[RARE INSCRIBED CATALOG BY THE BELGRADE COMPUTER ART PIONEER] Ivan Picelj: Jacques Baruch Gallery (.) January?February 1970. [Catalog]. ? With a handwritten dedication by the artist to Dunja Bla?evi? and Radomir Damnjanovi?

Picelj, Ivan (artist) and Abraham A. Moles (preface)

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Chicago: Jacques Baruch Gallery (printed in Zagreb by Grafi?ki Zavod Hrvatske), [1969]. Square octavo (21 ? 20 cm). Original glossy aluminum wrappers printed in black and embossed (designed by Ivan Picelj); [18] pp., 3 glassine leaves (two of them with millimeter squares) and a color screen print by Ivan Picelj, printed by Brano Horvat, Zagreb. Fragile wrappers, spine with minor abrasion; else about very good. Only edition of the rare catalog by the Belgrade pioneer of computer art. The title page with a handwritten dedication by the artist to art critic and curator Dunja Bla?evi? and intermedia artist Radomir Damnjanovi? (Damnjan). Picelj was one of the defining artists of the Zagreb-based movement ?New Tendencies? and one of the editors of ?Bit international? Even when the journal was founded, its aim was to establish the computing device, understood as a "thinking machine", as an artistic tool and medium. The members of "New Tendencies" placed themselves in a line of tradition with Concrete and Constructive Art, Bauhaus, Op Art, and Kinetic Art with its dynamic apparatuses. Based on the paradigm of interpreting fine art as "visual research", the Zagreb avant-gardists saw themselves as developers of a programmed art that was ultimately generated or controlled by computers. In other words: In Zagreb, intensive thought was already being given to the possibility of AI art in the 1960s. The Zagreb Group's interest in computers was sparked in no small part by French cyberneticist Abraham Moles, who, alongside Max Bense, was one of the theoretical pioneers of ?information aesthetics.? His lecture at a symposium accompanying the third ?New Tendencies? exhibition was decisive in choosing ?Computers and Visual Research? as the theme for the fourth exhibition. The poster for this was designed by Ivan Picelj, who based it on the aesthetics of punched tape. At the same time, the group also began publishing ?Bit international? (On this and the following: Darko Fritz. Vladimir Bona?i?: Computer-Generated Works Made within Zagreb?s New Tendencies Network. 1961?1973, in: Leonardo, vol. 41, no. 2, April 2008, pp. 175-183.) Picelj not only designed the iconic poster for the fourth exhibition, but also developed an installation together with cybernetics researcher Vladimir Bona?i? The aim was to make mathematical relationships and logical processes that are hidden inside the computing machine visually tangible. Together, they developed a grid consisting of light cells controlled by an electronic control unit. Bona?i? wrote a program that converted mathematical data into binary forms, i.e., into a sequence of signals of light turning on and off, which ultimately produced a continuously changing light pattern on the grid of numerous light elements. Picelj designed the aesthetic and spatial framework for this, such as the housing, the placement of the light fields, and the architectural integration into the exhibition space. Since that time Ivan Picelj has been intensively engaged with the surfaces of contemporary computer technology, which he translates into graphic systems. His inspiration came from perforated circuit boards, processors, and chip wafers. His compositional principles were grids, rasters, symmetry, and asymmetry, whereby he experimented with methods of serial arrangement, modularity, progression, and regression. (cf. Steffen Stolz, in: AKL XCV, 406.) Moles, one of the central thinkers in computer art, writes in the introduction to the catalog: "The greater part of Picelj's geometrical work rests upon a structural algorithm. The chosen elementary permutational play following the algorithm (mental rule preceding an operation) is freely created by the artist, which will determine the supersigns of the work: signs composed of recognizable elements which the public will single out in the finished work and which will help him to understand it by constituting the intermediate stages of the 'perceptive integration': In many of his works. N° de réf. du vendeur 55399

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Titre : [RARE INSCRIBED CATALOG BY THE BELGRADE ...
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