Arte Programmata: An important antecedent to the digital age.

In postwar Italy, a group of visionary artists used emergent computer technologies to experiment with art and technology and subvert conceptions of freedom and control. ARTE PROGRAMMATA is a book that describes how Italy’s distinctive political climate fueled the group’s engagement with computers, cybernetics, and information theory, creating a broad range of immersive environments, kinetic sculptures, and other multimedia art and design works. Here, author Lindsay Caplan is joined in conversation with Tina Rivers Ryan and Jacopo Galimberti.

Lindsay Caplan is assistant professor in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Brown University.

Tina Rivers Ryan is an art historian focused on art and technology. Ryan is curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, and a critic who writes most frequently for Artforum.

Jacopo Galimberti is an art historian and assistant professor at IUAV (Venice).

REFERENCES:
-The New Museum / Ghosts in the Machine Show (2012)

-Jackson Pollock

-New Tendencies (Armin Medosch)

-Antonio Negri

-Michael Hardt

-From Counterculture to Cyberculture (Fred Turner)

-Christiane Paul (Whitney Museum of American Art)

-Edward A. Shanken

-Pier Paolo Pasolini

-Spazio elastico (Elastic Space, 1967), Gianni Colombo

-Guy Debord

-Enzo Mari

TOPICS:

gestalt art, abstraction, politics, information theory, freedom, technology, operaismo (or: “workerism”)

Episode Transcript

Lindsay Caplan (00:03):
And we have the ability to mobilize social
systems, political systems,technological systems to better
ethical ends. We need somethingto work.

Jacopo Galimberti (00:14):
Lindsay's book finds a way to connect the
sixties to the present, and thisis particularly difficult.

Tina Rivers Ryan (00:21):
Anybody who cares about digital art needs to
read this book.

Lindsay Caplan (00:28):
Hi. Welcome. I'm Lindsay Kaplan, assistant
professor of art history atBrown University and the author
of Arte Programmata, Freedom,Control, and the Computer in
nineteen sixties Italy. And thebook takes a close look at
artists associated with the ArteProgrammata movement in 1960s
Italy. These are artists whobegin working in the early 60s

(00:48):
with kind of kinetic sculpturesand assemblages and begin to
work within immersiveenvironments and light
environments in the mid 60s andthen go on and continually work
in the field of householddesign.
And the book takes the idea ofthe program as a generative
structure and kind of follows itthrough these disparate
practices to unpack the dynamicsof freedom and control in art

(01:10):
but also beyond. Now I'mdelighted to be joined today by
two brilliant scholars and keyinterlocutors for this book.

Tina Rivers Ryan (01:19):
Hi. My name is Doctor. Tina Rivers Ryan and I'm
curator at Buffalo AKG ArtMuseum as well as an art
historian focused on art andtechnology and a critic writing
most frequently for art form.

Jacopo Galimberti (01:31):
Hi. My name is Jacobo Gallimbert, and I'm an
assistant professor at theUniversity of Venice, at Uof,
that's the name, and I'm an arthistorian.

Lindsay Caplan (01:40):
Thank you guys for being here. I invited Jacopo
and Tina because they representthe kind of two big intellectual
conversations that I was hopingthis book would kind of
intervene and also intersect andkind of bring together, the
world of kind of the history ofnew media art and art and
technology experiments that Tinais really an expert in as a

(02:03):
curator and both a, arthistorian and theories of art
and politics and politicalorganization in 1960s and kind
of post war Italy. Questionsthen my book that really think
about what broadly are thepolitics of form and Jacopo has
written extensively on this inhis first book, Individuals
Against Individualism. He evenwrites about some of the same

(02:23):
artists and his new book Imagesof Class, Aperisme, Autonomia,
and the Visual Arts. You know,my book really has thrived in
conversation with both of youand I wanted to bring you guys
together to think transverselyacross the key terms that kind
of come up in both worlds andalso, the kind of stakes that
come up.

(02:44):
I wanted to hear your thoughtsand get questions from you about
what you think the book is doinggiven these two different
conversations that you're a partof, you know, nineteen sixties
Italian art and theory and thehistory of new media art broadly
conceived. So, to begin, I'dlove to hear what you think that
intervention is having just readit, and and then get some
questions.

Tina Rivers Ryan (03:05):
I can't thank you enough for writing this
book. As I already conveyed toyou privately, I am relieved
that this book now exists in theworld. I've been waiting for a
book like this for a long time.As some listeners might be
aware, the area of art andtechnology in the nineteen
sixties, or even let's justbroaden that and say the early
history of art and technologyfrom the sixties, seventies, and

(03:25):
eighties, has not been as welldocumented, researched, and
theorized as digital art fromthe nineties onwards. And so
it's really a service to thelarger field of art history that
you're focusing on this earliermaterial.
Within the nineteen sixties, Ithink groups like experiments in
art and technology and the artand technology program at LACMA,

(03:46):
are better known. Arteprogramata, I think, is, you
have completely convinced me,actually, that it is a really
key part of this narrative andthat it really offers a very
different way of thinking aboutthe relationship between art and
technology than the movementsthat emerged elsewhere,
especially in North America.Just on that level, in terms of

(04:07):
what your topic is, it hasreally, I think, opened up the
conversation about art andtechnology for me personally. I
also really appreciate howyou're not only sort of
broadening the range of thehistorical archive, but also
deepening the the theoreticaland historical stakes in a way.
So much of the research on thistime period has sort of focused

(04:30):
on simply establishing whathappened when.
You know, there was such a hugegap in the secondary literature
that it's really been invaluablefor recent art historians to go
back and sort of document thathistory and go through the
archives. But the criticalstakes of your research is truly
breathtaking. And I know that,Jacopo has more to say about,

(04:50):
you know, your rethinking of therelationship between
individualism and community,between freedom and
determination. But I think yourframing of this book has made
this material seem particularlyrelevant. And to sort of sum up,
and state a little more clearlywhat I'm talking around, I think
that in the field of arthistory, in the sort of subfield

(05:13):
of art and technology, we, for along time, have been caught in
this human nuchal trap ofcritical or complicit.
Right? That any artist workingwith technology is either
critical or complicit. And thathas resulted, I think, in some
sort of dead ends and has often,I think, put artists in a very
awkward position of beingclassified as either techno

(05:35):
utopianists or, you know, technodystopianists. And, again, I
just I'm not sure how helpful ofa framing that actually is when
you look at the things thatartists have said about their
practice or what the artworksare doing. And so I just
personally think that allowingus to bring in cybernetic theory
and to understand how one canwork with technology in a way

(05:58):
that neither gives into the sortof individualism of neoliberal
rhetoric nor the kind of naivetechno optimism that we see or
that we saw.
Interesting. I use the presenttense. That's, that's a Freudian
slip that we saw so much, in thenineteen sixties, is is really,

(06:18):
really useful.

