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| How to stop worrying and love the computer Alise Tīfentāle, Art historian Work-in-progress: Introduction to the exhibition I am your servant, I am your worker for the Amie and Tony James Gallery, New York | |
| The exhibition I am your servant, I am your worker addresses the relationship between man and machine in the artistic production of the 21st century. in this exhibition, ‘machine’ is understood as a system of computer hardware, software and networks as well as a variety of digital image-making devices and image-sharing platforms. such devices are the ‘factories’ of the 21st century, universal labour-leisure machines, objects of consumer desire and at the same time ultimate instruments of exploitation, control and surveillance. I am your servant, I am your worker presents a selection of works made after 2000 that are based on computer software, hardware and networks. I am your servant, I am your worker revisits the legacy of the soviet russian avant-garde and projects its revolutionary potential, its interpretation of marxist-leninist ideas and its no less revolutionary aesthetics onto contemporary computer-based artistic practices in order to offer new insights and discuss a new art historical narrative. leftist political thinking in the light of the ubiquitous ‘occupy’ movements is relevant and ever-present, as are academic debates about post-internet art, the digital economy and digital humanities. art historians and curators in the past few years have made attempts to provide historical narratives of the man-machine relationship in art, for example, Ghosts in the Machine curated by massimiliano gioni at the new museum, new york (2012). there have been some advances in the direction that somewhat echoes productivist thinking, such as The Museum of arte Útil initiated by charles esche at van abbemuseum in eindhoven, the netherlands (2013-2014). the connection between the productivist slogan “from the easel to the machine” and today’s machine-based artistic production, however, still remains largely unexplored, and to contribute to such exploration is the aim of the proposed exhibit and related programming. The exhibition proposes a historical genealogy of present-day computer-based artistic practices and theoretical debates surrounding issues such as the role and functions of art in the digital economy and collective artistic production. the historical part of the show connects some of the soviet russian productivist ideas of the 1920s to contemporary practices through the groundbreaking designs, performances and stage-sets of Kraftwerk, those pioneers of electronic music founded in düsseldorf in 1970. the title of the exhibition is borrowed from the single Die roboter (the robots) from Kraftwerk’s album Die Mensch-Maschine (the man-machine, 1978). the screening of audiovisual performances by Kraftwerk and the selection of contemporary works in the exhibition are presented as diverse but valid responses to the revolutionary call From the easel to the Machine, the title of a book by one of the theorists of russian productivism, nikolai tarabukin, published in 1923. The contemporary works in the exhibition are grouped in three thematic clusters that offer a non-linear narrative focusing on the interaction between man and machine from different perspectives. in “the vanishing body”, individual images of the human body disappear to give place to aggregate images showing over-arching patterns through space and time. “the machine vision” explores some of the aspects of automated image recognition and surveillance systems. works in “the human touch” address direct and physical interaction between spectators and the machines that they activate. List of participating artists: Historical part gustavs klutsis (1895, latvia – 1938, russia) liubov popova (1889, russia – 1924, russia) aleksandr rodchenko (1891, russia – 1956, russia) varvara stepanova (1894, russia – 1958, russia) Kraftwerk (düsseldorf-based electronic music group, founded in 1970) The Vanishing body jason salavon (b.1970, lives and works in chicago) united visual artists (london-based art and design group, founded in 2000) The Machine vision r. luke dubois (b.1975, lives and works in new york) david rokeby (b. 1960, lives and works in toronto) The Human touch nova jiang (b. 1985, lives and works in los angeles) rafael lozano-hemmer (b. 1967, lives and works in montreal) Why love the computer? The art world has been and still is reluctant to embrace computer-based artistic practices. the early artistic experiments with mainframe computers in the 1950s and 1960s “elicited a negative, fearful or indifferent response” and were “dismissed as cold and soulless”, as art historian grant taylor has observed.1 the ensuing debates in the upcoming decades very much recalled similarly sceptical and negative responses to the invention of photography in the middle of the 19th century – machine-made art can in no way be considered real art, and we have to protect the realm of art from mechanical apparatuses striving to replace the genius of the artist. even though during the last couple of decades paradigmhifting advances have been made by all leading art institutions and museums, an air of suspicion and doubt still lingers.2 many of the artistic and theoretic approaches that this exhibition introduces are often marginalised as ‘new media’ or ‘electronic art’ and thus exist almost exclusively within a circuit of specialised festivals, biennales and galleries.3 this marginalisation tends to limit the audience and therefore the critical debate to a narrow group of specialists and insiders, escaping interaction with art historians, art critics and curators as well as the emerging, if sometimes vague, field of digital humanities. the exhibition I am your servant, I am your worker aims to provide a place and time for such interaction. