Tendencies 4: Computers and Visual Research (Zagreb, 1968–69)

Within the framework of Tendencies 4 (Tendencije 4), a series of exhibitions and symposia entitled Computers and Visual Research took place in Zagreb in 1968 and 1969. It brought computer art into the New Tendencies movement. Its histories set it beside London's Cybernetic Serendipity, which opened one day before the Zagreb colloquy in August 1968.^1, 2, 3

New Tendencies

New Tendencies began in 1961 in Zagreb, with an exhibition of concrete and constructive art organised by the city's Gallery of Contemporary Art, now the Museum of Contemporary Art. The artists called their work visual research: experiments with perception, light and movement, meant as research rather than as goods for the art market.^1, 2 By the mid-1960s Op art had absorbed much of it. The movement was in crisis in 1967, so the organisers postponed that year's exhibition by a year and dropped "New" from its name.^2, 3

The colloquy, August 1968

The new direction was the computer. On 3 and 4 August 1968 Zagreb held an international colloquy, Computers and Visual Research. It opened one day after Cybernetic Serendipity opened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.^3, 4, 5 The critic Boris Kelemen had put "visual research" into the title, and the organising committee included Frieder Nake in Stuttgart, Leslie Mezei in Canada and Abraham Moles in France. Speakers ranged from artists to engineers from Zagreb's research institutes. According to Christoph Klütsch's account of the papers, Nake said that Cybernetic Serendipity had mainly addressed the play instinct, and that Tendencies 4 might address social consciousness.⁴

Nake later put the difference this way: London was art as an event, Zagreb was art as research.³

bit international

In 1968 the gallery also started a journal, bit international, on information theory, exact aesthetics, design and media. Most of its first issue was taken up by Max Bense and Moles writing on information aesthetics, the theory that tried to measure art by order and complexity. Nine issues appeared; the sources disagree on whether the last came out in 1972 or 1973.^1, 2, 4

The exhibition, 1969

The exhibition ran from 5 May to 30 August 1969.^4, 5 According to Darko Fritz, it showed 189 computer-generated works by 33 artists or groups from 12 countries. A jury of Umberto Eco, Karl Gerstner, Vera Horvat-Pintarić, Kelemen and Martin Krampen gave prizes for computer and visual research to Vladimir Bonačić, Marc Adrian and the group Compos 68.²

Bonačić, a scientist at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, showed seventeen works. As part of the exhibition he also put a large computer-controlled light object on the façade of the NaMa department store on Kvaternik Square.²

Radoslav Putar, one of the curators of New Tendencies, summed up the change in the catalogue: the New Tendencies artists "have all dreamt of machines—and now the machines have arrived", but from an unexpected direction, "accompanied by people who were neither painters nor sculptors".²

Afterwards

The programme continued until 1973, when Tendencies 5 showed computer work beside the earlier visual research and conceptual art.^1, 2 In 2007 the Neue Galerie Graz reconstructed the story in the exhibition bit international, curated by Darko Fritz in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb; an expanded version was shown at the ZKM in Karlsruhe in 2008–09.^1, 6 Nees's exhibition in Stuttgart, three years before Zagreb, is in Generative Computergrafik.