Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989 | Hacker News Reader

Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–1989

moma.org

76 pointscardamomo13 comments

I went to see this exhibition today. I don't know that I would encourage friends of mine who aren't already interested in algorithmic and computer-assisted art to attend, but I got a lot out of it. As someone born after most of the pieces in this exhibition, it's interesting to see connections between these historical works and what artists and designers are doing today.

I also got a kick out of this seeing this refrigerator-sized CM-2 supercomputer (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/200389), not because it was so big but because the programs it ran were designed to make its array of LEDs blink. As described on Wikipedia:

> By default, when a processor is executing an instruction, its LED is on. In a SIMD program, the goal is to have as many processors as possible working the program at the same time – indicated by having all LEDs being steady on. Those unfamiliar with the use of the LEDs wanted to see the LEDs blink – or even spell out messages to visitors. The result is that finished programs often have superfluous operations to blink the LEDs.

When I saw "Thinking Machines" in the title TMC was what I was imagining. Was disappointed when it wasn't. But the saving grace is there was one thing about TMC there.

And apparently they had Tamiko Thiel come and speak last year!

I was there a few weeks ago just to visit MOMA.

MOMA is always fun. I walked through the exhibit then went to see Starry Night.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BgKRypUg26y/?taken-by=mmellinger...

The Richard Feynman/Danny Hillis story is classic HN: http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...

Some info about the CM-1 and 2 here:

http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine

I don't suppose there's even a single demoscene thing on display at the exhibit is there?

Not that I noticed. It's a rather small exhibition by MoMA standards and, to your point, has some notable gaps. Personally, I would love to see a more expansive exhibition of this sort, organized thematically rather than chronologically. It would be great to give some context to what current computer artists are doing.

I went through the fashion history exhibit right after this. If this were done with the scale and attention of the fashion history exhibit, that would be a great time. I think a non-technical audience understandably has a hard time grasping the art in some of these things, but the fashion exhibit used chronology and categorization to break things down. Thinking Machines might benefit from thoughtful presentation like that.

I scrolled through the list of artists, and I was perplexed that there weren't any Japanese nationals or companies. NEC, Sony, Nintendo and others all made substantial contributions to the craft of computing design in the specified 30 year range, so I found it to be odd they weren't recognized.

I paid my first (and so far only) visit to MOMA in July 2016. I really wish this had been on display then: seeing a ‘working’ Connection Machine 2 is one of my all-time obsessions. Unfortunately I live in Italy and there’s pretty much none to be seen this side of the pond, that I’m aware of.

(Before anybody has any doubts: I am aware that this is not a ‘working’ CM2 in the sense that it isn’t computing anything, it’s just been jury-rigged to display “das blinkenlights”.)

You would have enjoyed the exhibition as there are a couple of Italian gems in there: The Olivetti programma 101 desktop computer, the Olivetti TCV250 Video Display Terminal and a poster for the Arte Programmata (an Italian Kinetic Art movement from the 60's ) Normally you don't get to see this stuff in the USA as most of the exhibitions are very US centric.

Love this. These computers have inspired my own hardware builds, some of which I showed at a maker faire and at http://parallac.org

Saw this two weeks ago. Amazing exhibit.

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