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the single Die roboter by the german pioneers of electronic music Kraftwerk from their highly influential album Die Mensch-Maschine (1978). in Die roboter, these lines are recited by a computer-modified voice in russian: “Я твой слуга, Я твой работник” (ya tvoi sluga, ya tvoi rabotnik).4 these lines refer to a robot as a servant of man, a machine that is programmed to perform tasks that man has assigned to it, yet at the same time they give this very machine an agency, a personality, an ego via the first-person perspective, implying a certain level of mental-emotional capacity to at least mimic the human mind. the members of Kraftwerk themselves often are represented by humanoid robots – machines that mimic the human body. in addition, these lines suggest a reference to the legacy of the soviet russian avant-garde of the 1920s, productivism in particular, that has greatly influenced the forms of visual expression chosen by Kraftwerk for their album covers, stage designs and visual components of their live performances. I am your servant, I am your worker addresses the man-machine relationship in computer-based art made since 2000. the selected artworks are viewed as a direct or indirect response to the revolutionary ideas of the russian productivist theorists and artists as well as a continuation or development of the complex model of such a relationship proposed by Kraftwerk in the 1970s and 1980s. in the context of this exhibition, the machine is understood as a system of computer hardware, software and networks as well as a variety of digital image-making devices and image-sharing platforms. such devices are the ‘factories’ of the 21st century, universal labour-leisure machines, objects of consumer desire and at the same time ultimate instruments of exploitation, control and surveillance. the exhibition introduces artistic practices that seemingly have more in common with scientific research, engineering, programming, data analysis, journalism or communication studies than the studio art practice as we know it. Some aspects of the relationship between man and machine that artists participating in I am your servant, I am your worker are activating include questioning or affirming certain models of labour in the digital economy, use of data mining and surveillance technologies, application of algorithmic processes, computer vision and automated image analysis and recognition software. the exhibition focuses on what the historical productivists perhaps would have called “mechanised and collective forms of production and distribution” of art.5 it turns out that many of the ideas that the soviet russian art historian and theorist nikolai tarabukin mapped out in the manifesto of productivism From the easel to the Machine (1923) are eerily echoed in present-day artistic practices and debates surrounding artistic production within the digital economy. the historical productivists argued for a new mode of artistic production, for the abandonment of the easel in favor of the machine. but they could not foresee the exact ways in which man would interact with the machine after 2000, i.e. the ways in which human input is analysed, synthesised and otherwise processed by computer software and/or distributed via computer networks. | |
 Humanoid robots representing the members of Kraftwerk, pioneers of electronic music. 1977 Publicity photo | |
| This introduction maps out some of the most relevant aspects of the man-machine relationship in contemporary computer-based art from a perspective of an art historical narrative that slightly differs from the western textbook canon. separate elements of a broader discussion regarding the relationship between man and machine have been addressed in scholarly writing, conferences and museum exhibits since 2000, but these elements have not yet come together in the shape of a distinct historical narrative connecting meaningfully the contemporary computer-based artistic practices with the historical avant-gardes of the early 20th century. For instance, there is an ever-present interest in the artistic production of post-revolutionary russia. constructivist and productivist works in general are constantly revisited in art museums in europe and the u.s., and their work is visible in large group exhibits and survey shows. the revolutionary potential and political ideas inherent in these works, however, largely remain unexplored. I am your servant, I am your worker in this aspect aims to revisit this heritage once again, to view it retrospectively through the lens of today’s socioec- onomic developments and see how the marxist-leninist political ideas of the early 20th century can be projected onto contemporary processes in order to find new insights and make meaningful connections. one of the recent examples was the large-scale exhibition rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism at tate modern, london (february 12 – may 17, 2009).6 The heritage of productivism was explored in a seminar titled The New Productivisms, organised by the barcelona museum of contemporary art (macba, march 27 – 28, 2009), which resulted in a publication of scholarly articles.7 this seminar involved artists, cultural theorists, filmmakers, political activists and art historians debating the political and aesthetic legacy of productivism; among the participants were devin fore, cristina kiaer, dmitry vilensky, makrolab and hito steyerl. furthermore, productivist-inspired theoretical thinking is present in recent writings by philosopher gerald raunig and art historian john roberts.8 the technological aspect of the dig- ital economy and the