Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In the course of time, it often happens that an individual person establishes her-
self or himself stably or almost irrevocably in the hall of art. Then she or he can
do whatever they want to do, and still get it accepted as “art”. But the principle
remains.
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The “only mathematician” statement is relevant only insofar as it is interpreted as
“unfortunately the pioneers were only mathematicians. Others did not have access
to the machines, or did not know how to program. Therefore we got the straight-line
quality of early works.”
However, if we accept that a work's quality as a work of
art
is judged by soci-
ety anyhow, the perspective changes. Mathematician or bohemian does not matter
then. There cannot be serious doubt that what those pioneering mathematicians did
caused a revolution. They separated the generation of a work from its conception.
They did this in a technical way. They were interested in the operational, not only
mental separation. No wonder that conceptual art was inaugurated at around the
same time. The difference between conceptual and computational art may be seen
in the computable concepts that the computer people were creating.
However, when viewed from a greater distance, the difference between concep-
tual artists and computational artists is not all that great. Both share the utmost
interest in the idea (as opposed to the material), and Sol LeWitt was most outspoken
on this. The early discourse of algorithmic art was also rich about the immaterial
character of software. Immaterial as software may be, it does not make sense with-
out being executed by a machine. A traditionally described concept does not have
such a surge to execution.
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The pioneers from mathematics showed the world that a new principle had ar-
rived in society: the algorithmic principle! No others could have done this, certainly
not artists. It had to be done by mathematicians, if it was to be done at all. The par-
lance of “only mathematicians” points back to the speaker more than to the mathe-
matician.
Trivial to note is that creative work in art, design, or any other field, depends on
ideas on one hand, and skills on the other. At times it happens that someone has
a great idea but just no way to realise it. He or she depends on others to do that.
Pushing things a bit to the extreme, the mathematics pioneers of digital art may not
have had great ideas, but they knew how to realise them.
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Marcel Duchamp was the first to talk and write about this: “All in all, the creative act is not
performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by
deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates
forgotten artists.” (Duchamp
1959
). This position implies that a work may be considered a work of
art for some while, but disappear from this stage some time later, a process that has often happened
in history. It also implies that a person may be considered a great artist only after his or her death.
That has happened, too.
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It is a simplification to concentrate the argument on conceptual vs. algorithmic artists. There
have been other directions for artistic experiments, in particular during the 1960s. They needed a
lot of technical skill and constructive intelligence or creativity. Recall op art, kinetic art, and more.
Everything that humans eventually transfer to a machine has a number of precursors.