Jacopo Galimberti (06:20):
Yeah. I mean, I I I shared in this analysis,
and I think Lindsay's book isextremely needed and timely. She
found a way to kind of connectthe sixties to the present. And
this is this was particularlydifficult because whenever you
deal with technology, it's veryeasy to come across as outdated.

(06:41):
Every form of art that, youknow, to engage this with
technology is exposed to theserisks.
And I think the way in whichLindsay managed to to connect
past and present is a verysubtle analysis of the cultural
and intellectual debates thatsurrounded as a program matter,
its critics, its curators, itsartists, its outlets. And I

(07:06):
think this is really the onlyway in which we can, develop
also sometimes a source ofempathy for these artists. Who
are active in a very different,technological environment and
media landscape. So very distantfrom us on that level. Yet, the
kind of problems they they theyengage with are somehow similar,

(07:27):
or at least this is what thebook manages to convey, in my
view.
This was particularly difficultbecause many, colleagues, good
colleagues, actually providedrather, formalistic, analysis of
art programmata and what's whathas been also called op art,

(07:48):
kinetic art, all these labelsthat are useful, but only to a
certain extent. I think it wasvery easy to kind of provide a
simplistic superficial readingof these optical effects. And
this is what has been done inmany exhibitions. And what
Lindsay achieved was thedevelopment of a completely

(08:08):
different perspective. And Ithink that just really sheds new
light on a movement and itsintellectual background.
So I think it's it's absolutelynecessary to read this book to
understand the sixties, tounderstand, of course, you know,
the very contradictoryrelationship between art and
technology. But also, and thisis also one of the strong points

(08:29):
of this volume, the connectionor relationship between art and
politics. And I think Lindsaydid a great job in in exploring
this kind of the kind ofpolitical undertones of some
seemingly playful, artworks. Theidea of of freedom, the idea of
community, the idea ofcollectivity, they sometimes

(08:52):
embodied. This required, youknow, very careful analysis of
their discourses and sometimesvery convoluted debates, that,
you know, require Lindsay tokind of acquire very ins you
know, insider knowledge of ofjargons and and technical words
or metaphors that are no longerin use.

(09:14):
And so I think this is aabsolutely pivotal book for the
history of art and for thehistory of of nineteen sixties
culture in Italy, but not onlyin Italy, in Europe, in Western
Europe.

Tina Rivers Ryan (09:26):
Can I just build off of what Jacopo just
said to to say that not only arethese works playful, they're
also abstract? And another thingI really, really appreciate
about Lindsay's book is that sheis renewing the conversation
about the politics of form andhelping us understand, you know,
that that this traditionalnarrative of Artaprokamata is
being sort of apolitical upuntil the moment at which the

(09:49):
movement dissolves and they allbecome like graphic designers,
and we have this integration ofart into life, that that
narrative actually occludes theway in which their work that was
abstract and playful was alwaysalready political. Right? And to
allow us to sort of locate thatpolitics in the work through the
mobilization of new models ofsubjectivity, basically, and

(10:11):
agency as well, right, that arepremised not on these more
traditional models, but on amore cybernetic networked way of
being, I think, is, like,really, really important
contribution. Perhaps I can getstarted, a conversation here
with, with a question forLindsay.
You know, as, you know, acurator who is really interested

(10:31):
in this time period, one of mygreat frustrations is that a lot
of the objects themselves areactually not extant. And you
know Lindsay's heard my horrorstories of going to visit museum
collections and I'm not gonnaname names, but going to visit
museum collections and you knowhaving made an appointment to
view certain artworks andliterally being brought out like
a box of parts. And so I Iwanted to, start with a question

(10:54):
which I'm just personally veryinterested in, which is what was
the process of researching thismaterial like, and what were the
sort of frustrations or thesurprises of working with this
particular archive? I know yousaid at, you know, sort of the
outside of the book that a lotof this material now has been on
display more recently, includingin museums of modern and

(11:17):
contemporary art in Italy. Andso that you did have the chance
to see it in person.
But I know you also mentionedthat a lot of the works you
couldn't see in person and wererelying on secondary
documentation. So, sort of as aservice to future scholars who
might also be interested inmining this territory, I wonder
if you could talk about that.

Lindsay Caplan (11:33):
Yeah. Thank you so much and thank you for your
comments. I wanna just also sayquickly that, you know, it took
me a while to get my head aroundthese works. You know, what
you're describing as a kind ofdense unpacking. I started with
a real question that startedwith this kind of
incommensurable duality of thisabstract work and these artists

(11:55):
who were so politicallyinvested.
That was a problem for meinitially that I felt like I
needed to solve And it forced meto rethink the terms and by
which I had come to judge whatpolitical art was. And so it
really took a while. And Iinitially relied quite a bit on
the language of the artists andthe writing about the artists.

(12:17):
Umberto Eco, who's a big figurein the book and his notion of
the open work is, you know, notquite open, but not not quite
closed, you know, a field ofpossibilities. And all of this
did a lot of work for me at thestart.
And I got very, seduced by thatlanguage, but not this, not
that, both this, both that, thatI think initially was a trap
that was set for me in theresearch to some extent because

(12:39):
it obscured the stakes and alsothe material. The fact that when
you look at these works and yousee them, and this is to get to
answer Tina's question of thekind of revelation I had once I
started to actually see them,which happened quite late in the
research, you know, after acouple of years or so of
reading, that you feel bothempowered but also manipulated.

(13:00):
You know, these are abstractkinetic works. The little ones
are kind of silly, almost. Theyfeel a little playful, but also
childish.
You know, they look like littleexperiments in gestalt form or
kind of something that you mightthey do look like children's,
mobiles. Some of them are butalso they look a little bit like
science experiments, and sothere's a kind of you go back
and forth between both playfuland also controlled. And that

(13:22):
was the feeling I got, a feelinglike these works were inviting
you to kind of an unboundedassociative subjective process,
but also they kept kind of youkept coming back to their
simplicity and their controllingeffects. And so it was the work
that spoke to me, did began totell a different story. And I
was lucky that they they startedpopping up.