artist’s role and functions within it have been addressed in theoretical writings and actual artistic practices that sometimes are referred to as post-internet art or post-internet culture. these are useful terms, although their vagueness often limits discussions to a narrow field of web-based practices. such a shortcoming points to a lack of better, more suitable art historical vocabulary for a critical and productive debate about contemporary computer-based artistic practices. one of the most prominent voices in the post-internet debate is artist artie vierkant, whose theoretical article The Image Object Post-Internet (2010) has been widely discussed.9 an emerging and energetic voice belongs to omar kholeif, artist and curator at the whitechapel gallery, london, whose edited volume you are Here: art after the Internet (2014) opens up numerous new avenues of further research and discussion.10 The man-machine relationship in 20th-century art has been revisited in several recent art exhibitions. the reconstruction of richard hamilton’s Man, Machine and Motion (1955) at ica, london, can be mentioned as the most recent example (february 12 – april 6, 2014).11 in addition, some speculative curatorial advances have been made in a direction that somewhat echoes productivist thinking, such as the ambitious project The Museum of arte Útil initiated by charles esche at van abbemuseum in eindhoven, the netherlands (december 7, 2013 – march 30, 2014).12 Considering all these recent debates and developments, I am your servant, I am your worker is conceived as a direct response to the recent show at the new museum, Ghosts in the Machine (july 18 – september 30, 2012), curated by massimiliano gioni and gary carrion-murayari.13 whereas Ghosts presented the man-machine relationship in a romanticised manner, defining as a ‘machine’ virtually any mechanical device and depiction thereof from the dystopian torture machine envisioned by franz kafka in the short story In the Penal Colony (1914) to silkscreen prints by thomas bayrle with collaged images of car parts (1989), I am your servant, I am your worker focuses on a very specific understanding of a machine as a computer. furthermore, I am your servant, I am your worker claims a particular genealogy for the exploration of the man-machine relationship that differs from Ghosts in the Machine. gioni for his exhibition choose an orthodox duchampian lineage that can be summarised like this: Marcel Duchamp The Large Glass (1915–1923) Richard Hamilton Man, Machine, Motion (1955) Harald Szeemann The Bachelor Machines (1975) I am your servant, I am your worker instead suggests a genealogy that extends over the somewhat limiting boundaries of the western, elitist and duchamp-centred art history and reaches into territories where art and artistic production are merging into the popular culture and what can be called everyday life in general: Nikolai Tarabukin From the easel to the Machine Kraftwerk Die Mensch-Maschine Web camera Instagram, face recognition and observing system The aim of I am your servant, I am your worker is to add a different perspective to the one that was mapped out in Ghosts in the Machine and to contribute to the theoretical debate by mobilising issues that were overlooked in Ghosts, such as: the use of the human body (or representations thereof) as a source of data to be analysed and interpreted by computers; the role and functions of the artist as producer14 in the digital economy; the often confused relationship between labour and leisure, production and consumption, art and science, etc. one of the basic principles of productivism was the integration of artistic production in real everyday life, the elimination of a separate field of art both in terms of its production and consumption. computer-based media have virtually succeeded in such elimination at least in the sense that the same hardware and software is very often used to produce and consume what might be called art as well as non-art. all works in the exhibition I am your servant, I am your worker are made using the same labour-leisure machines (i.e. software, networked computers and cameras) that are employed in other types of production, including but not limited to fields such as filmmaking, video games, pop music videos, surveillance and security systems, health care, social media, marketing, scientific research, etc. in many cases the artist equals an engineer, a software programmer, a data analyst, etc., and often the art-making involves teamwork. for instance, social networks and image-sharing platforms together with the general availability of image-making apparatuses such as smartphones contribute to what can be seen as the ultimate democratisation of image-making. “if the teleological art of the past found its meaning in recognition by the individual, then the art of the future will find such meaning in recognition by society. in a democratic art all form must be socially justified,” tarabukin wrote in 1923.15 moreover, tarabukin emphasised the idea of ‘installation’ that will replace a singular, unique ‘art object’. as art historian maria gough has put it, From the easel to the Machine “is a declaration of ‘the death of painting, the death of easel forms’ and the triumph, in their place, of mechanised and collective forms of production and distribution.”16 paradoxically enough, it can be argued that such triumph, at least in some aspects, is embodied in works presented in the exhibition. costume designs, photographs and photomontages by productivist artists such as aleksandr rodchenko, varvara stepanova, liubov popova and gustavs klutsis introduce a new type of human being, machine-like and functional, designed using simplified and inorganic elements. these images of the productivist body seem to