Hannah B. Higgins, Douglas Kahn (eds.): Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital Arts (2012)

“Mainframe Experimentalism challenges the conventional wisdom that the digital arts arose out of Silicon Valley’s technological revolutions in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1960s, a diverse array of artists, musicians, poets, writers, and filmmakers around the world were engaging with mainframe and mini-computers to create innovative new artworks that contradict the stereotypes of ‘computer art.’ Juxtaposing the original works alongside scholarly contributions by well-established and emerging scholars from several disciplines, Mainframe Experimentalism demonstrates that the radical and experimental aesthetics and political and cultural engagements of early digital art stand as precursors for the mobility among technological platforms, artistic forms, and social sites that has become commonplace today.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2012
ISBN 9780520268371, 0520268377
xiv+362 pages

Reviews: Hubert Howe Flushing (Comp Music J, 2013), Rob Myers (Furtherfield, 2015).

Publisher
WorldCat

HTML

Performance Art / LIVE, 1-7 (1979-1982)

The late 1970s in New York City generated a lively scene in experimental theatre, performance, dance, music, sound, video, film, clubs, and festivals. Numerous alternative spaces were opened up and publications started. The seven numbers of the zine-style magazine Performance Art (then retitled LIVE) devoted to downtown performance discuss topics such as acting/non-acting, intermedia, comedy, solo performance, new wave rock, what is performance art?, gay and feminist performance, punk, and new dance.

Edited by Bonnie Marranca and John Howell
Publisher Performing Arts Journal (Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta)
47 pages (numbers 1-5), 120 pages (number 6)

Number 1, 1979 (13 MB)
Number 2, 1979 (11 MB)
Number 3, 1979 (14 MB)
Number 4, 1980 (14 MB)
Number 5, 1981 (16 MB)
Number 6-7, 1982 (42 MB)

Tomáš Štraus: Umenie dnes: pokus o kritickú esej (1968) [Slovak]

A critical review of the arts of the 1960s by the Slovak art theorist and historian Thomas Strauss (1931–2013).

“Je ťažké, ba priam nemožné rozlíšiť, kde končí sféra dejín prekračujúcich prah čerstvej až najčerstvejšej súčasnosti. Nejde tu len o nový, ustavične sa rozmnožujúci a neohraničený materiál, ktorý ešte nestačil vykryštalizovať a primerane spevnieť, aby sa mohol stať predmetom chladnej analytickej vedeckej pozornosti. Ide predovšetkým o stanovisko a metódu. Predkladaná práca sa hlási k dedičstvu — ako sa u nás doposiaľ hnevlivo hovorí — ‘neobjektívnych’ a ‘nehistorických’, to znamená horúcou ihlou bezprostredného zážitku zošívaných prieskumov novej tvorby. Od Herberta Reada po povedzme Jindřicha Chalupeckého (ktorému som navyše zaviazený i za konkrétne pripomienky k rukopisu) je veľký rozptyl autorov, ktorí v posledných desaťročiach uvažujú o umení — dnes. Priznávam sa k tejto tradícii programovo už i vlastným titulom práce.” (from the Foreword)

With Russian and English summaries (pp 159-162 & 163-165)
Publisher Vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry, Bratislava, February 1968
Volume 2 of Monoskop Unlimited Edition series
185 pages

Interview with the author (Daniel Grúň, Kritika & Kontext, 2005, in Slovak)

PDF (70 MB, no OCR)