Media art in Czech Republic

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(under construction)


Predecessors

  • Jan Amos Komenský
  • Jan Evangelista Purkyně (18th c.), constructed his own version of zoetrope which he called forolyt: he put nine photos of him shot from various sides to the disc and entertained his granchildren by showing them how he, an old and famous professor, is turning around at great speed.
  • Juda Loew ben Bezalel (Rabbi Loew), invented the Golem, experimented with the camera obscura.
  • Karel Čapek wrote a sci-fi drama R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) on robots in 1920s.

Experimental film, avantgarde film

Interactive environments and installations

  • Zdeněk Pěšánek, kinetic artist. Designed "colour piano", which added lighting effects to the music (1000 light bulbs with 238 tones of colour; the light patterns or 'score' corresponded to the perforated rolls of the player-piano and were replaceable), built by Petrof company (1928), exhibited in the Czechoslovak pavilion for the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1937). Wrote about electronic machines fulfilling miracles in his book Kinetismus (1940). Was able to produce a light-kinetic sculptural painting, where the keys could also trigger the scenic means of the painting and the colour changes within the illuminated embossment work, in dynamic interplay with a mechanical spectrophone (reflector play). Real instrument, technically well executed and managed by Erwin Schulhoff. Pesanek designed light and kinetic sculptures for architectural settings from department stores to the electricity generating housings in CS in the 1920s and 1930s.
  • Theatergraph by E.F.Burian and Miroslav Kouřil. Performance stage with integrated projection surfaces on which films and slides were projected during theater performances, and established a direct visual relationship to the onstage action. This technology was first used in 1936 for Wedekind’s production of Spring’s Awakening, and later for Pushkin’s Eugen Onegin.
  • Laterna magika by Alfréd Radok (film director) and Josef Svoboda (stage designer). First introduced in the Czechoslovak pavilion at the Expo '58 in Brussels, this entity combined ballet, theater, several film projections, and sound background. [...] LM transformed the concept of virtual and physiological time. The medium of virtual time included a real actor with whom the spectator could identify and thus gain a direct paradigm on which to model his own behavior, should his physical body ever find itself in a virtual interactive space. [...] It was a highly synchronized program, coordinated to the last detail, with everyone having his exact spot in a precisely marked space. Later presented at Expo '67 Montreal, Expo '70 Osaka.
  • Josef Svoboda: Diacran (1958), Polyecran (Expo 1967 Montreal), Polyvision (with Frič, 1967).
  • Jaroslav Frič: Polyvision (with Svoboda, 1967), Kinoautomat (with Činčera, 1968), Spherorama - a slide projector with only a single lens was able to create a 360-degree dome projection (Expo 1970 Osaka), Vertical Cinemascope (Expo 1970 Osaka), Rondovision (1984).
Quotes
  • critic Jiří Padrta in a review of an exhibition of kinetic art described the perceiver as a type, "highly active, open, not only in terms of sight, but also in terms of multiple-sense perception, able to register and emotionally grasp very diverse sensations at the same time." (Jiří Padrta, "Světlo a pohyb" (Light and Motion, review of an exhibition), Výtvarné umění XVI, 1966, nos 6-7, p 327.)

Computer and computer-aided art

  • Miroslav Klivar, painter, graphic artist, poet, curator. Organised Computer and Art exhibition in Prague 1968. Started to use computer in 1966.
  • Zdeněk Sýkora is considered the first Czechoslovak artist to use computer. In 1964 in collaboration with the mathematician Jaroslav Blažek he began creating the visual computer-aided structures. In 1972 he created his first computer generated line paintings. The results of computations, spatial compositions of alphanumerical symbols were interpreted by the two dimensional shapes manually painted or used as a mosaic tiles at the architectural objects.
  • Zdenka Čechová, studied Art and Mathematics. Started using computer in 1972 and used computer generated images at the textile and ceramics design, and book illustrations.
  • Aleš Svoboda, Stanislav Zippe, Pavel Rudolf, Lubomír Sochor, Jan Moučka, Zdenek Frýbl
  • Radomír Leszczynski, painter. Since 1995 he has concentrated on the brushwork realization of "subjacent" work on a computer. Also produces electronic prints.
Works
  • Zdeněk Sýkora, Black-and-White Structure, ceramic mosaic, 530x350cm, 1969. The composition of the pattern was computed with a program on a LGP-30 (German) computer.
  • Zdenka Čechová, Sand Storm, computer drawing, 21 x 28 cm, 1991. This drawing was printed on a dot-matrix printer using the author's program.
Publications
  • Josef Hiršal and Bohumila Grögerová Slovo, písmo, akce, hlas (word, letter, action, voice) (1966). Presented the parallel trends of the 1960s in the rest of Europe in a condensed form, they made use of the term "experimental art" in order to set parameters. editors included new types of artificial poetry, permutational and programmed art and happenings under the flag of experimental art, as their selection of manifestos, essays and artistic programs presented it.
Computer art exhibitions