anticipate the man-machine that speaks in Kraftwerk’s song Die roboter (1978): “we’re charging our battery and now we’re full of energy, we are the robots, we’re functioning automatik and we are dancing mekanik” (original spelling refers to the simplification of human language into an imagined machine language). Kraftwerk in their visual presentation as well as in their musical innovations present a link between the soviet russian avant-garde of the 1920s and the rise of computer-based artistic production that started in the 1970s and 1980s and has become especially visible and relevant after 2000. being pioneers of the revival of the productivist-inspired visual aesthetic and computer-generated music of the 1970s, Kraftwerk are highly present and visible also today. they tour the world on a regular basis and their shows are staged in art museums as well (one of the most notable examples being the retrospective at moma in 2012, conceived as a series of eight consecutive multimedia performances).17 their performances continue to update and revisit the legacy of the productivists and constructivists, employing the latest developments in animation, 3d imaging and stage lighting. | |
 Leningrad electronical institute, USSR. Life magazine. 1959 Publicity photo | |
| Paradoxical as it might be, much of the recent critical analysis of Kraftwerk revitalises the visionary vocabulary of the productivists, although without making a direct reference to the russian avant-garde, thus recalling the urgency of issues that were raised in the 1920s and are still valid and unresolved today. for instance, theater historian david pattie notes that “technology facilitates and structures a new set of relations between the individual, his or her environment and other individuals. in doing so, it creates, it might be argued, new beings, beings who are now defined by their relationship to these new technologies first and foremost. it is not that the human being in these performance events entirely disappears, or is entirely subsumed within, the new media that the events employ; rather, it is that the relation between the human and the machine is rethought – and from this reworking, new ideas of the human emerge.”18 indeed, the man-machine relationship is one of the pivotal elements of Kraftwerk’s artistic and musical production. their self-identification with a machine, metaphorically translated into images of humanoid robots, is ubiquitous in all the photographs, album covers and music videos where they are often represented as robots and in their live performances where robots replace the musicians onstage for the length of the performance of Die roboter. the human voice in their music is often transformed by machine, or a completely machine-generated ‘voice’ sometimes is used. this ‘rethinking’ of the man-machine relationship is also the focus of the exhibition I am your servant, I am your worker. all works included in the show in one way or another relate to the human body and its complex relationship with the machine. Furthermore, the idea of the networked camera – a hybrid apparatus consisting of surveillance and smartphone cameras, software applications, online image-sharing platforms, automated face recognition and image analysis tools, and internet (or intranet) connection – presents a new type of machine, which operates simultaneously as an image-making and image-sharing device. this device can be viewed as a materialisation of the fantasies of the productivists, giving anyone the possibility to be a producer and distributor of visual information.19 the networked camera is an integral part of today’s factory, the universal labour-leisure machine. most of the works in I am your servant, I am your worker relate to images originating from such a camera, directly sourcing the images from the surroundings in real time. The productivists focused on the factory as the major site of production in the industrial economy. they insisted that it is also the site where artistic production should take place. contemporary artists focus on the factory of the digital economy, the universal labour-leisure machine that many of us carry with us at all times. this new factory – the personal computer and similar devices – is the new site of production, the site of exploitation and surveillance. at the same time, it has seamlessly merged with the sites of consumption, the sites of leisure, and the new factory itself has become an object of consumer desire. it can be argued that people in 2014 love their iMacs, iPads and iPhones significantly more than people in 1914 loved their furnaces, spinning machines and mining drills. in the practice of everyday life, most of us have stopped worrying and started to love the computer already for a while. one of the productivist theorists, soviet russian art historian boris arvatov, in 1925 envisioned the new socialist object, an object that functions “as a social-labouring force, as an instrument and as a co-worker.”20 our modern electronic devices can be defined with exactly the same words. does that mean that we are the real productivists about which the soviet russian avant-garde of the 1920s fantasised? has the human love for the machine eliminated the alienated labour? are the theories we produce with computers as our co-workers actually capable of reflecting the current state of affairs? Kraftwerk: man, machine and music The visitor’s experience of the exhibit starts with a screening of Kraftwerk’s retrospective dvd Minimum-Maximum (2005). the dvd consists of live shows performed during Kraftwerk’s 2004 world tour. their performances continue to update and revisit the legacy of the productivists and constructivists, employing the latest developments in animation, 3d imaging and stage lighting. The man-machine