(13:45):
When I started this project, itwas very unknown. And I started
reading about arts program atthe when I was in graduate
school. I was immersed in therhetoric, you know, kind of
debates about social practiceand relational aesthetics. And I
was seeing the kind ofconversation about open
endedness and the open workeverywhere because these were
social practices that were meantto establish a setup in which
people could participate and beultimately free. And then when I

(14:08):
learned that the open workcoincided with this exhibition
on programmed art, that waswhere my question came from.
But it was also a moment whenart and you know, everyone
wanted to be a part of andigital like the prehistory of
the digital avant garde. So Iremember seeing at the new
museum, the Ghost and theMachine show had a lot of this
work. I think it might have been2012. And the Galleria del Arte

(14:30):
Moderna in Rome has a lot ofthis work, a lot of their kind
of objects. The Museo delNovocento in Milan had all the
environments on the Top Floorwhen I was doing my research.
So I was able to see a lot ofthese works. And, again, they to
really unpack experientially andbegin to read what it meant
experientially to have,especially with the
environments, these abstractlight environments with mirrors

(14:55):
and black lights and little navilabyrinthine spaces, you know,
the fun but also the kind ofterror of being inside these
spaces. And really think aboutwhat are the political analogies
and theories of subjectivitythat they invite you to kind of
feel but also think. So I wouldsay there were a lot of the
works I got to see in Italy andthen in in shows in New York,
and there was a show, in MoMAthat had some of these works.

(15:17):
But then Grupo n's environments,in particular are only diagrams
and I had to really work againwith literature like writing
about them.
In some ways that itself was agift because I'm interested in
how the artists diagrammed theworks and what, you know, how
they imagined the subject thespectator was going to interact.

(15:38):
And that for me was as much animportant part of the story as
the works themselves. And ofcourse, the discourse and the
discursive context, but also thecontext in which these become
thinkable was important to me aswell. So I felt like seeing the
works was important, but, all ofthat other archival research and
and and the lack of the objectsreally allowed me to see what I

(15:59):
saw.

Jacopo Galimberti (16:00):
Lindsay, I I wanted to, pick up on on some of
the issues that Tina raised. AndI wanted to ask you something
about the political agenda of asa program matter, more
specifically, about theconnections between
Atropogrammeister andYugoslavia, which was a
socialist country, but was notpart of the socialist block. And

(16:23):
Yugoslavia went went on tobecome one of the most important
countries of the so called,Third World, Movement at the
time and played a major role inthe promotion of Ataturk
Prokomasa with severalexhibitions. So, I wonder
whether you can elaborate a bitmore about this kind of
connection if it's, you know,meaningful.

Lindsay Caplan (16:45):
Yes. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. The
actual material connectionsbetween Arte Programatza and
artists in Yugoslavia were key.They were mostly forged through
the New Tendencies exhibitionsthat began in 1961 that brought
together this kind ofinternational network of artists
working in geometricabstraction, drawing on
metaphors and ideas of computersand cybernetics.

(17:08):
And these exhibitions and theconversations that happened
around them were in large partabout artists who were
struggling to work outside theCold War binary, which in art
really manifest as a kind ofdebate between figuration and
abstraction. Abstraction beingkind of completely absorbed by,
the Western democraticcapitalist model with Pollock as

(17:30):
the kind of pinnacle andfiguration kind of socialist
realism, aligning itself withthe kind of Soviet collectivism.
So not only was the cold waroverdetermining, you know,
political models, but it wasalso absorbing kind of aesthetic
models at the time. And so theseartists were looking for
something else, for a a model ofindividuality that was was not

(17:53):
socially responsible and anticollective and a model of
collectivity that stillmaintains some dimension of
individual freedom andflexibility. So, you know, a
form, but also a kind ofpolitical model that could just
be completely outside this againback and forth back and forth.
And so it's not incidental thatin dialogue with artists from

(18:13):
Yugoslavia that they're able tosee cybernetics of all things in
this way because cybernetics isthe theory of systems that can
be flexible but also functional.And it really takes on
uncertainty and unknowability asI as I kind of try to outline in
my book as a condition and wantsto work and function
nonetheless. And so we we beginto get some very interesting

(18:36):
alignments and kind ofunderstanding of cybernetics as
an alternative to, again, thethe cold war binaries. And this
is something that the newtendencies group, which is
artists from Latin America andboth Eastern And Western Europe
really take on. And one of thethings I was interested in doing
was parsing, like, notnecessarily Arte Programat as
uniqueness because they share alot of these things with these

(18:57):
artists, but kind of what makesthem singular or kind of what is
also their position in Italymaybe bring.
And I can say more about that ina minute, but the fact there's
the fact of Yugoslavia and theconversations with artists in
Yugoslavia about alternatives tothe capitalist communist binary
were were essential andformative. And I think
structured how they're able tosee what they saw when they read

(19:19):
cybernetic theory, when theylooked at information theory,
when they kind of encounteredcomputers. And this is something
that the scholar, Armin Mendoce,in a great book of his On New
Tendencies, he goes comes rightout and calls them cybernetic
socialists. And you can findthis a lot, and I teach this, in
fact. I kind of teach thesemultiple different readings of
cybernetics, which in The UScontext is often seen as just a

(19:40):
kind of prehistory forneoliberalism and always already
neoliberal and always alreadytyrannical.
And that is both because it hasroots in wartime cryptography
and technologies and alsobecause it does in fact become
neoliberalism. But theseartists, largely because they
weren't actually engineers, canread cybernetics irresponsibly,
I think, and do what they wantwith it. And I think it's really

(20:03):
important to see what they see.Also to your point, Jacopo,
about the political question,one of the things that interests
me about what's different aboutRT programata is also what they
see when they see politics.Because what I found was and
this was not initially part ofthe book.
I really didn't deal withautonomy. I didn't really get
deep into the politicalquestions that were happening at

(20:26):
the time. And as I did, I sawthat these questions of
organization and form and kindof what structures can allow for
the greatest freedom, they werethere in the political theory.
And so I came to see that a lotof the ways in which not just
this the beautiful balance ofstructure and agency and
flexibility and functionality ofcybernetics that that a lot of

(20:47):
these artists share, but alsothe kind of deep investment in
form as a political question.That was something that, again,
I'm I'm hesitant to say unique,but it's something that has a
certain kind of tenor, a certainkind of intensity with the
Italian artist that I thinkmakes them somewhat singular.
It really was also bringingmultiple histories, not, you
know, the the conversation withYugoslavia, but also what does

(21:08):
seeing that from the position ofItaly allow us to see that I
tried to really take seriouslyand balance in the book?

