Leonardo

Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970-2000

Author(s): Lev Manovich
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 35, No. 5, Tenth Anniversary New York Digital Salon (2002), pp. 567-
569+571-575
Published by: The MIT Press
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 Ten Key Texts on Digital Art:
1970-2000
LEV MANOVICH

catalogs, which act as key referencepoints in the field of modern

art. How many visitors to Bitstreams (the Whitney Museum,
2001) and 010101: Art in TechnologicalTimes(SFMOMA, 2001)
This article highlights ten major written works that knew that thirty years ago the major art museums in New York
reflect the brief history of digital art. The lack of and London presented a whole stream of shows on the topics of
public knowledge on digital art is largelydue to a art and technology? Together, these shows were more radical and
lackof standardtext. Whileseen by most as a relative-
conceptually interesting in terms of new media than current
ly new art form, several exhibitions are mentioned
attempts. The following are some of these shows: Cybernetic
here dating from the late 196os to the early 1970s,
all of which have had a major impact on the devel- Serendipity(ICA, curated by Jasia Reichardt, 1968); The Machine
as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age (MOMA, curated by
opment of the field. Authorsand editors chosen for
the list include Gene Youngblood, jasia Reichardt, K.G. Pontus Hulten, 1968); Software,Information Technology:Its
CynthiaGoodman,FriedrichKittler,MichaelBenedikt, Meaning for Art (Jewish Museum, New York, curated by Jack
Minna Tarkka,Peter Weibel, Espen Aarseth, and Burnham, 1970); Information (MOMA, curated by Kynaston
UlfPoschardt. McShine, 1970); and Art and Technology(LACMA, curated by
Maurice Tuchman, 1970).
While a number of online exhibitions were organized by Steve
Dietz at the Walker, recent exhibitions at the Z Lounge at the
sW ^ orking on my assignment to select written works con- New Museum in New York City (curated by Anne Barlow and
sidered important to the of
history digital art, culture, Anne Ellegood), the shows and events curated by Christiane Paul
and technology turned out to be quite difficult. In at the Whitney, and Jon Ippolito's curatorialwork at the Guggen-
contrast to other art fields, the memory of the digital art field is heim, are all sophisticated. They are also small-scale affairs. In
very short, while its long-term memory is practicallyabsent. As a terms of recent large-scalemuseum surveys,only the exhibition at
result, many artists working with computers, as well as curators SFMOMA (2001) can be compared to those of thirty years ago. It
and critics who exhibit and write about these artists, keep rein- was an ambitious attempt to sample the whole landscape of con-
venting the wheel over and over again. While other fields usually temporary culture in order to present how artists and designers
have certain critical and theoretical texts which are widely known acrossa number of disciplines engage with computing on a variety
and which usually act as starting points for new arguments and of levels: as a tool, as a medium, as iconography, and as a source
debates, the digital art field cannot compare. No critical text on of new perceptual,cognitive and communication skills and habits.
digital art has achieved a familiarity status that can be compared In comparison, the show at the Whitney was a truly reactionary
with the status of classic articles by Clement Greenberg and Ros- affair.Here was a show on new media art that did not include any
alind Krauss (on modern art), or Andre Bazin and LauraMulvey computers or interactive works. Instead, new media was reduced
(on film). So what does it mean to select written works considered to flat images on the walls: stills presented as digital prints, or
important to the history of digital art? The field did produce
many substantial texts that were important at particularhistorical Lev Manovich, Associate Professor,Visual Arts Department
points, but since these texts are not remembered, they have no University of California at San Diego
bearing on currentdevelopments. 9500 Gillman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0327, U.S.A.
If you think that I am overstating my point, consider the fol- E-mail: manovich@ucsd.edu
Web site: www.manovich.net
lowing example: Think of important museum shows and their

? 2002 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 35, No. 5, pp. 56567-575,2002 567

