bit international. [Nove] tendencije: Computer and Visual Research. Zagreb 1961–1973 :: February 23, 2008 - February 22, 2009 :: ZKM | Media Museum :: Opening: February 22, 7 pm :: ZKM_Foyer.

The history of computer-based arts has not yet been adequately described, and is only rarely reflected on in conjunction with the other arts. This area of the arts is hereby denied the development of a diverse discourse and the generation of a competent and critical audience, which is a basic condition for other media, i.e., painting, sculpture, and even film and video. In a series of exhibitions, the ZKM has taken on this task, for example, with Algorithmischen Revolution. In the exhibition bit international. [Nove] tendencije: Computer and Visual Research. Zagreb 1961-1973, the ZKM | Karlsruhe turns its attention to one of the most important artistic movements of the 1960s, which was of enormous influence in its day, but has sunk into near oblivion today: New Tendencies.

Beginning with an exhibition of concrete and constructive art in Zagreb in 1961, New Tendencies quickly developed to a dynamic movement triggering an international Op-Art boom. Art became visual research (GRAV; Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visual / Group for Research in Visual Art). They continued to stake their avant-garde claim by including the computer in the program as a medium of artistic research in 1968. During that same summer, parallel to Cybernetic Serendipity, the legendary computer art exhibition at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts, the program tendencije 4 - Computer and Visual Research began in Zagreb.

The Gallery of Contemporary Art Zagreb, known today as the Museum of Contemporary Art, addressed the theme of computer and visual research with a series of exhibitions, symposia, and publications on the theme of computer and visual research from 1968 to 1978. They thereby established a unique platform for the exchange of ideas and knowledge from the areas of art, the natural sciences, and engineering. During the height of the cold war, artists and scientists from around the world presented their works and attended symposia in Zagreb. They came from Brazil, West Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, the Soviet Union, Spain, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the US. The gallery’s multilingual magazine Bit International established Zagreb as an initiator for aesthetic and media-theoretical reflection that was unknown anywhere else in the world at the time.

Tendencije 4 (1968/69) established a relationship between the computer-generated works and constructive and kinetic art, Tendencije 5 (1973) set them in a context together with the conceptual art of the time. The organizers of the Zagreb Tendencies attempted to consciously accompany and form the historical transition in which the computer, the symbol processing machine, was first perceived as a machine of artistic creation. The arts of electronic media are not seen as isolated phenomena, but rather, are included in the history and in the discourse of the fine and performing arts.

In collaboration with the MSU | Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb and an international network of collectors and private archives, this exhibition offers the first overview of the [New] Tendencies and their program Computer and Visual Research: For the first time in nearly forty years, graphics, paintings, films, sculptures, as well as computer-generated lyrics and literature are once again available for a broader audience. The project allows an expansion of media-theoretical and historical discussion and sensitizes our awareness of the historical centers of art and culture in eastern Europe.

Curated by Darko Fritz. Scientific support Margit Rosen, Peter Weibel.