01/03/2025
The Earl of Clancarty reviews 'Electric Dreams' at the Tate Modern, London, 27 February 2025.
"This Tate Modern exhibition examining how art engaged with science, technology and material innovation before the age of the internet is a topical, Proustian assault on the senses
With the topicality of Artificial Intelligence, now is a good moment to look at how art has responded to and engaged with technology. The current exhibition at the Tate Modern, Electric Dreams, does precisely this in a survey that spans a period from the late 50s to the early 90s, just before the internet took off."
"The final piece in the exhibition, Liquid Views – Narcissus’ Digital Reflections (1992-3) by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, poses helpful questions about the use of technology. You peer into a small screen below you and appear on a big screen on the wall as a face in a stream. To get the sense of what Narcissus was about, you could look into a real stream and see your own reflection in nature. But here the personal becomes something that can be viewed by anyone. Both, then, the benefit and curse of our contemporary digital lives."
Here is the impressive line-up of artists in the show: Rebecca Allen, Marina Apollonio, Manuel Barbadillo, Alberto Biasi, Vladimir Bonačić, Davide Boriani, Martha Boto, Pol Bury, Harold Cohen, Analivia Cordeiro, Waldemar Cordeiro, Carlos Cruz-Diez,
Charles Csuri, Computer Technique Group, Dadamaino, Atul Desai, Lucia Di Luciano, Ivan Dryer and Elsa Garmire, E.A.T., Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Herbert W. Franke, Brion Gysin, Samia Halaby, Desmond Paul Henry, Hervé Huitric and Monique Nahas, Edward Ihnatowicz, Eduardo Kac, Hiroshi Kawano, Ben Laposky, Julio Le Parc, Ruth Leavitt, Liliane Lijn, Heinz Mack, Robert Mallary, Mary Martin, Almir Mavignier, Gustav Metzger, David Medalla, Tatsuo Miyajima, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, François Morellet, Tomislav Mikulić, Fujiko Nakaya, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, Akbar Padamsee, Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, Ivan Picelj, Otto Piene, Günther Uecker, Paolo Scheggi, Lillian F. Schwartz, Sonia Landy Sheridan, Aleksandar Srnec, Jesús Rafael Soto, Vera Spencer, Takis, Atsuko Tanaka, Jean Tinguely, Franciszka Themerson, Suzanne Treister, Wen-Ying Tsai
This Tate Modern exhibition examining how art engaged with science, technology and material innovation before the age of the internet is a topical,...
