In 2016 you’d be hard-pressed to find artists working in any medium who don’t consider the role of technology in their work. But the history of artists’ response to technological innovation has gone underexplored. “From Minimalism into Algorithm,” an ambitious program at the Kitchen unfolding over the 2015-16 season, considers the roles of seriality, speculation and networked communication in art from the 1960s to the present. A slate of performances and one exhibition unfolding in three parts (on view Jan. 8-30, Feb. 4-27 and Mar. 3-Apr. 2) consider the past half-century of art through this algorithmic lens. Spanning from static objects to the digital and performing genres, the ambitious program includes over 50 artists, who helped organize the program along with the Kitchen’s curatorial staff.
EPPLEY: One striking work in the show is the Mary Lucier installation, which is a conglomerate of materials and sounds belonging to the late composer Robert Ashley, including the recorded composition Automatic Writing (1979). This is a seminal work of experimental music, but again it is rarely discussed in an explicitly art historical context. There is a moment in the composition, which you can listen to in the installation, when you actually hear music from Ashley’s neighbor, or some contiguous room, bleed into the recording. The intrusion evokes an ecology.
