Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet

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Tate Modern exhibition: 28 November 2024 - 1 June 2025
Discover how artists used machines and algorithms to create mesmerising and mind-bending art between the 1950s and the early 1990s.

From collaged punch cards to early experiments with virtual reality, artists have found inspiration in technology to invent new forms and new ways to engage the senses.

Bringing together works by groundbreaking artists from across Asia, Europe and the Americas, Electric Dreams celebrates the innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who imagined the visual languages of the future through immersive, responsive and automatically generated works. Their circuits of connections and creativity, of new thinking and tinkering are illuminated here through the perspectives of artists, curators and art historians. Hundreds of illustrations of intriguing and often stunningly beautiful artworks are accompanied by newly researched archival images, casting fresh light on this extraordinary period.

From Rebecca Allen to Edward Zajec, from Katsuhiro Yamaguchi to Suzanne Treister, these artists were unafraid to push boundaries. They redefined what art can be, channelling how electronics and computation radically transformed everyday life before the dawn of the internet age.

Author Bio

Val Ravaglia is Curator, Displays & International Art at Tate Modern, London. Sarah Cook is Professor of Museum Studies at the College of Arts and Humanities, University of Glasgow. Carlos Cruz-Delgado is the son of the artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Chief Executive of the Cruz-Diez Foundation. Bronac Ferran is a writer, curator and researcher based in London. Darko Fritz is an artist, independent curator, researcher and graphic designer based in Zagreb, Croatia. Nina Horisaki-Christens is an art historian, writer, editor, translator and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Tina Rivers Ryan is a curator, researcher, author, editor and art historian. Ming Tiampo is a Canadian curator, professor of art history and director of the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Suzanne Treister is a British contemporary artist based in London. Her works are known for being conceptually oriented around emerging technologies. Kira Wainstein is Research Assistant at Tate Modern, London. Odessa Warren is Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, London.