Article ID: CBB545754371

Art Out of Order: Jack Burnham, the 1970 Software Show, and the Aesthetics of Information Systems (2022)

unapi

In 1970, curator Jack Burnham debuted the lavish exhibition Software at the Jewish Museum in New York. Conceptual artists displayed information-oriented pieces, while technical experts deployed computers, image-making, and multimedia technology in their works. Burnham's goal was to showcase contemporary techniques of computer-based command and control, allowing viewers to respond in real time to the "programmatic situations" artists presented. While critics dismissed Software as a technical and aesthetic disaster, today it stands as a touchstone for efforts to integrate technology with artmaking. This article takes us back to Software's gallery spaces and Burnham's aim of showcasing the potential of interactivity and "real-time systems." More broadly, it situates Software as a provocation to a public unfamiliar with computer technology yet at the threshold of a new postindustrial era, where the power and performative aspects of computing would predominate.

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Authors & Contributors
Betsy Fahlman
Gabriella Giannachi
James R. Kieselburg
Brook T. Amos
Anne Cannon Palumbo
Charles L. Amos
Concepts
Technology and art
Artists
Industrial archaeology
Computers and computing
Cybernetics
Art of Industry
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
China
Pennsylvania (U.S.)
Chile
Great Britain
Institutions
The Museum of Modern Art
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