REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art

Many issues that artists engaged with between 1960 and 2000 surrounding the functioning of new technology and media, including computers and computer networks, offer renewed inspiration for the conversation around social issues today. The imagination with which digital pioneers explored the artistic possibilities and possible social consequences offered by computers is linked to the ways we imagine society today. Their active, independent mindset can help us think about how we want to shape the future. The exhibition is arranged along a number of threads of key works and contemporary artists' responses. In four storylines, they collectively narrate system critique, online identity, human-machine collaborations and the aesthetics of computers and technology.

Featuring key works by Annie Abrahams, Livinus and Jeep van de Bundt, Driessens & Verstappen, Edward Ihnatowicz, JODI, Bas van Koolwijk, Lancel/Maat, Jan Robert Leegte, Yvonne Le Grand, Peter Luining, Martine Neddam, Marnix de Nijs and Edwin van der Heide, Dick Raaijmakers, Joost Rekveld, Remko Scha, Jeffrey Shaw, Steina, Peter Struycken, Michel Waisvisz and with contemporary responses by Janilda Bartolomeu, Cihad Caner, Dries Depoorter, Swendeline Ersilia, Ali Eslami, Jonas Lund, Luna Maurer and Roel Wouters, Play the City and Brui5er.

The static approach of many traditional museum presentations is not well suited to the field of digital culture and technology. After all, since the introduction of computers and networks, these have permanently influenced every facet of our lives. "When you 'reboot' a computer system or programme, you shut it down, switch it off for a while and then restart it shortly afterwards, to start all over again. So, with REBOOT, the New Institute and LI-MA explicitly want to show an ongoing, living history of digital art and culture," according to initiators and curators Sanneke Huisman of LI-MA and Klaas Kuitenbrouwer of the Nieuwe Instituut. It is more than a retrospective and the exhibition reflects the importance of process in media art.

To make the changing dynamics between digital technologies and society visible and palpable, the curators have created a dialogue between then and now in the form of a relaunch. The selected key works of art not only say something about the period in which they were made, but also constantly acquire - and provide - new meanings over time. How to present historical media artworks in an appealing way in this day and age, they ask themselves. They have had to make choices in view of both the changing technology that is rapidly overtaking carriers and equipment and the visitor experience, which is now fundamentally different from a time when 'the digital' was still new. In specially created works-in-commission, selected makers respond from a contemporary social perspective to the DIY network culture that has unfolded since the 1960s.

The key works are quite varied. They include colourful abstract video and sound paintings such as Moiré, with which video art pioneer Livinus van de Bundt and his son Jeep searched for the extreme 'painterly' possibilities of a new medium back in the 1970s - they had to build the then unprecedented image synthesisers themselves - but also Dick Raaijmakers' large-scale loudspeaker installation Ideofoon, which, like a sound robot caught in a feedback loop, composed its own, unintentionally increasingly destructive input.

You will also find the algorithmic sculpture Breed by Driessens & Verstappen, which generates new sculptures according to a programmed cell division, and the online performances with which Debra Solomon, in her alter ego the_living, created a digital personality for the then-new fully networked 'living environment' of the internet. Digital art in the exhibition ranges from Annie Abrahams' exploration of the consequences of digital communication for our identity and humanity to Jan Robert Leegte's Scrollbar Composition that turned the internet into a gallery space and elevated the user interface of web browsers into an alternative form of online sculpture.

The curators describe their choice of creators of contemporary responses as follows: "The artistic questions of that period are the social questions of today. That's how we summarise the project. The early expectations of what a computer could do, what networks could do for society and how to be creative in your collaboration with machines or programmes; these are all questions we still recognise decades later, but on a different scale. We can learn a lot from the independence with which artists once dealt with the rise of the digital, for example, if we want to detach ourselves from the power of big technology companies in the present day. 'The internet is broken, but we can fix it,' as internet expert and Waag director Marleen Stikker puts it."

"Meanwhile, the impact of digital culture extends far beyond digital art. You can see this in the reactions of contemporary creators who have drawn inspiration for new work from their historical predecessors. We deliberately chose to emphasize this enormous scope by inviting artists from unexpected disciplines. You don't immediately think of a krump dancer in a project about digital heritage, for instance. But by reversing the almost human shyness of robot sculpture The Senster and exploring how mechanically a human body can move, the performance of someone like brui5er makes you think about strength and vulnerability in the tension between human and machine.

Or consider the feedback from Raaijmakers' Ideophone, which generates its own input with increasingly violent sounds and gradually seems to herald its destruction. Which, through Jonas Lund's reaction, suddenly becomes a foreshadowing of the consequences of artificial intelligence that is only in dialogue with itself: from mechanical sound feedback to AI generating its own prompts. Peter Luining, with his designs for endless distraction, previewed the disruptive effects of contemporary social media algorithms that exploit the human need for interaction. In his response, Dries Depoorter contrasts this with a charging station in which users must actually cut themselves off from stimuli in order to charge their smartphones."

In the run-up to the opening of REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art, digital culture platform LI-MA, initiator and co-organiser of the exhibition, is already highlighting some of the key works that will be on show. From a reflection on Dick Raaijmakers' Ideophone I in collaboration with the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague to a re-coding of Artificial by Remko Scha in collaboration with Creative Coding Utrecht. With its public research and activity programme Digital Care, LI-MA explores what it means to collect, preserve and present digital art - both in the current context and with a view to the future.

Within this programme, caring for digital cultural heritage is a distinctly public and communal process. It involves collaboration with diverse artists, makers, theorists and audiences. Partner institutions play a prominent role: they increase the visibility and support of digital cultural heritage by reflecting on a key work in digital art related to their own practice, programming or history.

With Digital Care, LI-MA and the partners address pressing questions about preserving and exhibiting digital art. After all, how can you continue to present digital artworks now and in the future? What role do documentation and archives play in this? When do you use contemporary hardware and software to display older works and when can you not avoid the original equipment and programmes? Does a technological 'update' still do justice to the original art - or is a revision or adaptation in certain cases even the most appropriate way to do it justice?

The starting point of REBOOT and Digital Care is the research commissioned by LI-MA from digital art experts into the most important digital art of the late 20th century. The Digital Canon (1960-2000) lists the 20 most influential works by creators who were active in the Netherlands for an extended period of time. It is not a fixed or exhaustive overview but a conscious and careful reflection process that the initiators consider a form of activism. They problematise their own canon in advance. The exhibition continues that line and encourages the continuation of the debate that was initiated with the presentation of the canon. View the entire canon and read explanations on the selection process at digitalcanon.nl