer scientists were worried nobody was listening to us. Now I’m worried that too many people are listening.”

Note: open since last September and seen here and there, this exhibition at the Withney about the uses of rules and code in art. It follows a similar exhibition - and historical as well - this year at the MOMA, Thinking Machines. This certainly demonstrates an increasing desire and interest in the historization of six decades - five in the context of this show - of "art & technologies" (not yet "design & technologies", while "architecture and digital" was done at the CCA).

Those six decades remained almost under the radar for long and there will be obviously a lot of work to do to write this epic!

Interesting in the context of the Whitney exhibition are the many sub-topics developed: 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Ideas as Form / 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Generative Measures / 

- Rule, Instruction, Algorithm: Collapsing Instruction and Form /

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Image Resequenced / 

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Liberating the Signal /

- Signal, Sequence, Resolution: Realities Encoded /

- Augmented Reality: Tamiko Thiel

Via Whitney Museum of American Art

-----

Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 establishes connections between works of art based on instructions, spanning over fifty years of conceptual, video, and computational art. The pieces in the exhibition are all “programmed” using instructions, sets of rules, and code, but they also address the use of programming in their creation. The exhibition links two strands of artistic exploration: the first examines the program as instructions, rules, and algorithms with a focus on conceptual art practices and their emphasis on ideas as the driving force behind the art; the second strand engages with the use of instructions and algorithms to manipulate the TV program, its apparatus, and signals or image sequences. Featuring works drawn from the Whitney’s collection, Programmed looks back at predecessors of computational art and shows how the ideas addressed in those earlier works have evolved in contemporary artistic practices. At a time when our world is increasingly driven by automated systems, Programmed traces how rules and instructions in art have both responded to and been shaped by technologies, resulting in profound changes to our image culture.

The exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of Digital Art, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research, with Clémence White, curatorial assistant.

Note: As a direct follow-up to the May 1968 celebrations, Makery published (in French) an article retracing a history of "inhabitable utopias", or different architectures that have since been experimented with or thought about. 

The short article is mainly illustrated with an interactive timeline presenting these experiments carried out over the past 50 years.

Via Makery

-----

Depuis l’urbanisme utopique issu de Mai 68 jusqu’aux «Lieux infinis» mis en avant par le collectif Encore Heureux à la Biennale de Venise 2018, Makery balaie cinquante ans d’alternatives architecturales.

En savoir plus:

La webographie suit le déroulé de la chronologie ci-dessus.

L’image qui ouvre cette chronologie est le Makrolab de Marko Peljhan, à Rottnest Island, en Australie, 2000.

---

Instant City, Peter Cook, Archigram, Royaume-Uni, 1968.

« Structures gonflables », exposition au musée d’Art moderne de la ville de Paris, du 1er au 28 mars 1968.

Whole Earth Catalog, édité par Stewart Brand, de 1968 à 1971 aux Etats-Unis.

L’église gonflable de Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, par Hans-Walter Müller, France, 1969.

Inflatocookbook, du collectif Ant Farm, Etats-Unis, 1970.

Le laboratoire urbain d’Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri, Arizona, Etats-Unis, 1970.

La « ville libre » de Christiania, Copenhague, Danemark, 1971.

Le restaurant FOOD de Gordon Matta-Clark, New York, 1971, exposition Gordon Matta-Clark, anarchitecte, musée du Jeu de Paume, du 5 juin au 23 septembre 2018.

Superstudio, agence d’architecture, Italie, 1966-1978.

Shelter, Lloyd Kahn, Etats-Unis, 1973.

Lutte du Larzac, France, 1973-1982.

Sunspots, Steve Baer, Zomeworks, Etats-Unis, 1975.

Comment habiter la terre, Yona Friedman, 1976.

Casa Bola, Eduardo Longo, São Paulo, Brésil, 1979.

Les cabanes de Josep Pujiula à Argelaguer, province de Gérone, Catalogne, Espagne, 1980-2016.

Bolo’Bolo, P.M., 1983.

Le Jardin en mouvement de Gilles Clément, 1985.

