Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018
Sept 28, 2018–Apr 14, 2019
Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 establishes connections between works of art based on instructions, spanning over fifty years of conceptual, video, and computational art. The pieces in the exhibition are all “programmed” using instructions, sets of rules, and code, but they also address the use of programming in their creation. The exhibition links two strands of artistic exploration: the first examines the program as instructions, rules, and algorithms with a focus on conceptual art practices and their emphasis on ideas as the driving force behind the art; the second strand engages with the use of instructions and algorithms to manipulate the TV program, its apparatus, and signals or image sequences. Featuring works drawn from the Whitney’s collection, Programmed looks back at predecessors of computational art and shows how the ideas addressed in those earlier works have evolved in contemporary artistic practices. At a time when our world is increasingly driven by automated systems, Programmed traces how rules and instructions in art have both responded to and been shaped by technologies, resulting in profound changes to our image culture.
The exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of Digital Art, and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research, with Clémence White, curatorial assistant.
Please be warned this exhibition includes video and projection with a flashing light effect.
Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 is sponsored by Audi
Major support is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Generous support is provided by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, the Korea Foundation and the Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Hearst.
In-kind support is provided by the Hakuta Family.
Signal, Sequence, Resolution:
Image Resequenced
4
Several of the “programmed” works here reflect on how rules and code are used to rearrange images. Nam June Paik’s massive wall of televisions, Fin de Siècle II, for example, choreographs music videos and “dissolves” the television program into combinations of dancing patterns, providing a different framework to understand broadcasting. Other works resequence images while engaging with such varied subject matter as image processing, interactive storytelling, and political commentary. Steina’s multichannel video installation Mynd investigates the aesthetic effects of software processing, while Lynn Hershman Leeson’s interactive installation Lorna prompts visitors to navigate a branching narrative with multiple endings and the two works from Barbara Lattanzi’s series C-Span x 4 annotate news reportage with subtitles borrowed from a political sci-fi film or karaoke-format song lyrics.
Lillian Schwartz, Newtonian I, 1978
Lillian Schwartz made these pioneering computer generated films at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where she was artist-in-residence from 1969 to 2002.
In Newtonian I Lillian Schwartz draws upon mathematical systems to create the illusion of three-dimensional images. Schwartz was interested in the unpredictability of the macro language systems used to create this films, which generated unexpected forms by randomly selecting the areas and shapes into which they would grow.
Events
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Sat,
May 11Ethics of Looking
4:30 pm
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Sat,
May 4Ethics of Looking
4:30 pm
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Sat,
Apr 27Ethics of Looking
4:30 pm
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Sat,
Apr 6Whitney Signs: Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018
4–6 pm
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Thurs,
Mar 28Member Night
7:30–10 pm
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Fri,
Mar 22Verbal Description and Touch Tour: Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018
10–11:30 am
Essay
![](https://whitneymedia.org/assets/image/821894/large_WMAA_PROGRAMMED_15_SM.jpg)
Histories of the Digital Now
By Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of digital art
Walk into any given gallery or museum today, and one will presumably encounter work that used digital technologies as a tool at some point in its production, whether videos that were filmed and edited using digital cameras and post-production software, sculptures designed using computer-aided design, or photographs as digital prints, to name just a few examples.
Audio guides
“The hope was for me as an artist to lose control, and to have my control exist at the level of setting up the experiment.” —Ian Cheng
Hear directly from artists and curators on selected works from Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018.
Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection
View 61 works
In the News
"How Artists Made Code Their Paintbrush"
—Science Friday
"Tamiko Thiel’s 'Unexpected Growth' is an augmented reality installation on the future of oceans and climate change."
—Hyperallergic
"The exhibit uses the Whitney’s own collection to explore how computational art has evolved and changed over the decades based on technology."
—Smithsonian
"Is a particularly urgent, relevant exhibition and a perfect setting in which to consider some of the most pressing questions of our time.”
—Sotheby’s Museum Network
"Programmed explores the limits of code-based art, looking at past generations of computational art and illustrating how the ideas of earlier works have developed to form new contemporary styles.”
—SVA NYC
“From early mathematical works, to Generative art, to digital art in a variety of media, the works in Programmed take many forms.”
—Art and Object
"Artists play and experiment with algorithms and technology, working within limits but achieving effects greater than the sum of their codes or instructions. The duality at play in this exhibition is as separable as the wave and particle natures of light. To recognize only one explanation would be reductive; to see both is beautiful.”
—Scientific American
“Paik captured both the allure and the futility of following events that happen so quickly they don't register before they're outdated.”
—Forbes