Video art

  • Woody Vasulka, artist. After producing a pioneering body of tapes in collaboration with Steina Vasulka since 1969 in the USA, he has investigated the narrative, syntactical and metaphorical potential of electronic imaging. Co-founded The Kitchen in 1971.
  • Petr Skala, video artist, film director, screenwriter. In late 1982 began to work systematically with the video technology, which he had not previously regarded as an artistic medium, but only as a tool for preserving his abstract moving images.
  • Radek Pilař, bought video camera and VCR in 1983, then first video experiments. Since 1988 organised exhibitions of video art.
  • Video Salon. A famous animation producer and illustrator Radek Pilař was making video art tapes from 1987 and gathered a number of artists to form a video group. This "Video Salon" made their first exhibition in the summer of 1989 with numerous screenings and four video installations. The members had access to information on video installation because one of the members, Dr. Vancat, was then working for the National Art Archive where there were photos of works by Paik and Bill Viola. Filmmakers Petr Skala, Tomáš Kepka, Ivan Tatíček, photographers Pavel Scheufler, Pavel Jasanský, Michal Pacina, Jasoň Šilhan, visual artists Lucie Svobodová, Věra Geislerová, Lenka Štarmanová, Kateřina Scheuflerová, Roman Milerský, René Slauka, and architect Miro Dopita. Active til mid-1990s. Since 1993 directed by Petr Skala.
  • Original Video Journal, the dissident video magazine started in 1986 with Vaclav and Olga Havel's initiative, was being edited and copied secretly on school equipment.

Electroacoustic and experimental music, sound art

Summary

I navzdory diskontinuitě můžeme u současných aktivit v oblasti radioartu vnímat bohatou tradici, pojící současnou tvorbu s různými počiny minulého století – od Burianových voicebandů, konkrétní poezie, produkce Elektronického studia Československého rozhlasu v Plzni v 60. a 70. letech, produkce Experimentálního studia v Bratislavě až po nejmladší pokus o soustavnou (a zejména „svobodnou“) reflexi současného zvukového umění v Audiostudiu Československého rozhlasu v Praze, které působilo – do jisté míry rozporuplně – pouze v letech 1990–1994.

People, works, institutions
  • Alois Hába, composer primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones.
  • 18. ledna 1961 byla povolena jednorázová diskuze odborníků o experimentální hudbě v Literárních novinách. Zúčastnili se Jarmil Burghauser, Svatopluk Havelka, Jan Rychlík, Vladimír Šrámek, Václav Trojan, Eduard Herzog, Vladimír Lébl a ing. Antonín Svoboda. Následně byla zřízena komise, která měla posoudit prospěšnost této hudby.
  • Alois Piňos, composer. Patří k zakladatelské generaci české Nové hudby šedesátých let. Na svém kontě má i několik zajímavých prvenství: první česká kompozice kombinující orchestr s magnetofonovým pásem (Koncert pro orchestr a magnetofonový pásek, 1964); první týmové kompozice (1969–1971); první české audiovizuální dílo – ve spolupráci s výtvarníkem Daliborem Chatrným (see below); hudba vytvořená ze zvuků krápníků (Speleofonie, 1976) atp.
  • Experimentální studio v Plzni bylo zřízeno v roce 1965. Miloslav Kabeláč, Karel Odstrčil, Miroslav Hlaváč, Jan Hanuš a Milan Slavický a další. Toto studio však zůstalo uzavřeno pro autory, kteří nedokázali předložit dostatečně socialistické projekty. Ještě v roce 1963 však v mnohatisícovém nákladu vyšla kniha, jejímž hlavním cílem bylo zostudit a zesměšnit všechny experimenty prováděné ve světě.
  • Petr Kotík (see below)
  • Milan Grygar (see below)
  • Miloslav Kabeláč
  • Rudolf Růžička
  • Milan Knížák, Broken Music (1979) (Fluxus). "In 1963-64 I used to play records both too slowly and too fast and thus changed the quality of the music, thereby, creating new compositions. In 1965 I started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. By playing them over and over again (which destroyed the needle and often the record player too) an entirely new music was created - unexpected, nerve-racking and aggressive. Compositions lasting one second or almost infinitely long (as when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over). I developed this system further. I began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing different parts of records back together, etc. to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds. A glued joint created a rhythmic element separating contrasting melodic phrases... Since music that results from playing ruined gramophone records cannot be transcribed to notes or to another language (or if so, only with great difficulty), the records themselves may be considered as notations at the same time."
  • V průběhu 70. let vzniklo mimo oficiální půdu v prostředí undergroundu několik hudebních experimetů Milana Knížáka (skupina Aktual) a Pavla Zajíčka s Milanem Hlavsou (skupina DG 307). V 80. letech se v Praze kolem skladatelů Petra Kofroně a Martina Smolky vytvořila skupina Agon, která dodnes interpretuje původní tvorbu českých a světových autorů. V Brně se v 90. letech podařilo zavést tradici Expozice nové hudby, která jednou ročně nabízí přehlídku nejnovějšího vývoje v oblasti experimentální tvorby.

