Dostęp otwarty
CZECHOSLOVAK EXPERIMENTS IN MEDIA ART: LESSONS FROM CENTRAL EUROPE HISTORY OF CULTURE & TECHNOLOGY (VISUAL/COMPUTER/VIDEO ART & POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS)
Anna MAJ1
Język publikacji: angielski
scientific paper
Transformacje Nr 4(123)2024, Data publikacji: 30 grudnia 2024r.
Słowa kluczowe: new media art, video art, computer art, political transformation, socio-cultural transformation, emigration, experiment, creation, Czechoslovakia, Central Europe
Streszczenie The beginnings of new media art are connected with creative explorations in the area of new technologies, both analog and digital. On the one hand, they include artistic experiments in video art, and on the other, the first attempts to write computer programs that would have an aesthetic or artistic dimension. In both of these directions of activities, the critical element is access to technology and technical knowledge at an appropriate level: in the case of video art, it is about access to the most modern equipment in the form of cameras and video recorders, enabling the recording and editing of image and sound, as well as public presentation of the art-forms, in the case of computer art – to sufficiently advanced computer equipment and appropriate programming knowledge that enable writing programs, creative coding and its use in an artistic context. By definition, Central Europe before the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the time of political transformation was an area where technocentric creative activities were doomed to failure and artists were fac-ing various difficulties. These creative activities were also at least partially late compared to the West. By presenting selected profiles of Czechoslovak creators, I will try to show the spectrum of these problems, the winding artistic and existential paths leading to artistic creation in the area of video art and computer art, as well as the accompanying economic, technical, cultural and social contexts.
University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
ORCID: ORCID: 0000-0003-3958-267X
E-mail: anna.maj@us.edu.pl