Terminal Art Concepts—Definitions—Interpretations




Artificial Intelligence (AI)
"'ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in art' is the change of the paradigms of art in the context of the digital world background. Art is no longer the production of artifacts of the pictorial or electronic genre—production is inapplicable—art is the revealing of the inner laws of the digital world view. By this I mean the uncovering of freedoms that have been covered by digital functionalism. Art in opposition to digital economy. Art in opposition to the functional digitalization of world concepts." "The world that we are exploring has increasingly become a world exploring us. This is the change of cultural paradigms. In the context of the AI environment the concepts creativity, naturalness, humanism, etc. will acquire new meanings."

Richard Kriesche, exh. cat. "No. 1 Brainwork", Graz/Los Angeles 1985, p. 8, 10.

Bauhaus
"At present we have every reason for changing the entire sphere of design and communication, of applied art and applied science in a similar, radical way as it was changed at the beginning of the twenties by the BAUHAUS."

"The BAUHAUS rediscovered the function of the symbolic ... Indeed, it may be said that the BAUHAUS even created a new style, if style is taken to imply the homogenization of symbolic forms (which is absolutely meaningful) ... As to life-styles the BAUHAUS concept fulfilled what had determined the history of applied art since Schinkel's days and what applies all the more today: Any design, in fact, any style is born by the respective life-style; without changing the life-styles the artistic access to the material conditions of life remains arbitrary."

"From product design via sociodesign to communication design, that is a development necessitated along the lines of Gropius by new technologies and their social consequences. The designer is not trained to fulfill a certain professional role, he ought to acquire qualifications enabling him to define by himself what his activity is going to be, to create his own professional role."

Bazon Brock, The reality it the mind. What is design in the age of the microchip? From the Bauhaus concept to "Communicative design". Publ. by Richard Kriesche, Artificial intelligence in the arts, Nr. 1 "Brainwork", Exh. Cat. Graz 1985, p. 53–56.

Computer conference
"To the artist, COMPUTER CONFERENCES constitute an ideal metaphor for the overall interlacement as well as a new and exciting instrument for the realization of the most different approaches in the arts of this century: it is a medium that is by its very nature participatory. It requires associative thinking and the development of a language that is richer and more complex; it aims at the common features of cultures, disciplines, and the great variety of modes of human being and perceiving."

Roy Ascott in: Jacques Vallee (Ed.), Saturn Encounter, Infomedia Corporation 1981.

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Computer Simulation
"COMPUTER SIMULATION like any other externalized simulation is the extension of an inner model, an extension generally facilitating better results than the initial idea due to its accuracy of detail, complexity, and velocity, often revealing deficiencies of the idea faster and more blatantly—just as paper and pencil can support thinking."

Oswald Wiener, Turings Test, in: Kursbuch 75. March 1984, p. 28.

Interaction
"A subject in general or a phenomenon is considered information (a combination of signs). The signs constituting it are formed of discrete elements being distinctive characteristics of the carrier or the material ... The distinctive differences in the distribution of these properties constitute the code of the information. The information travels from a transmitter pole (or terminal) to a receiver pole and is coded at the one and decoded at the other, information is supplied about the subject concerned.
The general concept of INTERACTION implies, first of all, that each of the poles as to the structure itself is relevant in his relations to the other poles, secondly, that a change in the function of one of the poles entails a destructuring and restructuring of the whole: it is then a different information."

Jean-François Lyotard and others, Immaterialitat (immaterialness), Berlin 1985, P. 80/81.

Art and technology
"It's a first and a second world of machines then! On the one hand, the machines for work and energy—with the great old example of the Archimedean lever—and on the other, the machines for information and communication—with the splendid paradigm of Pascal's calculator: Sprung from the sciences, the inductive and deductive organization of intellect and ratio, nurtured, directed, eliminated, and refined in the laboratories and at the desks and at its best not only according to profitable business but also to reason. In the midst of this extremely nervous, rational, and sensitive bustle there is art, still art, not a relict but still a highly integrated, lively agent of our existence with all its contradictions and its magic. Here they are, ART AND TECHNOLOGY, the most decisive and momentous manifestations in that very human horizon of action, in which the precarious and the fortunate situations of life light up and fade.

The ontologic achievement of technology as well as art consists not only in increasing the world but also in changing it: that what has been made constitutes another perspective of reality and existence than the given. Any consciousness able to reflect upon oneself is highly sensitive towards such change, towards the change in the ontologic perspective concerning the existence of every being. No one will deny that this horizon of action, when challenged, is part of the principle and structure of self-appreciation. "Comprendre, c'est fabriquer" was a notable sentence of the 17th century. In the decisive combination of action and appreciation it becomes evident that we have to give to ourselves the world that is not given to us, and that increasing information does not only light the original darkness of the objective but also the creative abyss of our subjectivity."

Max Bense, Ästhetik und Zivilisation (Aesthetics and civilisation). Baden-Baden 1958, p. 14/15.

Light
"I think of the LIGHT that rises with the dawn, that steeps the midday in a white brightness, and fades away in the dusk. I think of the LIGHT in which planets travel and which makes the universe a chronometer of shining matter.