relationship is one of the pivotal elements of Kraftwerk’s artistic and musical production. their self-identification with a machine, metaphorically translated into images of humanoid robots, is ubiquitous in photographs, album covers and music videos, where they are often represented as robots, and in many live performances robots replace the musicians onstage for the length of a song. the human voice in their music is transformed by machine, and a completely machine-generated ‘voice’ is sometimes used instead. a rethinking of the man-machine relationship is also the focus of the proposed exhibition, as all works either involve direct interaction with the human body or deal with representations thereof. in addition, the exhibit also starts off with Kraftwerk because electronic music and digital sound processing is relevant to several other artists included in the show (the united visual artists collective was actually founded in order to produce a music video for Massive attack, artist r. luke dubois is also a composer and music performer himself, and artist lozano-hemmer’s practice often revolves around sound, like the human voice, the heartbeat and breathing). The Vanishing body Further on, the first work directly in front of the visitor is the interactive installation Hereafter (2007) by united visual artists. the work functions as a time-delay mirror: it reflects the person standing in front of it with a slight delay, in addition mixing the real-time reflection with recorded images of other persons who were in front of the installation earlier. this work can surprise and capture attention, inviting visitors to explore the rest of the exhibit. Hereafter is followed by jason salavon’s series of four large-format prints every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades (normalized) (2002). the artist has used data analysis methods and computer software to obtain an aggregate image of Playboy centrefolds, thus viewing this particular genre of photography in development throughout four decades. the work represents a certain evolution of a mass media and image market segment, which is based on desire (male) and labour (female). both Hereafter and every Playboy Centerfold focus on the human body, and in both works its presence and physicality is questioned – the individual body vanishes in these aggregate images. Propaganda wall newspaper (stengazeta) Pointing to the historical predecessors of present-day debates about the man-machine relationship, a two-part montage of scanned and printed visual materials makes a connection between the soviet russian avant-garde of the 1920s and the revival of their legacy in the album covers, performance photographs and posters by the german electronic music group Kraftwerk (1970s-2000s). Russian artists aleksandr rodchenko, varvara stepanova, liubov popova and gustavs klutsis are represented by their costume sketches, photographs, photomontages and posters, all revolving around the visionary concept of the new productivist body – a human body that has acquired machine-like qualities, a body that desires to mimic a machine or identify with a machine in order to be more productive at the site of labour, be it a factory or artist’s studio. The historical argument in the gallery space takes the form of a two-part propaganda wall newspaper (stengazeta in russian), itself a form of communication established by the russian productivists in the 1920s. if, according to productivist thinking, the artistic production must take place on the site of actual production – in their case, in factories – and stengazeta is one of the ways to engage the site and the workers in such activity, then in our case this gallery space during this exhibit also becomes a site of production of new meanings and new versions of art history. the design of the two-part wall Newspaper is borrowed from a well-known model, the workers’ club designed by aleksandr rodchenko for the soviet pavilion at the art deco exhibition (exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, paris, 1925). The Machine vision The next mini-cluster of works relate to some of the aspects of machine vision, focusing on human bodies as ‘seen’ and analysed by the machine. one of the gallery’s large display windows is the site where david rokeby’s interactive installation Sorting Daemon (2003) operates: the camera pointed outwards to the street scans the surroundings, and the custom-made software, resembling one that is used in surveillance systems, recognises images of human bodies. a composite real-time image is produced simultaneously on two lcd screens (one to be viewed from the street, the other from inside the gallery), where the software ‘sorts’ the captured images of human figures according to the colour of their clothing. R. Luke Dubois in his video work Kiss (2010) manipulates fragments from famous films applying computer software that is designed to automatically detect human faces. the limitations of the software, however, causes significant distortions, providing a humorous (or frightening) preview of what a completely automated and inhuman machine or computer vision might be. according to the artist, the soundtrack that accompanies this work “subjects the non-diegetic soundtrack of the kissing scenes to an auditory timelapse effect, creating a feedback network that underscores and propels the imagery”. The Human touch The last mini-cluster of works consists of two interactive installations that are activated by the visitors and directly involve their bodies. these works need the human touch – human input – to operate; they are machines that use the human body as their source and material and then compute this material with algorithm-based ready-made or custom-made software applications. in rafael lozano-hemmer’s