Audiovisual compositions

Musical-visual realisations, inspired by concrete works of visual art
  • Hommage á Dubuffet, František Chaun (1921), 1971. Symphonic work inspired by three concrete pictures of a French painter and musician. From the musical point of view, lit consists of three ingenious musical characteristics, or rather apho,risitic abbreviations.
  • Orbis pictus, Václav Kučera (1929), 1975. Cycle of madrigals, composed to his own texts, was awarded the first prize at the Berlin Biennale in 1975. Inspired by four pictures: The Rainbow by Václav Špála, Anguish and Fear by Kathe Kollwitz, A Child Dedicated to Pain by Paul Klee, and The Green Violinist by Marc Chagall. From the musical point of view, it is highly expressive; new composition techniques and, be- sides the traditional declamation, also expressive declamatory ele- ments (whispering, shouts, etc.) are used.
  • Windows (Okna), Petr Eben (1929), 1976. Cycle for trumpet and organ was inspired by the windows designed by Marc Chagall for the synagogue at Hadassa and for the cathedral at Metz. From the musical point of view, the colour possibilities of both instruments are exploited on modal basis in connection with the names of the individual parts (Blue Window, Green Window, Red Window, Yellow Window).
Audiovisual compositions
  • Alois Piňos, první české audiovizuální dílo – ve spolupráci s výtvarníkem Daliborem Chatrným vytvořil triptych Statická kompozice (for electronic music and slides, 1969), Mříže (for piano and film, 1969), Geneze (for chamber ensemble and film, 1970), Adoration (composition utilizing pendent plastic objects made to ring in different ways, 1970) - performed at the 2nd exhibition of experimental music at Brno in 1970. The Static Composition is created from sound objects, electronic and concrete, linked with the graphic objects by the relation of close assimilation at the level of abstract elements: point, line, curve. The graphic objects were divided in three groups according to the degree of complexity of the composition. The third, most complex group, corresponds to a musical composition on the ba- sis of interval series. Both components of the work are rationally determined. Their mutual relation may be defined as formal analogy. The Bars are created from a music, using grid-like tone structures-one-way interval series, periodical and symmetrical-and black-and-white film operating with the movement of surface divided by different rasters and with the moltif of a square. Genesis is a composition in five parts sand lasting eight minutes, creatively using the motif of a twirl and broken line and musical-colour, instrumental contrast between vertical and horizontal lines. The analogy of form is expressed by the composition in both contrasting components. The Adoration was created from the material of electronically treated so.und of suspended iringing sheet metal objects. The composition has an epic form in two parts, using the contrast of rather tonal and rather non-tonal surface and rhythmic structures, and has an unusual gracefulness, given by the sipecial character of the material.
  • Petr Kotík. Since his early works, Kotik's compositional method has been based on visually graphic material. Using graphs that were created without direct relation to his music, Kotik has determined all of his musical parameters. While be produced his own graphs in the 1960s, in 1971 Kotik began to use new graphic material which be accidentally discovered at his friend Jan Kucera’s medical lab at Buffalo University. Kucera’s graphs charted the results of experiments on the reaction of the nervous system to alcohol. Kotik used these until 1982, when he developed, with the assistance of Charles Ames, a computer program that produced chance progressions based on Markov's numerical chain process. Kotik applies these computer-generated progressions, like his earlier graphs, to all musical parameters.
  • Milan Grygar. In 1964 the artist produced a series of 64 black-and-white drawings on the principle of a linear sequence. Working in a fast rhythm, the artist could "hear" the drawing he was creating. From there, it was only a step to a discovery that was to define his future artistic career and bring him renown. Grygar made a tape of a precise acoustic recording of the drawing's origin. In 1965, the artist started to pursue the relationship between drawing and sound, and in 1966 exhibited his first acoustic drawings with accompanying tape recordings. These New Drawings led him to the direction known as the New Music, and were followed by large drawings and paintings recording hand movements. The next stage concerned mechanic-acoustic drawings in which the artist employed resounding mechanisms as drawing tools. A new comprehensive series entitled Ground-plan Scores started to take shape in 1967. In the series, drawings are composed as projections of "spread" sounds. In 1970, Grygar held a performance called Audiovisual Relations in the Ales Hall, Prague, in the course of which he executed an acoustic drawing as well as a unique haptic drawing, which the artist entered as a material being producing a drawing with his fingers, without the supervision of sight. Similar performances took place in Brno (1968; 1973, including Homage to Magic), Lodz (1974), Prague (1985), and at a festival in Gent (1986). The artist renders all his drawings and paintings as scores based on different principles (e.g. colour scores in which he sets a precise list of musicians and sound sources, architectural, 12 horizons etc.). Another spur for a sound interpretation was provided by sound-relief drawings which Grygar explored from 1972. In 1976, this system of a rhythmical square grid gave way to the linear principle in drawings which can be also interpreted acoustically. Large-format drawings referred to as spatial scores are offset by White Images (1980). In 1986 Milan Grygar participated in the Chambres d'Amis international event in Gent. The last phase of his work is associated with Black Images on the principle of black planes and colour lines in which the key part is played by fixed light. Milan Grygar's acoustic drawings were published by Supraphon on two LP's in 1969 and 1976.

