Early media art in Czech Republic

under construction

Predecessors

• Jan Amos Komenský
• Juda Loew ben Bezalel (Rabbi Loew), invented the Golem, experimented with the camera obscura.
• Karel Capek wrote a sci-fi drama R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) on robots in 1920s.
• Zdeněk Pěšánek wrote about electronic machines fulfilling miracles in his book Kinetismus from 1940.

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 early 70s.
• 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 the early 70s and used computer generated images at the textile and ceramics design.
• 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.

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.
• Video Salon. A famous animation producer and illustrator Radek Pilar 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.
• Petr Skala, video artist, film director, screenwriter. Since mid-1980s experiments with video technology.
• 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.

Experimental film

Sound art

• 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."

Electroacoustic music

Media theory

• Vilém Flusser, theorist.
• Jiří Valoch, organised first computer art exhibition in Brno 1968
• Keiko Sei, writer, curator and educator on media and media art. Until 2002 she has been teaching at the Video/Performance/Multimedia Studio FaVU Brno. Co-curated Orbis Fictus 1994.
• Prague Media Symposium 1991-98, international and interdisciplinary symposium on the media development, communications philosophy and media art organized by Goethe-Institut Prag, AVU and SCCA.

Exhibitions

• Alfred Radok created Laterna Magica interface between theater and film in the Czech pavillion at the Expo in Brussels in 1958(??)
• Computer Graphic (Brno, 1968), organised by Jiří Valoch
• Computer and Art exhibition in Filmový klub Prague, 1968, organised by Miroslav Klivar
• Expo '67 Montreal. Laterna magika, by Alfred Radok (film director) and Josef Svoboda (architect). Kinoautomat by Radúz Činčera and Svitáček, back then, it was billed as "the world's first interactive movie." Everyone in the audience had a red and a green button in front of them and the results of voting were displayed around the screen. The movie itself was a dark comedy about a man, Mr. Novak, who believes he was responsible for his apartment building burning down, and is structured as a series of flashbacks leading up to the fire. After each scene the film would stop and a live performer would walk onto the stage and ask the audience to vote. Immediately, as if by magic, the voted scene was played.

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]
• 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.
• Michal Bielický, Silver, Lucie Svobodová, Keiko Sei, ..
• 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-Multimedia-Performance FaVU.
• Terminal Bar venue Prague.

• Bibliography of writings on media art in Czech Republic