installation Pulse Index (2010), it is the visitor’s fingerprint pattern and heartbeat rhythm that constitutes the human input. the machine then displays the fingerprints of recent visitors, each of them “palpitating to the rhythm of their heartbeats”, as the artist explains. in nova jiang’s installation Ideogenetic Machine (2011), visitors are invited to touch the control panel and activate the built-in photo camera. the machine collects several photographs of the visitor and uses an algorithm to insert these photographs into a narrative of a comic book whose individual frames have been drawn by the artist but whose order of appearance is determined by another algorithm. these composite images are projected on the screen and visitors can also opt for receiving them via email. thus the visitor becomes an actor in a comic-book narrative that is partly generated by the machine. both of these works rely on visitors’ participation, on their willingness to activate the works by direct physical interaction. 1 taylor, grant. “the soulless usurper: reception and criticism of early computer art” in higgins, hannah, and douglas kahn, eds. Mainframe experimentalism: early Computing and the Foundations of the Digital arts (berkeley: university of california press, 2012), p. 19, 27. 2 for a discussion about the challenges that computer-based art presents to art museums, see paul, christiane. “challenges for a ubiquitous museum: from the white cube to the black box and beyond,” in paul, christiane, ed. New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital art (berkeley: university of california press, 2008), pp. 53-75. 3 for instance, the ars electronica festival (linz, austria), ntt intercommunication center (icc) in tokyo, bitforms gallery (new york), eyebeam art and technology centre (new york) and others. 4 the live performance of this song can be viewed online: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=okhqtoqfg5s 5 here i quote maria gough’s argument about soviet russian avant-garde theorist tarabukin, whose productivist manifesto is one of the sources of inspiration for this proposal. gough, maria. “tarabukin, spengler and the art of production”. October 93 (summer 2000): pp. 79-99. 6 website of the exhibition: www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ rodchenko-popova 7 website of the seminar: www.macba.cat/en/the-new-productivisms. link to the online publication: eipcp.net/transversal/0910 8 see the following: raunig, gerald, and aileen derieg. art and revolution: Transversal activism in the Long Twentieth Century (los angeles: semiotext(e), 2007); raunig, gerald. a Thousand Machines: a Concise Philosophy of the Machine as Social Movement (los angeles, semiotext(e), 2010); and roberts, john. “productivism and its contradictions”. Third Text. 23, no. 5 (september 2009): pp. 527-536. 9 see, for instance, vierkant, artie. The Image Object Post-Internet (2010), available at: rhizome.org/editorial/2010/dec/20/required-reading/ 10 kholeif, omar, ed. you are Here: art after the Internet (manchester: cornerhouse, 2014). 11 website of the exhibition: www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/richard-hamilton-ica 12 website of the project: museumarteutil.net/ 13 website of the exhibition: www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/ghosts-in- the-machine 14 here i refer to the extremely relevant book by maria gough: The artist as Producer: russian Constructivism in revolution (berkeley: university of california press, 2005). 15 tarabukin, nikolai. “from the easel to the machine” [1923]. translated by christina lodder. in frascina, francis, charles harrison, and deirdre paul, eds. Modern art and Modernism: a Critical anthology (new york: harper & row, 1982), p. 142. 16 “in the material culture of the future, tarabukin prophesies, the ‘modern product’ will take the form not of an integral object but an installation – a system or network of interrelated components. the precise form the productivist ‘installation’ will take – whether apparatus, device, mechanism or plant (and the russian word ustanovka encompasses all of these) – will be less important than the relationality of its functioning.” see also note 49 regarding ustanovka: “the semantic value of the word ustanovka increased rapidly in the 1920s, transcending the overtly technical sense in which tarabukin here deploys it to signify also within psychological and ideological discourses as ‘orientation’ or ‘positioning’.” gough, maria. “tarabukin, spengler, and the art of production”. October 93 (summer 2000): pp. 79-99. 17 information about the Kraftwerk retrospective at moma is available here: www. moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1257 18 pattie, david. “Kraftwerk: playing the machines.” in albiez, sean and david pattie, eds. Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop (new york: continuum international publishing, 2010), p. 123. 19 some recent research projects led by lev manovich (department of computer science, the graduate center, cuny), such as www.phototrails.net and www.selfiecity.net, have attempted to explore some of the implications of the popular uses of the new image-making devices and image-sharing platforms, applying custom-made software, commercial face recognition applications and data visualization tools. 20 for a discussion of arvatov’s ideas and productivist and constructivist design in general, see kiaer, christina. “’into production!’: the socialist objects of russian constructivism”, Transversal, no. 3(2009), n.p. accessible online: eipcp.net/transversal/0910/ kiaer/en. see also: kiaer, christina. Imagine No Possessions: The Socialist Objects of russian Constructivism (cambridge, mass: mit press, 2005). | |
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