Media theory


1990s

  • In 1990, when the Fluxus artist, deconstructivist Milan Knizak, was elected as a dean of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague all the professors of the old regime were removed. He replaced them, and set up an atelier of video art with Fluxus star Paik's student Michael Bielicky, fulfilling his iconoclasm against the authorities and the hierachy in both politics and art-history. Another provocative, ex-banned performing artist, Tomas Ruler, received a TV studio at the Technical University in Brno after the revolution and now runs an atelier of video art and multimedia performance there. Video was also the most effective media for him. [1]
  • Michael Bielický, New Media AVU academy program since 1991 (til 2007). "In 1991 I was called by the Prag Academy of Art to found and lead a section for new media. Nam June Paik donated quite a large amount of money for the equipment. As well, other (private) people from Germany supported this project. Thanks to the DAAD in Bonn, a longterm instructer for my department was made available for several years. The department is situated in a Cubist influenced villa. The first students reacted very individually in their way of using the new technology. From videotapes to video installations, interactive video sculpters, live video performances to communication art, they use their new techniques in a serious, but detached way."
  • Keiko Sei, head of Video/Performance/Multimedia Studio in Brno 1998-2001.
  • Miloš Vojtěchovský - Orbis Fictus, Dawn of the Magicians?, LABoratory
  • Silver, Lucie Svobodová, Milan Slavický composer..
  • experimental film: Martin Blažíček, Emil Kubiš, Vít Pancíř, Martin Ježek, Martin Čihák, Petr Marek
  • Video/Performance/Multimedia Studio. "In 1994, the receipt of a grant enabled us to take the initial steps towards creating a long-term program integrating modern technology and a Multimedia laboratory built in cooperation with Woody Vasulka, pioneer of video and electronic art. Developments include the aquisition of real-time multimedia interactive equipment and links to an academic network and the World Wide Web. Thanks to the support and financial assistance of Silicon Graphics, the VMP studio has been able to upgrade its equipment and increase its number of projects including interactive works and installations. In addition, opportunities to collaborate with other institutions have also been created and an academic metropolis net involving several universities is being developed."
  • Milan Guštar, he's been providing technical support for the works by David Černý, Silver, Federico Diaz, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Michael Bielický and others since 1987.
  • Orbis Fictus new media art exhibition Prague 1994, organised by SCCA. Curated by Ludvík Hlaváček and Marta Smolíková.
  • Dawn of the Magicians? exhibition Prague 1996-7, organised by National Gallery. Curators: Jaroslav Anděl, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Ivona Raimanová.
  • Hi-tech/Art Brno 1994-97, annual international exhibition and symposium, organised by Video/Performance/Multimedia Studio Brno.
  • NoD Media Lab, Terminal Bar Prague, LABoratory at CCA (1998-2004).

2000s

Bibliography

Others

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