Tate’s Electric Dreams

If Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s The Call is my work of the year. The exhibition of the year is Tate’s Electric Dreams.

The show at Tate Modern is a major exhibition celebrating the early pioneers of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art from the 1950s and Japan’s Gutai to the dawn of the internet age. What’s striking about the show is it’s Tate’s—one of the world’s most visited museums'—first focus on digital art since Tate Modern opened twenty-four years earlier, in 2000. In other words, this is a big moment for digital art.

I had the pleasure of speaking to the show’s curator, Val Ravaglia, who curated it with Odessa Warren and Kira Wainstein, twice about the show. First, in a written piece where we discuss historic challenges to artist’s working with technology and much more. Then in Part 2, a video interview, we some of the specific curatorial concerns of the show, especially display.

I also interviewed three legendary exhibiting artists from the show: Rebecca Allen, Analívia Cordeiro and Eduardo Kac, who exemplify the aims of the show. Yes, I thought the show was important.

More about this landmark show. It brings together over 150 works by more than 70 artists from across Asia, Europe and the Americas, showcasing the geographic diversity of digital art’s roots. It explores how artists intervened with emerging technologies in various ways to create immersive environments with just optical illusions, interactive installations and machine-generated imagery. These innovators experimented with light, motion and perception, responding to the increasing presence of technology in daily life. While touching on similar roots to Buffalo AKG’s and Tina Rivers Ryan’s Electric Op, Electric Dreams has a broader focus and incorporates more of digital art’s twentieth-century roots.

For example, the exhibition highlights key artistic movements and moments going back to Gutai, ZERO, New Tendencies and a special section dedicated to Jasia Reichardt’s, of course, legendary Cybernetic Serendipity. Of particular focus for Ravaglia was showcasing how artists reclaimed machines from military and corporate contexts to explore new creative possibilities. Works range from early experiments with video synthesizers like the Sandin Image Processor and algorithmic art to psychedelic environments and home computer-generated imagery.

Importantly, the show juxtaposes historical analog artists including Atsuko Tanaka, Otto Piene and Julio Le Parc with pioneering digital practitioners like Nam June Paik, Harold Cohen, Rebecca Allen and Suzanne Treister.

Electric Dreams was a major museum’s historical retrospective on digital art and its roots—exactly the kind of dialogue with the public that digital art needs to be having moving forward.