Text 7A3-I

As a science fiction writer, Octavia Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. The future she wrote about is now our present moment. She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She is also, increasingly, a writer recognized as one of the most important voices and visionaries of the 20^th century, and now the 21^st. As a Black woman and a writer, Butler demolished walls that seemed impermeable, writing on themes that seemed uncategorizable. Her ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.

Her vision about the climate crisis, political and societal upheaval and the brutality and consequences of power hierarchies seems both sobering and prescient. However, as Butler often noted, being right was never the point. She didn’t want to be right — far from it. She wanted to give us time, and tools, to correct the course.

Lynell George. The Visions of Octavia Butler. Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).

Text 7A3-I

As a science fiction writer, Octavia Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. The future she wrote about is now our present moment. She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She is also, increasingly, a writer recognized as one of the most important voices and visionaries of the 20^th century, and now the 21^st. As a Black woman and a writer, Butler demolished walls that seemed impermeable, writing on themes that seemed uncategorizable. Her ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.

Her vision about the climate crisis, political and societal upheaval and the brutality and consequences of power hierarchies seems both sobering and prescient. However, as Butler often noted, being right was never the point. She didn’t want to be right — far from it. She wanted to give us time, and tools, to correct the course.

Lynell George. The Visions of Octavia Butler. Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).

Text 7A3-I

As a science fiction writer, Octavia Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. The future she wrote about is now our present moment. She wrote 12 novels and won each of science fiction’s highest honors. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She is also, increasingly, a writer recognized as one of the most important voices and visionaries of the 20^th century, and now the 21^st. As a Black woman and a writer, Butler demolished walls that seemed impermeable, writing on themes that seemed uncategorizable. Her ideas and characters continue to resonate with new readers when so many are looking for, if not hope, then a map for a way forward.

Her vision about the climate crisis, political and societal upheaval and the brutality and consequences of power hierarchies seems both sobering and prescient. However, as Butler often noted, being right was never the point. She didn’t want to be right — far from it. She wanted to give us time, and tools, to correct the course.

Lynell George. The Visions of Octavia Butler. Internet: <www.nytimes.com> (adapted).

Text 7A2-II

In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.

I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.

As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).

Text 7A2-II

In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.

I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.

As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).

Text 7A2-II

In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.

I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.

As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).

Text 7A2-I

If we believe that our own information age is defined by the digital structures of electronic communication, we must take early modern culture as inextricably bound to the medium of print. Printed text and image arose within a few years of each other in the mid-fifteenth century, credited to the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who seemingly drew together a series of extant yet disparate technologies into a new machine that could print several thousand sheets a day. The ancient oil or wine press, the goldsmith’s craft in fine metal carving, the late-medieval development of plentiful rag paper, and the recent formulation of more stable oil-based inks enabled Gutenberg’s ‘revolution’.

Similarly, early photography developed from a coming together of two otherwise disparate technologies: on the one hand, the pinhole camera through which capture a refected view of the world as an image, and on the other the chemical means to fix the effects of light exposure on paper. In both cases, these technologies shared aesthetic resources with other media available at the time, while also producing forms of representation that were uniquely theirs, and which offered access to new ways of seeing, and enabled new forms of subjectivity. The greatly expanded flow of visual information facilitated by these technological breakthroughs worked to quicken the circulation of knowledge, and the foundations of thought itself.

Genevieve Warwick and Richard Taws. After Prometheus:

Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. In:

Art History – Journal of the Association of Art Historians.

Special Edition: Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. p. 201 (adapted)

Text 7A2-I

If we believe that our own information age is defined by the digital structures of electronic communication, we must take early modern culture as inextricably bound to the medium of print. Printed text and image arose within a few years of each other in the mid-fifteenth century, credited to the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg, who seemingly drew together a series of extant yet disparate technologies into a new machine that could print several thousand sheets a day. The ancient oil or wine press, the goldsmith’s craft in fine metal carving, the late-medieval development of plentiful rag paper, and the recent formulation of more stable oil-based inks enabled Gutenberg’s ‘revolution’.

Similarly, early photography developed from a coming together of two otherwise disparate technologies: on the one hand, the pinhole camera through which capture a refected view of the world as an image, and on the other the chemical means to fix the effects of light exposure on paper. In both cases, these technologies shared aesthetic resources with other media available at the time, while also producing forms of representation that were uniquely theirs, and which offered access to new ways of seeing, and enabled new forms of subjectivity. The greatly expanded flow of visual information facilitated by these technological breakthroughs worked to quicken the circulation of knowledge, and the foundations of thought itself.

Genevieve Warwick and Richard Taws. After Prometheus:

Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. In:

Art History – Journal of the Association of Art Historians.

Special Edition: Art and Technology in Early Modern Europe. p. 201 (adapted)