Making no claim to physical accuracy, we say today: LIGHT is matter, LIGHT is substantial, LIGHT is something, it can be medialized, LIGHT is a topic for art, it is not an appendix of visibility, it is a matter of seeing as such. LIGHT is neither miraculous, nor divine, nor obvious. LIGHT is equivalent to the material world, it has its own nature, it follows its own laws, has its own form, and has its own morphology comparable to that of the material sphere.

As painting is working with LIGHT by means of colours, LIGHT could replace them. This indicates the alternative, finding new LIGHT MEDIA.

The universe is a system of information—designed for thought, it is mental. It is not focused on matter, it does not rest on matter, but rather on LIGHT and energy."

Adolf Luther, Das Licht kann kein Bild sein. (The light cannot be an image.) Cologne 1984, P. 98/99.

Networks
"Even the expression 'information technology' sounds impersonal and strange, it reminds me of the outposts of a Kafkaesque institution. In fact, the opposite is true and in my opinion, computer aided NETWORKS offer such possibilities of global cooperation and creativity as have never been achieved before. One reason being that working in NETWORKS releases the mind from the body and unites it with a kind of timeless ocean ... Ideas emerging at a multitude of scattered places, in completely dissimilar cultural backgrounds, communicated by very different personalities can, nevertheless, be closely interlaced as to their meaning and purpose. NETWORK communication results in an interlacing of ideas conferring a very wide range of interpretation to the concept of 'associative thinking'."

Roy Ascott, Art and telematics, in: Art and telecommunication (H. Grundmann, Publ.), Vienna 1984, p. 29/30.

"...a most fascinating perspective appears: the development of a new language for the description of the entire knowledge and the feelings that are included in a NETWORK. Such a NETWORK will have 'feelings' different from those of the nodes within the system—not oppositional but, of a more comprehensive nature, just as the mind is more than the sum total of the processes in the individual neurons. At the same time, this NETWORK will dispose of a knowledge that is more comprehensive and homogeneous than that contained in the sum total of its nodes ... We might design an entire hierarchy of functions within a NETWORK analogous to those in the brain. We might look into the reflexes, the formation of pulsations in the NETWORK. And with the relation between stimuli and centrifugal signs, which is the key towards the decisive function of the feedback in the brain ... the 'hyperlanguage' of NETWORKS will be an expression of their 'hyperintelligence', and vice versa—in two processes dependent upon and enforcing each other."

G. Bugliarello, Hyperintelligence—The next evolutionary step, The futurist, dec. 1984 (Quote: R. Kriesche, No. 1 "Brainwork", p. 11/12).

Pacific Culture
"This shift of sensitivity, this transformation of mentality constitutes a shift from the Atlantic, European, industrial culture to the PACIFIC, PLANETARY, ELECTRONIC CULTURE.

This is not a development caused by technology (for the formation of this kind of linear causal connections derives from old industrial habits of thinking); it is a shift of consciousness with top and pop culture taking an equal part in the game of adaptation of a new culture ecology. In many instances the older European philosophers and artists have cast the shadow of this culture before them, but they would not feel at home in it."

"After the three preceding 'culture ecologies' (the river culture ecology, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic ecology), this fourth culture ecology is the universe, its human basis, however, is the PACIFIC BASIN. In the cultural relations between Japan and California, the technological shift from matter towards information can be witnessed, from 'Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism' to Zen and the spirit of cybernetics, from old European civilizations between London, Paris and New York towards the new Pacific civilization between Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Sydney."

William I. Thompson, The pacific shift, Munich 1985, p. 72, 85.

Telematics
"TELEMATICS develops from a blending of computers and communication networks and will reach its climax in the general application of satellites to transmit images, data and sounds.

Nora, Simon & Minc, Alain, The computerization of society, Cambridge (USA), 1980.

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"The entry 'TELEMATICS' does not only indicate the convergence of computers and systems of telecommunication, it also denotes a whole class of consciousness and culture, developing new knowledge and the possibility of dissemination. TELEMATICS implies interaction, negotiation, and cooperation among men and between men and intelligent machines. The telematic process is ruled by ambivalence, insecurity and incompleteness; there is no fixed purpose, it is being debated; truth, that is always relative, has no fixed place, it is always included in the process, it is devoted TELEMATICALLY to interlacement constituting human behaviour on the highest step of freedom."

Roy Ascoft, in: R. Kriesche (Ed.) No. 1 "Brainwork", Graz, Los Angeles 1985, p. 44.

Time—space
"The words gallery and salon denote the rooms of the Louvre Palace in which the first exhibitions were held (shortly after the beginning of the 18th century). The exhibition of painting is a rather modern institution ...

'The immaterial' cannot be accommodated in a TIME-SPACE of this kind. It is necessary to find a TIME-SPACE of the 'postmodern' era." Lyotard speaks of a car ride from San Diego to Santa Barbara, uncontrolled urban growth.

"It would rather be appropriate to speak of a nebulous shape in which the materials (buildings, roads) are the metastable state of an energy ... Information circles via radiation and invisible interfaces. Such a TIME-SPACE is chosen to take up the 'immaterial'. The eye is deprived of the exclusive right that is granted to it by the modern gallery. The aim of the exhibition, an unrest compelling reflection cannot be effected by an indicated path through the exhibition. It must not be an exposition, it should rather be a 'surexposition' in the way of the 'overexposed city' of which Virilio speaks."

Jean-Francois Lyotard and others, Berlin 1985, p. 86/87/88.