moving images presented with projectors
or plasma screens. The descriptions of the
works were positioned within the familiar
and well-rehearsed narratives and cate-
gories of standard 20th century art text-
books. In short, new media was
neutralized, diluted, and rendered harm-
less, similar to the way commercial culture
now takes over most of the new radical
cultural developments, from hip-hop to
techno.
In contrast, just reading the titles of the
exhibitions that took place thirty years ago
you can see that they experimented with
new categories and dimensions of the
emerging techno-culture. In terms of the
works and projects presented, the muse-
ums similarlywere not afraidto invite new
technologies and new types of artisticprac-
tices within their spaces [1]. For example,
The Machine as Seen at the End of the
Mechanical Age presented works by 100
artists, including commissioned collabora-
tions between artists and engineers under
the umbrellaof EAT. (Compare this to the
current practice of United States art muse-
ums to commission "Net art," which then
can be safely "tucked away" on museum
Web sites instead of in the actual galleries.)
The Softwareexhibition included a num-
ber of works which used a PDP-8 comput-
er in the museum. Meanwhile, the content
of the exhibition reflected the information
and communication revolution on a con-
ceptual level by presenting a number of
projects which asked viewers to participate
in particularcommunication scenarioscon-
structed by artistsVito Acconci and Hans
Haacke.
Given the systematic absence of long-
term memory in the digital art field, just
ten texts would not be enough to recon-
struct its rich fifty-yearhistory. Here is the
selection algorithm I ended up following:
(1) Given my limit of ten texts, I decided
to be a little subjective and give weight to
texts that were particularly important to
me when I first learned about digital art.
(2) Given that the digital art field does
not really have a set of canonical criti-
cal texts, I instead selected a few texts
which acted as key reviews of the field
during different decades (The Computerin
568 Lev Manovich, Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970-2000
Art, 1971; ExpandedCinema, 1970; Digital
Visions,1987).
(3) Since the annual festivals and exhibi-
tions such as Ars Electronica, ISEA, and
SIGGRAPH played a key role in develop-
ment of the field, I included a couple of
representativecatalogs from the particular-
ly important meetings (ISEA 1994, Ars
Electronica 1995).
(4) I then added the first publication from
the ZKM Center for Art and New Media's
Artintact series (artintact 1, 1994). Early
on, ZKM solved the two key problems of
the digital art field, distribution and criti-
cism, in a particularlyelegant and efficient
way. Every year since 1994 ZKM pub-
lished a CD-ROM/book. The CD-ROM
would contain three interactiveart projects
while the book would present critical texts
about each of the projects (today ZKM
continues this successful format with a
new series which uses DVD-ROM instead
of CD-ROM). By following the book for-
mat and teaming up with a major German
book publisher, ZKM assuredthat Artitact
would be distributed through the standard
book distribution channels. (It only took
the Whitney eight years to catch up: the
Whitney 2002 Biennial catalog similarly
included a CD-ROM attached to the front
cover [2]).
(5) While digital art does not have a canon
of critical texts about the art itself, most
artists and curatorsin the field are familiar
with at least some theoretical texts dealing
with the largertopics of digital technology,
culture, and society. In fact, I think that a
number of such theoretical texts are equiv-
alent to canonical critical texts in other art
fields. Since I was limited to a total of ten
texts, I could only include a small sample
of such theoreticalworks. I chose Discourse
Networks by Friedrich Kittler (1985,
English edition 1990); Cyberspace:First
Steps,edited by Michael Benedikt (1991),
DJ Culture by Ulf Poschardt (1995,
English edition 1998); and Cybertextby
Espen Aarseth (1997). But I could have
also selected books by Katherine Hayles,
Sherry Turkle, W.J.T. Mitchell, Paul Vir-
ilio, Peter Lunenfeld, Jay David Bolter,
Pierre Levy, Geert Lovink, Norman Klein,
Vivian Sobchack, Peter Weibel, Slavoj
Zizek, Erkki Huhtamo, Margaret Morse,
Alex Galloway, Matt Fuller, and many oth-
ers (and these are just the people who
write or are available in English transla-
tion; internationally, the list of brilliant
commentators on techno-culture goes on
and on) [3].
I think that each of the four theoretical
books I selected has something unique
about it. Benedikt's best-selling collection
is exemplaryin bringing together theorists,
artists and computer designers, or early
cyberspacessuch as Habitat, and somehow
forces the designers to write clear and the-
oretically sophisticated descriptions of
their projects and researchprograms. The
best of the anthologies and conferences on
digital arts and new media culture try to
create such a mix, but few succeed in
doing it the way Cyberspace: First Stepsdid.
Kittler is probably the most important
media theorist after McLuhan, and in his
master opus Discourse Networks he was
able to accomplish another difficult con-
vergence trick: bringing together the best
of what the United States called "critical
theory" (in his case it is Lacan and Fou-
cault) with his own brilliant ideas about
the effects of communication networks
and media recording/storage/access tech-
nologies on culture. Again, this is a kind of
convergence that many attempt, but prob-
ably only Kittler has succeeded so far.
Many would agree that the two areasof
culture where the new logic of digital com-
puting always shows up significantly earli-
er than in other fields are computer games
and electronic music. While I know next
to nothing about popular electronic music,
I found DJ Cultureto be a brilliant mix of
broad social, cultural, and technological
history and a provocative theoretical spec-
ulation. Many books and anthologies on
electronic music put you to sleep with too
much detail about this or that piece of
technology, but DJ Culture manages to
stay focused on the concepts. In his writ-
ing, Munich-based Ulf Poschardtalso suc-
cessfully integratesa "remix"-inspiredstyle
of exposition with a more standardhistori-
cal structure that keeps you on track
through this "think"book.
Finally, in his thin but dense Cybertext,
Espen Aarseth offers a particularlyelegant
solutionto the key questionof digitalarts any works by my Southern Californiacolleagues:
and culture:how to separatenew and old Hayles,Lunenfeld,Klein,and Sobchack.Why am I
beingso naive?New Yorkerscurateandpublishthem-
media. Although he is concerned with selvesallthe time.
texts,his approachcan be extendedto oth-
er media, providinga freshparadigmfor
thinkingabout the relationshipsbetween Lev Manovich (www.manovich.net) is an
the old and new media.Readthis book if Associate Professor in the Visual Arts
you missedit! (I don'twantto do his com- Department at the University of Califor-
plexand cleararguments injusticeby trying nia, San Diego, where he teaches courses
to summarize themin twosentences here.) in new media art and theory. He is the
In the end, it is probablyfor the best author of The Language of New Media
that the argumentsin digital arts do not (The MIT Press, 2001), and Tekstura:Rus-
alwaysreturn to the same few "master" sian Essayson VisualCulture(Chicago Uni-
textsoverand overagain,the way it often versity Press, 1993), as well as fifty-plus
happens in the art world and in the articles, which have been published in
humanities.As NormanKleinonce put it, twenty-plus countries. Currently he is
"topaintwith a computeris to paintwith working on a new book, Info-aesthetics,
a machine gun," meaning that a digital and a digital film project, Soft Cinema.
computeris unprecedentedin being the
key engine of moderneconomy, the key
controland communicationtechnologyof
modernsocieties,and also the key repre-
sentationalmachine.Given this unprece-
dentedconvergence,any seriousreflection
on the socialand culturaldynamicsof our
timehasto engagewith digitalcomputing.
The factthatthe theoreticaltextswhich
addressthe generalissuesin techno-culture
-a new functioning of space and time,
new dynamicsof cultural
info-subjectivity,
production and consumption, and so
on-aremoreimportantto digitalartistsand
designersthandigitalartcriticismperse is
ultimatelyveryhealthy.It meansthat the
peoplein our field havea keen interestin
how computerizationaffects society and
cultureat largeratherthanjust beingcon-
cernedabout the narrowhistoryof their
own field. So whilewe shouldall be more
familiarwith thishistorythanwe currently
are,we shouldnot turnit into a fetish.

