Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982

Abstract

As if in homage to dot-matrix printers (younger readers, look it up) and to this excellent book, the FedEx delivery slip that came with my copy was in a familiar, slightly fuzzy, greyish typeface on lined paper with holes down the side. The book, too, has (printed) sprocket holes as an inside cover design motif.Ah, the joy of that old technology! Greys and pale greens—the colors of an ex-East German picnic set. Clacks and whirs. Misalignments. As alluring as a teletype machine but cheaper. An absence of aura, at least not the aura of glossiness that today comes with every reinvention of the mechanical in the age of its interactionalist exploitability, a patina of technological determinism and self-delusion sprayed onto valueadded insults to the intelligence. No, not always, of course. But too often. The virtual door, the actually blowing wind, the animated bird, the valise of certainty (multiversal answers to Magritte’s questions, the dimensions all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same), the Walter Benjamin traduced, the Jeff Koons.… Don’t think, just walk in and ignore the rather musky smell.There, your reviewer feels better now. I have nothing against good art (which I define using criteria I am unwilling to divulge here, but some might not like them). Ergo, I have nothing against good computer-based or new media art. Still less am I against dematerialization, as all that is solid melts into air. But I have said it before and I’ll say it here, the sadness of most art is that it does not know its future; the sadness of much computer art is that it doesn’t know its past. Well, here’s a book to change that. Because especially in this area, there is a host of ideas that are still revolutionary but which have been passed over as the next shiny new thing comes along. (Full disclosure: the book quotes me saying something like that in its introduction. This in no way biases me towards the genius contributors and their charming friends and relatives … anyway every other review I’ve seen also thinks it’s fantastic.)Spanning from 1952 to 1982, the book is not just a catalogue of what happened, what was produced, where, when, and by whom (it is, though, the catalogue to the eponymous exhibition curated by Leslie Jones at the LACMA this year but is destined to reach much further). It also discusses the “Why.” It should become an important text for those entering into the creative uses of computers and other new media, and I should think many art school libraries will want it too. It is a manual for today, desperately needed, as well as an art history.It is inevitable that such a book be criticized for what it does not contain: certain people, places, artworks, journals, etc. That would be to miss the point. It is much more than a collection of artworks having to do with computers and texts about them.Reviews Panel: Kathryn Adams, Cristina Albu, Jan Baetens, John Barber, Catalin Brylla, Rita Cachao, Iain Campbell, Judith A. Cetti, Chris Cobb, Giovanna L. Costantini, Edith Doove, Hannah Drayson, Phil Dyke, Ernest Edmonds, Phil Ellis, Anthony Enns, Jennifer Ferng, Bronac Ferran, Enzo Ferrara, Charles Forceville, Gabriela Galati, George Gessert, Allan Graubard, Dene Grigar, Daisy Gudmunsen, Craig Harris, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Ione, Boris Jardine, Assimina Kaniari, Jacqui Knight, Mike Leggett, Ellen K. Levy, Will Luers, Robert Maddox-Harle, Roger Malina, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Stephanie Moran, Mike Mosher, Sana Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen Nappi, Ryan Nolan, Jack Ox, Jussi Parikka, Stephen Partridge, Ellen Pearlman, Robert Pepperell, Ana Peraica, Beate Peter, Stephen Petersen, Andrew Prior, Michael Punt, Aparna Sharma, George Shortess, Brian Reffin Smith, Laurence Smith, Eugenia Stamboliev, James Sweeting, Gregory Tague, Flutur Troshani, Ian Verstegen, Anna Walker, Cecilia Wong, Ahyoung Yoo, Jonathan ZilbergAlthough it starts with an interesting, even exciting, chronology by Leslie Jones (my god, all this happened and peo