Tina Rivers Ryan (21:16):
I was gonna pose this question to you,
later, but actually now seemslike a great time to bring it
up. You know, you're talkingabout the singularity of Arte
Pogramata, and I just wonder interms of how we understand the
relevance of this material toart today. You know, it's
something that Jacopo alreadysort of touched upon, you know,
that this is a book thatdefinitely has a relevance, But

(21:38):
I wanted to ask you about that.It's something that I was
thinking about is how youunderstand the extent to which
we might extrapolate from or atleast learn from Artaprogramata
and sort of apply it to what'sgoing on with art and technology
today. Because you do make anexcellent case that there is
this sort of singularity, right,that you do need to to

(22:00):
understand, for example, theirreading of cybernetics or their
mobilization of cybernetics, youneed to understand the political
context of post war Italy, andthe investment there in the idea
of a programmed social order.
And so given that that contextis not universal, but quite
specific, yeah, I just love tohear more from you. You know, I
know what happened to ArchaProgamata, and I know you

(22:22):
touched on this in theconclusion, so maybe it's just a
matter of recapitulating that.

Lindsay Caplan (22:25):
Sure. Thank you. Yeah. I personally feel that I
was able to see what I saw inthis material because of my own
historical position. You know,really, learning about art and
politics in the early twothousands when relational
aesthetics were big and alsocoming to critical art practice
and critical art history.

(22:46):
After poststructuralism, afterneoliberalism, like deep in
neoliberalism, I feel like myintellectual formation was of a
moment when, you know, and I saythis in in the acknowledgments,
I think, and it's also why thebook ends where it does, when
everyone was reading Harte Negriand Empire and Multitude, and
these were super importantformative questions. This was

(23:08):
also a moment when everyone inmy graduate school reading
groups, it seemed like communismwas a was a kind of exciting
word again, small c communism.There was a deep suspicion of a
kind of individualist freedomthat it felt like was maybe
inherent in a lot of the ways inwhich we talk about critical art
and criticality as such and thenegative gesture. So there was a

(23:29):
kind of paralysis aroundthinking about positive
organizing because you'resubject to critique. And I feel
like I saw that.
I felt that, and I foundsomething exciting, not
necessarily with the program asit manifest in RT programata,
but that the program manifestsas it did in programata. So I

(23:50):
would say I'm wary to say thelesson is to kind of reproduce
or replicate as you say withoutcontextual specificity. But the
lesson is kind of how we need amaterialist and historically
sensitive idea of freedombecause depending on where you
are, it just still feels likethe pendulum swing between a
kind of negative assertion of,well, we need fewer constraints

(24:13):
or the trap that the freedom andcontrol binary can set for us. I
think today too, Tina, you knowthis better than I do, the
rhetoric of freedom is soingrained into how we talk about
technology and this is oftenfrom a kind of North American
perspective. And again, eitheryou're critical of that, you see
art and technology experimentsas kind of asserting an

(24:34):
individual freedom that in, infact, the ways in which people
move from the art space to thekind of institutional design
space tracks as becomingneoliberalism and becoming the
internet and becoming the kindof facade of freedom that we
find.
But I was interested again inthinking of another history and
another historical model inwhich the technology isn't

(24:56):
always already complicit withthe present as such. I also
think that, again, given that,you know, I think the ways in
which things like cryptocurrencyand NFTs are framed in terms of
freedom, and again, Tina, thisis really your area of
expertise, but I see such thesame ideas about freedom from
constraints and kind of a totallibertarianism as really getting

(25:18):
attached to certaintechnological forms of
deregulation and networks thatand, you know, a certain
collapse between a certainnetwork form and democracy as
such when, of course, theseforms that can be grossly
undemocratic. That I think kindof in my strange way at this
case study that seems so faraway, I had all of that in mind
when I was writing. You know, adeep suspicion of

(25:41):
structurelessness. Oh, concernabout freedom as such as a kind
of individual antisocialprogram.
These were very much in my mindas I was writing and determined
again how I was able to see whatI saw and and appreciate the the
historical sample that I

Tina Rivers Ryan (25:58):
study. Yeah. I know. I mean, let me know if
this is a misreading, but, Ithought one of the things that
was great about your work isyou've just sort of gestured
towards is that in it, I findnot only a lesson for those
crypto anarchists technolibertarians who define freedom
negatively as a freedom fromconstraint. I also find in it a
lesson for those who don't havean understanding of freedom that

(26:21):
is sufficiently grounded in thesort of, like, materialist and
social infrastructure.
I just keep thinking of thephrase better living through
circuitry. In my mind, that usedto be aligned with this kind of,
like, naive techno optimism, butI think what I got from your
book is, you know, anunderstanding that, like, the
circuitry is a necessary part,actually. Like, in a sense, the

(26:41):
circuitry is actually aprecondition for freedom. At any
event, we we have the circuitry.Right?
So as you point out, in a way,we've been asking the wrong
question all along because we'vebeen asking an ontological
question, about technology, whenwhat we needed to be asking,
right, was rather about howtechnology can be mobilized or
weaponized to different ends,and what our relationship is to

(27:02):
that circuitry. Andunderstanding that the claims
made about the technology arenot self evident, that they're
not categorical a priori, right,that rather the politics of the
technology only is sort ofinstantiated in particular
cultural context, historicalmoments, etcetera. So, in that
sense, I guess what I'm tryingto say is that I found it a
helpful corrective to two veryextreme positions about

(27:24):
technology, which is why it's sosort of, like, relevant and and
applicable to this contemporarymoment.