REFERENCES

1. For more information on these shows and other

important milestones in the fifty-year history of com-
puter and telecommunication art, see the excellent
Telematic Timeline produced as a part of the show
curated by Steve Dietz (http://telematic.walkerart.org/
timeline/).

2. In 2002, Hatje Cantz Publishers published The

Complete Artintact 1994-99 CD-ROMagazine on
DVD-ROM.

3. I decided not to include in my final "Top 10" list

Lev Manovich, Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970-2000 569

 '
7':!p. '. I Gene Youngblood
'
_ 1j'"' ,5j jJjj . Expanded Cinema
-. Introduction by Buckminster Fuller
(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970)

The Computer
iinn r A Jasia ReiclUt
rrtt
::: ............... e--bw* ....... .....................................................

'. ....... 11'II...

IXo@

Jasia Reichardt
The Computer in Art
(London: Studio Vista, 1971)

Lev Manovich, Selections 571

Cynthia Goodman Friedrich A. Kittler
Digital Visions: Computers and Art Discourse Networks
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990)
Original German edition, 1985

572 Lev Manovich, Selections

 Michael Benedickt

Michael Benedikt, ed. ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Cyberspace: First Steps Artintact i: Artists' Interactive CD-ROMagazine
(Cambridge: MITPress, 1991) (Stuttgart: Cantz, 1994)

Lev Manovich, Selections 573

 mP*-:i Minna Tarkka et al., eds.
The5th InternationalSymposiumon ElectronicArtCatalogue
(Helsinki: ISEA, 1994)

T1 E THE
WE1C11 WIRED
MWOHl
WIELCOME TO THIE WIIRED WIORLD

@rselectronica 95 Peter Weibel et al., eds.

MythosInformation:Welcometo the WiredWorld
SPRINGER-VI*OA WIEN NEW YOEK Ars Electronica 1995 Festival Catalog
(Vienna and New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995)

574 Lev Manovich, Selections

 Espen Aarseth
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)

IUCILTUIn
ULF
PISCNAI

Ulf Poschardt
DI Culture
(London: Quartet Books, 1998)
Original German edition, 1995

Lev Manovich, Selections 575