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.

       

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Rule, Instruction, Algorithm:
Ideas as Form

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Artists have long used instructions and abstract concepts to produce their work, employing mathematical principles, creating thought diagrams, or establishing rules for variations of color. Conceptual art—a movement that began in the late 1960s—went a step further, explicitly emphasizing the idea as the driving force behind the form of the work. In his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” (1967), Sol LeWitt wrote: “The plan would design the work. Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity.” The works in this grouping—from Sol LeWitt’s large-scale wall drawing and Josef Albers’s series of nesting colored squares and rectangles to Lucinda Childs’s dances and Joan Truckenbrod’s computer drawings—all directly address the rules and instructions used in their creation. Essential to each is an underlying system that allows the artist to generate variable images and objects.

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John F. Simon Jr., Color Panel v1.0, 1999

A software panel on a white board.
A software panel on a white board.

John F. Simon Jr., Color Panel v1.0, 1999. Software, altered Apple Macintosh Powerbook 280c, and plastic, 13 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 3 in. (34.3 x 26.7 x 7.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 99.88a-c. © 1999 John F. Simon Jr.

Color Panel v1.0 is a piece of software art displayed on components of a laptop computer modified by the artist, John F. Simon Jr. The software “controls the screen, draws the composition, picks the colors, [and] moves the colors,” producing constantly evolving compositions of squares and rectangles that deliberately evoke early modernist geometric abstraction. Simon cites the influence of Josef Albers and Johannes Itten, who investigated the apparent changes in hue caused by placing different colors next to one another. Simon addresses the same principles through software that explores color mixing in motion and over time. In each section of the screen, the software chooses from groups of possible color combinations without specifying the exact color to be picked. The color composition is therefore variable and open to chance; its sequences never repeat, progressing over a time frame that approaches eternity.

Artists

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Essay

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.

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Audio guides

TV screens stacked on top of each other with faces.
TV screens stacked on top of each other with faces.

Nam June Paik (1932-2006), Fin de Siècle II, 1989. Seven-channel video installation (partially restored), 207 televisions, sound, 168 × 480 × 60 in. (426.7 × 1219.2 × 152.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith 93.139. © Nam June Paik Estate

“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.

View guide

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

On the Hour

A 30-second online art project:
Maya Man, A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City

Learn more about this project

Learn more at whitney.org/artport

On the Hour projects can contain motion and sound. To respect your accessibility settings autoplay is disabled.