Lindsay Caplan (27:30):
Yeah. Absolutely. That's a lot of what
I was going for because a lot ofthe historians of technology
that I love, they trace what wasand this is people like Fred
Turner or Pamela Lee and othersas well. We can kind of see a
real kind of earnest progressivepolitics get kind of morphed
into particular forms likenetworks, communication, or
participation. And then thoseget abstracted from their

(27:52):
context and then they can beinstrumentalized and kind of
mobilized to nefarious ends.
So I think a return to thehistorical specificity and kind
of how participation or, youknow, to what ends communication
is really the kind of questionsI think we need to be asking.
Again, we don't necessarily justtake the model and apply it, but
these are the ways we unpack it.And I do think that recent

(28:13):
writing, I think of BenjaminBratton or even Naomi Klein's,
like, a little manifesto duringthe pandemic about technology. I
think, you know, there was amoment during the pandemic when
I was reading stuff where thereseemed to be this moment when
people were thinking, okay. Sowe have these capacities.
We have planetary computation.We have the ability to mobilize
social systems, politicalsystems, technological systems

(28:35):
to better ethical ends. Youknow, we have these resources
and they don't always have to betyrannical or surveillance.
Capitalism, you know, how mightwe think differently because we
need something to work. And theother thing is I started this
book at a moment when I feltlike a lot in the art world,
there was a kind of equationwith kind of critical art
practice with kind of noisemaking jamming machines, which I

(28:56):
think is a really importantlegacy.
But again, I was looking at thisin a moment where I was
thinking, you know, I'd likesomething to work once in a
while and a kind of fatigue withthat fetish for dysfunction.
That was also something that wasvery much on my mind. And
another was the concern withwhen does the focus on
technology as a form and a kindof looking for its inherent

(29:17):
politics actually obscure fromthese political questions of,
like, like, how and to what end.

Jacopo Galimberti (29:22):
Lindsay, let me ask you something about the
kind of narrative you build inyour book because I remember
reading a an important book,Fred Turner's From
Counterculture to Cybercultureand having the impression that
that narrative was presented asa kind of quintessential shift
from countercultural milieu to amore libertarian milieu, whereas

(29:47):
my impression was that that wasvery specific to a very specific
area of The United States. Myunderstanding of your book is
that you kind of suggest adifferent narrative, one which,
artists, working with computersand cybernetics, in the latter
part of the sixties stoppedworking with computers because

(30:07):
computers in Italy are perceivedas serving a different function,
has different connotations. Andso I I wanted to ask you, if you
could say a bit more about thiskind of, let's say, alternative
narrative.

Lindsay Caplan (30:23):
Yes. Absolutely. Well, one of the things that
kind of drives that narrative isby defining the program not as a
technology like a computer, butas a particular idea, as a
certain conceptual conceit, as akind of generative structure
that kind of has infinitepossibilities, but nevertheless
can be bounded and kind ofgrounded, excuse me, in

(30:44):
something that can be understoodand comprehended and and seen.
So you have a a balance therefor these artists between a kind
of discernible structure,endless freedom, spontaneity,
and kind of agency. And I dothink that Humberto Eco's idea
that, you know, this structure,which is parallel to the open
work is that has a field ofpossibilities is really

(31:05):
important because he's thinkingabout how meaning can happen,
how you can have multiplemeanings but not total chaos all
the time.
One of the key differences wasthat what happened in The US was
that it's kind of spun off intointo kind of total individualist
relativism, and there wasn'tthis kind of focus on the
bounded, the the other side ofit, the control part, the

(31:25):
collective part. But, also, itwas always an idea. The artists
in Arti Programata almost neveruse computers as a medium, and I
say that outright. They use itas a conceptual idea, as a kind
of a score, you know, or like astructure for by which they make
these abstract assemblages. Andso what looks like an
abandonment of computers, I say,is a continuation of these ideas

(31:50):
about programming in the fieldof design.
And here they begin to thinkabout objects as kind of
catalyst for change as theyenter a system and kind of can
provoke change as they movethrough. So again, we have that
balance between the structure ofthe system and the kind of
agency of the individual node.And that idea structures the
narrative of the book, And itallows me to make the arguments

(32:12):
about the continuity among theirwork, which is an argument I
believe in. But, but also it itkind of gets us away from
thinking about computers andprogramming as principally a
medium, which is often how, it'sunderstood and then people can
talk about kind of theexperimental formal quality of
this work. But looking at theprogram, it's this set of

(32:33):
relationships and how itstructures a relationship
between artist, object, andaudience, I think opens up a
whole other set of questions,about how meaning happens,
about, you know, again, and itit allows us at least I argue to
extrapolate all sorts of ways tounderstand subjectivity and
collectivity as such.
So it was a narrative structuredby thinking about a kind of

(32:55):
intellectual history of theprogram and that intellectual
history includes art historybecause I treat the artworks as
these kind of philosophicalpropositions as ways of working
out these questions ofcommunication and action. And
that was there, you know, of allthe things that changed in
writing a book, I have to saythat that narrative was actually
there. That was one thing thatstayed the same. And I've been

(33:17):
working on this book for many,many years, too many to say. But
that was one thing that stayedbecause I always saw the program
as an as an idea rather than amaterial.

Jacopo Galimberti (33:28):
As a model?

Lindsay Caplan (33:30):
As a model. Yeah.

Tina Rivers Ryan (33:31):
Or a metaphor.

Lindsay Caplan (33:33):
As a metaphor. I know. I what I'm now obsessed
with is thinking about thedifference between all those
words. This book kind of slips,I realized, between a lot of
these, but I am obsessed withthinking about that. And I am
actually very interested inthinking about the limits of the
model because I think thequestion of jumping from the
scale of the artwork to thescale of the nation state is
something we still need to, Ithink, as art historians to kind

(33:54):
of grapple with and thematize.
I won't do that here, but I willsay that that remains an open
question for me in the book. ButI think when it comes to
theorizing these questions abouthow meaning happens and
subjectivity, the artwork is agreat place to do that. I think
a very compelling place to dothat.