Le Magasin à Grenoble, Patrick Bouchain, 1986.

Future Shack, Sean Godsell, Australie, 1985.

Brevétisation du container en habitat par Philip C. Clark, Etats-Unis, 1987.

Black Rock City, la ville éphémère du festival Burning Man, Nevada, Etats-Unis, 1990- .

Le projet A.G. Gleisdreieck, Berlin, Allemagne, 1990- .

Reclaim The Streets, Londres, 1991- .

Castlemorton Common Festival, Royaume-Uni, 1992.

Les maisons en carton de Shigeru Ban, Kobe, Japon, 1995.

Muf (Londres), Stalker (Italie), Coloco (Paris), Bruit du Frigo (Bordeaux), créés en 1996.

Makrolab, Marko Peljhan, Projekt Atol, Slovénie, 1997-2007.

Manifestations de Seattle contre l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, Etats-Unis, 1999.

Ecobox, Atelier d’architecture autogérée, Paris, 2002.

L’architecture du RAB, Exyzt, Paris, France, 2003.

Parking Day, Rebar, San Francisco, Etats-Unis, 2006.

Zone à Défendre, Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France, 2008- .

Tactical Urbanism, Mike Lydon et Anthony Garcia, Island Press, 2015.

Cloud City, Tomás Saraceno, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Etats-Unis, 2012.

Fab City Global, création en 2014 et Fab City Summit, à Paris du 11 au 13 juillet 2018.

Assemble Studio (Royaume-Uni), Turner Prize 2015.

Elemental, Pritzker Prize 2016.

Accueil des migrants porte de la Chapelle, Julien Beller, Paris, 2016-2018.

Mai 68. L’architecture aussi !, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, du 16 mai au 17 septembre 2018.

Lieux infinis, agence Encore Heureux, Pavillon français de la Biennale internationale d’architecture de Venise 2018.

----

Direct translation with DeepL (no links):

To know more about it

The webography follows the chronology above.

The image that opens this chronology is Marko Peljhan's Makrolab, Rottnest Island, Australia, 2000.

---

Instant City, Peter Cook, Archigram, United Kingdom, 1968.

"Inflatable structures", exhibition at the Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, from 1 to 28 March 1968.

Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand, from 1968 to 1971 in the United States.

The inflatable church of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, by Hans-Walter Müller, France, 1969.

Inflatocookbook, by the Ant Farm collective, United States, 1970.

The Arcosanti Urban Laboratory, Paolo Soleri, Arizona, USA, 1970.

The "Free City" of Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1971.

The FOOD restaurant of Gordon Matta-Clark, New York, 1971, Gordon Matta-Clark exhibition, an architect, Jeu de Paume museum, from June 5 to September 23, 2018.

Superstudio, architectural firm, Italy, 1966-1978.

Shelter, Lloyd Kahn, United States, 1973.

Larzac struggle, France, 1973-1982.

Sunspots, Steve Baer, Zomeworks, USA, 1975.

How to Live on the Earth, Yona Friedman, 1976.

Casa Bola, Eduardo Longo, São Paulo, Brazil, 1979.

Josep Pujiula's huts in Argelaguer, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain, 1980-2016.

Bolo'Bolo, P.M., 1983.

Le Jardin en mouvement by Gilles Clément, 1985.

Le Magasin à Grenoble, Patrick Bouchain, 1986.

Future Shack, Sean Godsell, Australia, 1985.

Patenting of the container in housing by Philip C. Clark, United States, 1987.

Black Rock City, the ephemeral city of the Burning Man festival, Nevada, USA, 1990- .

The A.G. Gleisdreieck project, Berlin, Germany, 1990- .

Reclaim The Streets, London, 1991- .

Castlemorton Common Festival, United Kingdom, 1992.

The cardboard houses of Shigeru Ban, Kobe, Japan, 1995.

Muf (London), Stalker (Italy), Coloco (Paris), Bruit du Frigo (Bordeaux), created in 1996.

Makrolab, Marko Peljhan, Projekt Atol, Slovenia, 1997-2007.

Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, United States, 1999.

Ecobox, Atelier d'architecture autogérée, Paris, 2002.

