[spectre] From one London to another ...

[Vera Frenkel]

Dear Friends and Colleagues,


Though still caught in the afterlife of Zoé Whitley’s “*Possessions” *at
*Frieze-London*, it seems that I’m about to show a project in the other
London  -- >  London, Ontario.

A two-channel version of *String Games:Improvisations for Inter-City Video
(Montréal-Toronto) 1974, *is being installed for the opening later this
week of  *Computational Arts in Canada, 1967-1974            *at the
McIntosh Gallery, the oldest university art gallery in Canada.

Curated by* Adam Lauder *and *Mark Hayward, *the exhibition will run from
November 5th to December 12th, 2020, and the catalogue is at press.
Appointments
to visit the exhibition can be booked online at
https://mcintoshgallery.setmore.com/ and admission is free.

Sadly, McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.  Since I depend on a
walker, this means we’re unlikely to meet there.  Nevertheless, it promises
to be a wide-ranging exhibition of considerable interest and well worth a
visit.  Inquiries are welcome at:  mcintoshgallery at uwo.ca

*McIntosh Gallery*  / *1151 Richmond Street N.*  /  *London, **ON,* *N6A
3K7*


>From the curators’ statement:

*Computational Arts in Canada 1967-1974*

The first historical survey of Canada’s rich contributions to
first-generation computer art, *Computational Arts in Canada 1967-1974*
assembles an impressive array of animated films, videos, plotter drawings,
digital paintings, computer-generated silk-screen prints, and interactive
teletype printouts capturing the remarkable diversity of activity during
this period of creative ferment and technical innovation. The exhibition
shines a light on ground-breaking computer visualizations as well as
language-based experiments by Greg Curnoe and the Vancouver-based
conceptual enterprise N.E. Thing Co. Ltd.   Curnoe’s *Computer Journals*
and the work of experimental filmmaker (and Western University emeritus
professor) Alexander Keewatin (“Kee”) Dewdney firmly anchor broader
histories in a London, Ontario context by highlighting the
interdisciplinary collaborations between artists and researchers
facilitated by Western’s Department of Computer Science under the visionary
leadership of former chair John Hart. *Computational Arts in Canada* also
illuminates the achievements of women artists in this historically
male-dominated field, including Suzanne Duquet—a long-time UQÀM professor
of painting who made repeated visits to Western as an
artist-in-residence—and the multidisciplinary Web art innovator Vera
Frenkel.


Rarely exhibited, foundational computer drawings by former University of
Toronto computer science professor Leslie Mezei and French artist Roger
Vilder (active in Montréal during the 1960s and 1970s) showcase the formal
dazzle, occasional humour and even eroticism that resulted from artists’
earliest experiments in computer graphics. Their work also draws attention
to artists’ embeddedness within global networks of research and creative
collaboration. This opening onto the world is brought into arresting
visibility by *Art Ex Machina*, a suite of computer-generated silk-screen
prints by an international roster of artists, including Frieder Nake and
Hiroshi Kawano, published by Montréal artist and gallerist Gilles
Gheerbrant in 1972. Based on animations that she programmed during extended
summertime stints with Western’s Department of Computer Science in the
early 1970s, Duquet’s computer paintings translate machine logics into a
highly personal vision. Documents drawn from Duquet’s archive record every
step in her creative process—from program to painting—offering rare
insights into the materiality of early digital art.



Not limited to works generated by computer, *Computational Arts in Canada*
features artists who engaged with computation in an expanded sense.
Although predating his tenure with Western’s Department of Computer
Science, Dewdney’s *The Maltese Cross Movement* (1967) narrates the
technics of machine visualization. Frenkel’s pioneering series of
teleconferencing performances, *String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City
Video* (1974), straddles materiality and metaphor in enacting a
computational frame, one that clears a path for our contemporary world of
social media and planetary connectivity.
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