Tina Rivers Ryan (34:10):
Building on what you just said, I wanna ask
you a question that is bothextremely straightforward and
also potentially really thorny.After having written this book,
how would you define digitalart? Oh, wow. So I I ask because
I think about the books that Iread in a kind of spatial way
as, like, where they sit on mybookshelf, which is both, like,

(34:30):
a practical question, but also ahistoriographic one. And in my
mind, like, I have already, youknow, gone out on social media
telling everybody I know thatanybody who cares about digital
art needs to read this book.
And I realized that it's it'salways good to manage people's
expectations and that I shouldperhaps warn them that this is
actually a book that is notabout artists using computers at

(34:51):
all, and yet I think this is oneof the most important books
about digital art that has comeout in recent years. So it's
something that I'm also sort ofstruggling with is where do we
draw the boundaries? And this issomething that, for example,
Christiana Paul, the, curator ofdigital art for the Whitney, has
written about in her books ondigital art that it gets very
tricky, Like, if we want to besort of, like, unreconstructed

(35:12):
formalists and say, Well, youknow, it's anything made with a
computer, that increasingly isnot tenable because name any
artist right now who doesn't usea computer at some point in
their creative process. Youknow, a painter painting from a
photo that was shot with theiriPhone that they're viewing on
their desktop, for example. Soshe argues that rather we should

(35:33):
think about digital art as workthat is not only made with
computer technologies, but alsoexhibited, displayed,
experienced via computertechnology.
So it's artwork that'sinteracted with on a screen or
through digital projection,etcetera. I've been chewing over
that a lot recently because assomebody who is a historian who
is interested in the sort ofvery early moments of artists

(35:56):
encountering computertechnologies, it's not just art
programmata. There's a lot ofgroups who were only able to
interact with a computer at thelevel of sort of metaphor, but
who were definitely inspired byit. And actually, one of the
major arguments that's been putforward recently by people like
Edward Schenken, for example, isthat in many ways, the way that

(36:17):
artists working with computertechnology fits into the the
larger narrative of post war artis on sort of on the level of
ideas. Right?
That there's nothing moreconceptual than algorithmic art,
and that there's nothing morealgorithmic than conceptual art,
I guess, in some sense. Right?I'm just wondering, would you
call Arte Programata, like, doyou wanna claim them for

(36:39):
nineteen sixties, you know,quote, unquote, computer art as
it was known back then? Or doyou think it's important to
separate them out and have alittle bit of distance, and what
would be your motives eitherdirection?

Lindsay Caplan (36:52):
Thank you for elaborating because it was great
to hear you talk about that.But, also, it helps because I
think I'm definitely of themindset that, you know, you can
analyze almost anything in thetwentieth century through its
kind of technological conditionsor it's a commentary on its
technological conditions, andI'm more invested in seeing the
technological as a way to do thehistorical and see materially

(37:16):
the historical. And that'sthrough the level of metaphor
too. You know, how we come tounderstand the body, how we come
to understand the brain islargely defined through the
media that determine oureveryday lives. I'm a % behind a
really expansive idea of what itmeans to be a historian of art
and technology.
There's no motivation for me todraw a line. I don't have to
curate a show in which I kind ofcome up with constraints. I can

(37:39):
write and teach expansively andand transversely about these
things, and I do. And I agreethat a lot can be gained. I
think also, you know,cybernetics was just everywhere
in the sixties.
I mean, it it was Kaprow'shappenings. You know, he's
reading. So I and I think thatthe extent to which we draw that
line actually does a disserviceboth to the history of
cybernetics, the history ofthose artworks, and, you know,

(38:02):
the ways in which we understanddigital art. And the extent to
which I actually find thelanguage of communication and
control in cybernetics in thingslike performance in the sixties
is mind boggling and I thinkreally important because it was
the terms by which I think a lotof questions about audience came
to be understood. I do thinkvery expansively about this idea
of digital art.
Computer art is something else.I have a very visceral response

(38:26):
to that word. I will actuallytell you this. This is going
public, but I don't think itneeds to be a secret that, we
had a back and forth about thetitle of this book because it
was started as more convoluted.And one of the things they
wanted me to call it was justcomputer art in Italy or
something like that.
And I was like, absolutely not.That's gonna make everyone think
it's about, like, fancyscreensavers. And I refused. I

(38:49):
did not want any and, obviously,it's a keyword. Obviously,
that's what this is.
Obviously, it is. But there'ssomething about that word that
feels very opposed to thatbroader extensive history that
I'm interested. Even though asyou're right, that was the word
that was used. So I might haveto check myself on that, but I I
got the title I wanted.

Tina Rivers Ryan (39:07):
No. I I think I don't think you need to check
yourself. I think you landed inthe right spot. I think computer
art now very clearly denotes a avery bounded field of activity
that was mostly made by in houseengineers at major corporations
and research centers thatresulted in, like, plotter
diagrams. I mean, it's just,like, a very particular thing,

(39:28):
and it's amazing how, in a way,that's not even historically
accurate.
Like, if you go back and look atCybernetic Serendipity in 1968,
which you do talk about in thebook, You know, that show
included not only plotterdiagrams, but also, like, music
and and computer film and lotsof other kinds of output. But I
think at this point, it veryspecifically refers to this kind

(39:48):
of work on paper and that'sanother reason why I'm actually
very grateful for this book isthat it reminds us to think
about computer art as existingin this kind of expanded field
even at the very beginning, evenin the nineteen sixties.

Lindsay Caplan (40:01):
Jacopo, can I ask you because you don't write
about technology, if if you'venoticed especially in the kind
of field of Italian politicaltheory, if you've noticed these
metaphors, you know, because alot of strands of kind of more
recent writing by Franco Berardiand Hart and Negri do use these
metaphors? I'm wondering if youhave a take on the technological

(40:22):
and the theoretical.

Jacopo Galimberti (40:24):
Well, you know, the most interesting,
Marxist trend to emerge is inthe June, my view, is operasmo
or also known as, world tourism.And it was extremely
technophile. It was extremelytechnophile also because Italian
culture, including leftistculture, often flirted with some

(40:46):
sort of leftist pastoralism. Youknow? Think of Pasolini's
central view of these, you know,dilapidated suburbs or of the so
called Third Wall.
Italy, because of many reasons,the church and so on, the
Italian left often had this kindof very problematic vision of

(41:08):
rural life as being closer tothe human life, closer to
authentic being, in a in a way,a very Rousseauian, approach to
politics. So as a technophilepolitical group or movement,
Operismo was very, very keen in,these debates and and and

(41:29):
especially, my impression butI'm really not expert of of this
dimension. My impression wasthat what they call
technological scientificintelligence, which was
virtually a synonymous of theword intellectuals, was derived
from a German debate about newwhite collars in the sixties.

