Software at the Jewish Museum, New York

Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art showcased programmed art’s potential as a creative tool. The experimental exhibition was curated by Jack Burnham. According to the catalogue, it aimed to “encourage [conceptual] artists to use the medium of electronic technology in challenging and unconventional ways.” The exhibition saw “software“ as a process that a machine or person could execute based on instructions from the artist. According to Burnham, the show provided “the means by which the public could personally respond to programmatic situations structured by artists.” The show was deeply inspired by cybernetics' interest in communication and the environment. Software presented art objects as communication devices in dialogue with a responsive audience. Participating artists included those at the forefront of technological and conceptual art: Sonia Sheridan, Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Hans Haacke, and others. Nicholas Negroponte’s Architecture Machine Group, which would go on to become the MIT Media Lab (with Negroponte as director), exhibited the installation, SEEK, a life-sensing computerized system that pioneered the use of machine learning. Following the strong momentum of the '60s, Software marked a high point in the use of technology in Conceptual art. That same summer, MoMA’s Information had already gathered dozens of conceptual artists, this time with no code involved and little mention of technology. Mainstream Conceptual art had shied away from the computer and code by 1970. Yet in 1970 at Software, Conceptual art and the computer were perhaps at their zenith. It also anticipated today’s digital, instruction-based art by several decades.