Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Variable Conditions: Para-Computational Arts in Canada, 1965-1995

Variable Conditions: Para-Computational Arts in Canada, 1965-1995

Lauder, Adam

Hardcover

Series: McGill-Queen's/Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Ar

Canadian Art

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0228018854
ISBN13: 9780228018858
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Nov 15 2023
Pages: 392
Weight: 1.65
Height: 1.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

Variable Conditions recovers and explores early Canadian encounters between computational media and contemporary art in the late twentieth century, charting a network of developments linking meteorology, computation, and the arts that arose long before the age of cloud computing.

Essays uncover the material conditions that shaped the emergence of computational arts in Canada, from projects executed by mainframe to digital paintings and analog synthesizer performances. A surprising number of institutional circumstances granted access to early computer hardware - government nuclear and hydroelectric infrastructure, agencies as diverse as the National Film Board and the National Research Council, and a myriad of university settings across the country - and creative conditions varied from benign administrative neglect to the artistic exploration of randomness or a distinct emphasis on thematizing transformation as a motor for graphic visualization and auditory exploration. Interviews featuring leading artists give first-hand insight into artistic practices and the historical moment in which they occurred. The book provides valuable new perspectives on computer art pioneers such as Leslie Mezei, Robert Adrian X, Suzanne Duquet, Roger Vilder, and Vera Frenkel, as well as new contexts for understanding Michael Snow and IAIN BAXTER&. Not limiting their explorations to art generated using computers, contributors outline the integration of computational techniques and concepts into artistic methods across disciplines and trace computation's emergence as a matter of interest and concern for a range of contemporary cultural producers.

Combining historical analyses with theoretical approaches to computation and its entanglement with contemporary cultural discourses and social movements, Variable Conditions excavates the origins of computational arts and, in the process, sketches a new landscape of interdisciplinary creation and surprising connections between scientific and artistic institutions.

Also from

Lauder, Adam

View All

Also in

Canadian Art

View All