(41:53):
This is something that I mightneed to explore in the future.
But, anyway so intellectuals asbearers of technological
scientific view or culture.
And, really, they didn't make adifference between artists,
scientists, and, let's say,humanist intellectuals, if you
if you wanna put it like that.And this is very interesting

(42:15):
because it was more about theworking conditions and the
prestige of this conditionrather than, you know, the usual
division between manual andintellectual labor. So I think
you definitely have a goodinteresting angle to look at
also this kind of politicalstrength? What what was the
relationship to technology andand the metaphor? How often they

(42:38):
relied on this method?
I don't know really. Actually,Lindsay, I wanted to ask you
something about, again,technology and its social
connotations because I you know,of course, Italian society was
extremely sexist, and thesegroups were not very different
from mainstream society. And yetthe Tea Group included a female

(43:00):
artist, Gracia Varisco. So Iwonder whether you had a chance
to talk to her. I think she'sstill alive, but I might be
wrong.
And I wonder whether, you know,you could tell us a bit more
about her condition as a womanwithin this very virile
technical world.

Lindsay Caplan (43:19):
Thank you. I didn't get to speak to her.
There were a couple artists Idid get to interview, but not
her or Enzo Mari, which was wasa real I really feel like it was
a missed opportunity. But I alsothink that one of the things
that question raises is theextent to which I extent to
which I take interest in any ofthe artists as individuals or
kind of it's not really abiographical study which I think

(43:42):
is one of the reasons why Idon't have a real sense of
insight into her experience. Butyou're right she was included in
this movement but she doesn't asfar as I know go on to make
environments and I don't see herrepresented in a lot of the kind
of transcripts and cataloguesand writings of the new
tendencies.
So she is a bit of a specter forme and that's I don't know the
extent to which that is becauseof her gender or because of her

(44:05):
interests or her investments. Idon't really know. But I think
that the other thing yourquestion reminds me is that the
world in which they existed waslargely art and design, not the
big corporations. I mean,Olavezzi, of course, sponsors
the Arti Programmaticexhibition, but the kind of work
world was one of art school,design school, and then
exhibitions, and that was notthe kind of big technical

(44:29):
engineering corporations at all.

Jacopo Galimberti (44:32):
To be honest, I think it's even more
interesting because this isclearly an artist working before
the feminist movement. And Ithink female identity is not
problematized, not by her in thefirst place. And I think, yeah,
I mean, maybe this kind ofobjective, rational world,
rigorous analysis that you'retrying to convey may have

(44:53):
facilitated, integration.

Lindsay Caplan (44:56):
Yeah. One of the things I argue is deeply part of
Arte Programata is a critique ofmastery, you know, and a
dispersion of authorship. Callit what you want, I don't know
if I'd go as far to say it'sfeminist, but there is a
problematizing of the author andauthorship and mastery and
that's there across the board. Ido think it's interesting. Even

(45:17):
the people I did speak to, Imean the artist interview is an
interesting format because I didnot use a lot of the stuff we
talked about because again Iread the works kind of against
what the artists say about them.
Well, especially the the earlyArte Programmesse works and the
the Groupe OT works. They reallytalk about them in terms of
freedom, dispersing the creativeagency from the artist to the

(45:38):
audience, and they're they'requite enthusiastic about that.
And so for me to come along andsay, I see all of this also
about control and an anxietyabout dispersion and the
eradication of meaning, whichdoes come later in the
conversations they have about, Isay, clarity and communication.
And I find I find a lot ofevidence about that anxiety as
well. But the artists do talkabout the those early works

(45:59):
largely in terms of theirliberatory potential for the
audience and I do say somethingdifferent than that by reading
the work.
So I I take the artist'sexperience and their intentions
and their own voice with, withsome kind of historical
parenthesis, I would say.

Tina Rivers Ryan (46:15):
So one thing I realized we haven't done up
until this point is actuallygiven you an opportunity to walk
us through a close reading ofany of the work in the book. I
would love to hear the sort ofsummation from you on, you know,
what your argument is aroundsomething like Columbo's elastic
space, I'm not even gonnaattempt the Italian
pronunciation, Or, Ceske's andBoreani's experimental

(46:40):
environments. And not to, youknow, continually bring
everything back to thecontemporary, which I do think
is a problem with, you know,sort of mode of art historical
scholarship where in order forthings to be relevant, they must
speak to the contemporarymoment. It's like very, sort of
present, distant, chauvinisticin a way. Things can be
important simply because theyexisted or on different terms.
But thinking about some of theseenvironments in particular, I'm

(47:02):
just so desperate to ask you,like, what do you think about
Van Gogh light shows? And wereyou concerned at all writing a
book about, you know, ambientspatial environments that there
would be this profoundmisreading in a way where
you're, you know, oh, well, thisis a genealogy of, you know,
multimedia sort of likeimmersive digital environments
and light shows. And, you know,as your book was suggested

(47:23):
earlier, your work is reallyagainst a kind of misreading of
that work as being purely aboutoptical phenomena and
phenomenology. I wonder so Iguess it's sort of a two part
question. One is, like, can youjust maybe walk us through what
you think is the significance ofthese kinds of room sized
installations that are spatialand optical environments as well
as being something else perhaps?
And then also how you see themrelating to to the sort of,

(47:46):
like, recent surge of popularityof these kinds of spatial
environments that are thoroughlymediated by technology.

Lindsay Caplan (47:54):
Yes. Thank you. So I'll talk about Spazio
Elastico because I've seen itI've seen it, I think, at least
twice, and it's the cover too.

Tina Rivers Ryan (48:02):
And this is the work that's installed in
Rome? Yeah. At the GalleriaNazio della dei moderni
contemporary.

Lindsay Caplan (48:08):
This was a reconstruction, but I also saw
it. It was in the new museum,Ghost in the Machine show, and I
it was also, I think, when I sawit in Milan.

Tina Rivers Ryan (48:18):
I also saw it in both the new museum show and
Milan. So I am soup or sorry, inRome rather. So I am super
interested to get your take onit because I will totally admit
that I was just initially sooverjoyed to actually be
experiencing a historicalinstallation, with technology at
that scale. But I was just,like, ecstatic to be there and I

(48:39):
I, like, completely blew mycritical apparatus just because,
you know, I suggested with myearlier question, like, a lot of
time we only encounter theseartworks through documentation.
And so, yeah, I would love Iwish I could have seen that with
you, and so this is myopportunity to do that.