L'architecture du RAB, Exyzt, Paris, France, 2003.

Parking Day, Rebar, San Francisco, USA, 2006.

Zone à Défendre, Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France, 2008- .

Tactical Urbanism, Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia, Island Press, 2015.

Cloud City, Tomás Saraceno, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 2012.

Fab City Global, created in 2014 and Fab City Summit, in Paris from 11 to 13 July 2018.

Assemble Studio (United Kingdom), Turner Prize 2015.

Elemental, Pritzker Prize 2016.

Reception of migrants at Porte de la Chapelle, Julien Beller, Paris, 2016-2018.

May 68. Architecture too, Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, from 16 May to 17 September 2018.

Lieux infinis, Encore Heureux agency, French Pavilion at the 2018 Venice International Architecture Biennale.

More about it HERE.

Note: just after archiving the MOMA exhibition on | rblg, here comes a small post by Eliza Pertigkiozoglou about the Architecture Machine Group at MIT, same period somehow. This groundbreaking architecture teaching unit and research experience that then led to the MIT Media Lab (Beatriz Colomina spoke about it in its research about design teaching and "Radical Pedagogies" - we spoke about it already on | rblg in the context of a book about the Black Mountain College).

The post details Urban 5, one of the first project the group developed that was supposed to help (anybody) develop an architecture project, in an interactive way. This story is also very well explained and detailed by Orit Halpern in the recent book by CCA: When is the Digital in Architecture?

Also some intersting posts about Max Bense, Christopher Alexander, Cedric Price and Gordon Pask on the same Medium account.

Via Medium

-----

By Eliza Pertigkiozoglou

URBAN 5’s overlay and the IBM 2250 model 1 cathode ray-tube used for URBAN 5 (source: openarchitectures.com)

Nicholas Negroponte (1943) founded in 1967, together with Leon Groisser, the Architecture Machine Group (Arch Mac) at MIT, which later in 1985 transformed to MIT Media Lab. Negroponte’s vision was an architecture machine that would turn the design process into a dialogue, altering the traditional human-machine dynamics. His approach was significantly influenced by recent discussion on artificial intelligence, cybernetics, conversation theory, technologies for learning, sketch recognition and representation. Arch Mac laboratory combined architecture, engineering and computing to develop architectural applications and artificially intelligent interfaces that question the design process and the role of its actors.

The Architecture Machine’s computer and interface installation (source:radical-pedagogies.com)

Urban 5 was the first research project of the lab developed in 1973, as an improved version of Urban 2. Interestingly, in his book “Architecture Machine” Negroponte explains, evaluate and criticize Urban5, contemplating on the successes and insufficiencies of the program that aimed to serve as a “toy” for experimentation rather than a tool to handle real design problems. It was “a system that could monitor design procedures” and not design tool by itself. As explained in the book, Urban’s 5 original goal was to “study the desirability and feasibility of conversing with a machine about environmental design project… using the computer as an objective mirror of the user’s own design criteria and form decisions; reflecting formed from a larger information base than the user’s personal experience”.

Urban 5 communicated with the architect-user first by giving him instructions, then by learning from him and eventually by dialoguing with him. Two languages were employed for that communication: graphic language and English language. The graphic language was using the abstract representation of cubes (nouns). The English language was text appearing on the screen (verbs). The cubes could be added incrementally and had qualities, such as sunlight, visual and acoustical privacy, which could be explicitly assigned by the user or implicitly by the machine. When the user was first introduced to the software, the software was providing instructions. Then the user could could explicitly assign criteria or generate forms graphically in different contexts. What Negroponte called context was defined by mode, which referred to different display modes that allow the designer different kinds of operations. For example, in the TOPO mode the architect can manipulate topography in plan, while in the DRAW mode he/she can manipulate the viewing mode and the physical elements. In the final stage of this human-machine relationship there was a dialogue between designer and the computer :when there was an inconsistency between the assigned criteria and the generated form, the computer informed the architect and he/she could choose the next step: ignore, postpone, and alter the criterion or the form.

Source: The Architecture Machine, Negroponte