Max Bense, Elisabeth Walther (eds.): rot 19: Computer-Grafik (1968) [German]

“This little booklet of 14 pages is one of the first publications ever on computer art. It appeared at the occasion of the first exhibition of computer-generated, algorithmic art world-wide: the famous show of a small set of graphic works by Georg Nees. The show was held from February 5 to 19, 1965, on the premises of the Studiengalerie of TH Stuttgart (now University of Stuttgart).

The booklet is in German. It contains two short contributions by Georg Nees (2 pages) and Max Bense (3 pages) plus six images of Nees’ earliest works.

Both texts are important from a historic perspective. Nees gives a brief account of the essentials of early algorithmic art, including five descriptions of programs in plain language. These descriptions are precise formulations of the algorithms, and as such they constitute perfect documentations, independent of programming language, operating system, run-time support, or hardware. This was possible because of the simplicity of the algorithmic schema.

Bense’s text, Projekte generativer Ästhetik, must be considered the manifesto of computer art. It introduces the notion of Generative Aesthetics, in direct reference to Chomsky’s Generative Grammar. It is formulated in Bense’s typical apodictic, rigorous, almost mechanistic prose. But it points to a development that started to blossom and gained recognition only during the first decade of the 21st century: the exciting movement of generative art, design, architecture, music, and more.

The special issue of Studio International, published by Jasia Reichardt, for the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in London, 1968, contains an English translation. It has often been re-published.” (source)

Published in Stuttgart, February 1965
14 pages
via Nina Wenhart

More information (compArt database Digital Art)

PDF (updated on 2016-2-17)

Gerald Raunig: Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (2005–) [SR, EN, RU]

“Gerald Raunig has written an alternative art history of the ‘long twentieth century,’ from the Paris Commune of 1871 to the turbulent counter-globalization protests in Genoa in 2001. Meticulously moving from the Situationists and Sergei Eisenstein to Viennese Actionism and the PublixTheatreCaravan, Art and Revolution takes on the history of revolutionary transgressions and optimistically charts an emergence from its tales of tragic failure and unequivocal disaster. By eloquently applying Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the “machine,” Raunig extends the poststructuralist theory of revolution through to the explosive nexus of art and activism.

As hopeful as it is incisive, Art and Revolution encourages a new generation of artists and thinkers to refuse to participate in the tired prescriptions of marketplace and authority and instead create radical new methods of engagement. Raunig develops an indispensable, contemporary conception of political change—a conception that transcends the outmoded formulations of insurrection and resistance. Too much blood and ink has been shed for the art machines and the revolutionary machines to remain separate.”

Originally published in German as Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus im langen 20. Jahrhundert by Turia+Kant, Vienna, 2005

English edition
Translated by Aileen Derieg
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2007
Active Agents series
ISBN 1584350466, 9781584350460
319 pages

Reviews and commentaries: Marco Meseriis (Mute, 2008), Rob Myers (Furtherfield, 2009), Nettime discussion (2008), Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Culture Machine), Beatrice von Bismarck (Texte zur Kunst, DE). Reuben Fowkes (Art Monthly), Karl Reitter (Grundrisse, DE), Ivan Pravdić (Filozofija i društvo).

Author, more
Editor (SR)
Publisher (EN)

Umetnost i revolucija. Umetnički aktivizam tokom dugog XX veka (Serbian, trans. Relja Dražić, ed. kuda.org, 2006, updated on 2015-8-30)
Art and Revolution: Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century (English, trans. Aileen Derieg, 2007, updated on 2017-6-26)
Искусство и революция. Трансверсальный активизм в долгом двадцатом веке (Russian, 2011, DJVU, 28 MB, updated on 2017-6-26)

New Literary History 41(4): What Is an Avant-Garde? (2010)

“What is an avant-garde? In posing such a question, this issue of New Literary History seeks to reexamine a category that often seems all too self-evident. Our aim is not to draw up a fresh list of definitions, specifications, and prescriptions but to explore the conditions and repercussions of the question itself. In the spirit of analogously titled queries—from Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” to Foucault’s “What is an Author?”—we hope to spur reflection not only on a particular object of study but also on the frameworks and critical faculties that we bring to bear on it. As Paul Mann notes, every critical text on the avant-garde, whether tacitly or overtly, “has a stake in the avant-garde, in its force or destruction, in its survival or death (or both).” A reassessment of these stakes is one of the priorities of this special issue.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Jonathan P. Eburne and Rita Felski, Peter Bürger, John Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, Mike Sell, Benjamin Lee, Griselda Pollock, Amy J. Elias, Philippe Sers, Walter L. Adamson, Bob Perelman, Richard Schechner, Martin Puchner

Editor Rita Felski
Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-7-18)