Lindsay Caplan (48:51):
Yeah. Thanks. It's, it is really fun. So you
enter through a small passagewayinto a a kind of room with this
grid of elastic white elasticstrings that are kind of
attached to these rotatingmotors that make the whole grid
kind of mutate and you can walkthrough it. It does it kind of
demarcates a path but becauseit's moving and also because

(49:14):
it's dark with black lights,your depth perception is totally
messed with so you can't alwayssee which of the lines is the
one that's actually demarcatingyour path and which is kind of
further behind or ahead of you.
And so you walk through it and,you know, I saw it in a very
crowded space where you kind offollow the people, that was a

(49:34):
little bit disorienting. Andwhen I saw it in Italy, and I
can't remember if it was Rome orMilan now, I was the only person
and so it was much moredisorienting. And so it it
messes with your ability to kindof navigate space, which again
can be fun, can be kind of funhousey, but also, spending time
with it and also feeling theextent to which your eyes don't

(49:55):
ever really adjust can be kindof disorienting. And I think
Columbo's environments areparticularly manipulative. He
has these sculptural objectskind of stairs that I've also
seen that are kind of fun towalk on but also kind of mess
with your, you know, you feellike you're on a boat and you
can't you can't really walkquite properly after you get off
of them.
So he he does these very subtlemovements that also really mean

(50:16):
that you start to doubt if whatyou're seeing is is an effect or
the reality of the materialaround you. So it's that tension
between your kind of freedom insome ways to navigate space but
also your reliance oninformation coming from the
environment and the extent towhich you can't quite trust that
that really, I think, puts youas a viewer between a sense of

(50:37):
empowerment and alsomanipulability. And the other
thing that about a lot of theseworks and this work in
particular does this is youdon't I don't feel like a body.
I feel like an eye because it'sdark. And so I'm feeling that my
eyes are doing a lot of work,and my eyes are kind of driving
my body through this space.
And the other so the other thingis that these are to some degree

(50:59):
immersive, phenomenological, butthey are very optical and they
play with light so that you feelattacked, but largely through
the kind of porosity of youreyes. And the after and
especially with ones that usespotlights, the ways in which
your eye kind of the light staysas an after image for longer
than it is actually shining. Soit can really mess with your
perception. That's my closereading of the work of how it

(51:23):
creates this kind of sense ofyourself and also again as
empowered and also manipulatedand I think that in terms of
seeing this as a pre history tokind of interactive spectacular
art, I get that question.They're like but this is just
spectacle that's the word peoplelike to use And I'm interested
in that word because they'rebeautiful, they're abstract, and

(51:43):
that often means spectacle.
But, of course, Giedebourd, whenhe writes the Society of the
Spectacle, he says it's a socialrelation. So insofar as I saw
the program as a set ofrelationships, I thank him.
Thank you. And I take mytraining in sociology as much as
art history to see it as a setof social relationships and not
just an aesthetic. So that's myanswer to that is that it's a

(52:05):
misnomer.
It describes something. Itdoesn't analyze how it positions
you. But I also think here iswhere the technological and the
historical are so importantlyconnected because our image
economy and our sensory economyand our attention economy are so
different that these kind of newforms, I have not seen the Van
Gogh. These new forms have to beunderstood in relationship to

(52:27):
that. And and again, taken Ithink with deep specificity.
So I haven't seen the Van Gogh,but I do really like immersive
environments. And I'm interestedin, for example, the kind of
spectacular popularity ofKusama. So a lot of Yayoi
Kusama's work are very similar.They use mirrors. They use
light.
A lot of her infinity rooms do asimilar thing even on more

(52:48):
advanced scales. And can weread, you know, what they mean
now as opposed to what they meanthen? I don't have, I think, the
most brilliant answer to thisright now. But, I think that's
of interest to me, and I thinkher meaning now is quite
different than it was then.There's a lot of parallels
actually with her environmentsand some of the works I'm
looking at.
I'm not initially going to shootdown works that address us

(53:10):
through abstraction, throughimmersion, and through beauty as
de facto spectacle. I'll saythat. That's one thing I kind of
pause to think more criticallyabout. Especially, I tend to
like works that are aggressivetowards the viewer. I like
difficult works that demand bothkind of long thoughts and, you
know, close looking.

(53:31):
So, I'm a geek like that.

Tina Rivers Ryan (53:33):
And I I think your your scholarship and your
comments are both sort ofinvaluable reminders that we
can't evaluate these strategiesin a historical vacuum. Right?
Like, I remember reading David eJames writing about the
strategies of avant garde cinemaand how those strategies, twenty
years later, became the visuallanguage of MTV. Right? So that
strategies continually get coopted.

(53:54):
So when you refer to, like, whatKusama's work might have meant
then versus what it means now,right? Part of what happens with
avant garde artistic strategiesis that they then actually wind
up filtering into a kind ofmainstream or get co opted and
wind up having very differenteffects and meaning as time goes
on. And so I think, it's justnice, like, you know, throughout

(54:15):
this conversation and also inthe book, this insistence on a
kind of historical grounding,right, and understanding that
the way these strategies like,the the to walk into a
disorienting space mediated bytechnology in, like, 1968 is
very different than walking intoone in 2022. Right? Simply
because it's a differenthistorical moment and we become
sort of like accommodated or orprogrammed, by different kinds

(54:37):
of technologies and socialrelations in the intervening
years.

Lindsay Caplan (54:41):
Definitely. And I'm interested or I kind of
hesitant to do the kind of arthistorical reading that reads
things through their co optationand kind of reads the history as
a steady march towards it had tobe this way because I don't
think that's good history and Idon't think that's the way
things work and one of thethings that I think a kind of
historical study, I mean,history as such can do is begin

(55:02):
to say, like, this was imaginedotherwise. It didn't have to
become complicit with thesestructures or or or come to mean
this thing. In many ways, thequestion that motivated again
this whole project was this didnot fit into the concepts I had
to understand both art andpolitics at the time and, like,
what was politically expedient.So it wasn't so much my job, I
felt, to go back and say, did itwork?

(55:23):
Was it right? Did it do what itsaid it did or something like
that? But to rather ask, like,how was it? What were the
conditions? And with this whenwhich this was not just
artistically, but politicallydesirable work to make?
And what does that tell us aboutthe, again, the kind of
motivating imaginary, politicalimaginary, but also, like, not
just their goals, but also theconcepts and their methods,

(55:46):
which I do think have more kindof staying power. Thank you so
much Tina and Yakupo for joiningme. It's been so great talking
to you and hearing your thoughtsabout the book.

Jacopo Galimberti (55:57):
Thank you Lindsay.

Tina Rivers Ryan (55:58):
Likewise. Congratulations. Thanks.