Imagine being in Italy in the 1960s, a country growing at an exhilarating pace, the economy soaring, industry shining like never before, our brands conquering the world, and the world discovering the beauty of Made in Italy. These were the years when images of Mastroianni captured by Federico Fellini became symbols of the “bella vita” and beauty in general, when the Vespa became a symbol of freedom, and when Olivetti effectively invented the first home calculators, precursors to personal computers. It was precisely at the Olivetti headquarters in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan that the first exhibition of kinetic and programmed art was produced under the curatorship of Bruno Munari and Giorgio Soavi.
In an art world accustomed to figurative art or, at most, the emerging avant-garde movements, the exhibition on programmed art generated great curiosity, drawing appreciation from some and criticism from others. What was being proposed in this new and exciting context was a revolutionary conception of the artwork: “the open work.”
The concept of the “open work,” theorized by Umberto Eco in his eponymous 1962 essay, is essential for understanding kinetic and programmed art. Eco defined the open work as a piece of art that is neither finished nor definitive, but that requires the audience's interaction to be completed. This idea perfectly aligned with the intentions of kinetic and programmed artists, who designed works capable of evolving over time and responding to external stimuli. At the major Olivetti exhibition, these concepts seemed to create a new form of interaction with visitors, who, mesmerized, explored works by Boriani, Costa, Biasi, Colombo, and others.
The artists involved came from groups forming in Padua and Milan at the time, particularly the T group and the N group, with the MID group also deserving recognition, whose member Antonio Barrese remains an active figure in kinetic art today.
This new conception of the artwork marked a shift in a paradigm that had been largely immutable for centuries. The sacred dynamic between artwork and viewer was disrupted, giving rise to a perceptual dance in the process of experiencing creativity. Color, form, and space became subjective variables of the experiential context; the works were fresh and engaging as never before.
All around, the world was awakening from the fatigue and pain caused by global conflicts. Yet these remnants had sparked a strong desire for rebirth and an enthusiasm for science, which was exploring dazzling new horizons, and technology, which for the first time in human history was decisively entering everyday life, gradually transforming society and ultimately the way people lived. It is easy to see that in a world where televisions were slowly entering households, art, too, faced this wind of change, and artists were increasingly drawn to experiment with what new technologies had to offer.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, someone had the audacious and astonishing idea to disrupt the creative process, which until then had always been the domain of humans—from painting to sculpture, from collage to performance, man had always been the creator of art as it was known… until the first forms of generative art emerged. The idea was that the artwork could be produced by a machine, making the creative process essentially automatic, with the human role limited to setting up the machine prior to creation. Early generative art was largely connected to machines used in scientific research, and the first generative artists often came from scientific and laboratory backgrounds.
Art and science, which had long been at odds, thus reached a harmonious marriage: the creative and emotional human united with the rational and calculating human, producing a completely new form of art in which man was no longer the sole protagonist, but shared his glory with the technological element, the machine.
The 1960s were also crucial for the advent of tools that would become central in human history and life: computers. Computing triggered a new wave of technological development that, predictably, impacted all aspects of daily life, and unexpectedly influenced the art world, giving rise to new and exciting paths in generative art, where artists used computers to produce works of art, and the algorithms themselves became the protagonists.
Those passionate about art and technology may recall the first computer art experiments. The first name that comes to mind is the extraordinary Hungarian artist Vera Molnar, considered the first true computer artist in history. Of course, these early experiments, which did not stand out for expressive power or lyrical impact, did not generate widespread enthusiasm at the time, but they immediately caught the attention of pioneers in the new disciplines.
Over time, technology became increasingly flexible, malleable, and user-friendly. Initially, using these machines required access to labs and research centers, but gradually, the tools became more domestic, manageable, and affordable. Electrical circuits became electronic circuits, punched-card computers got their first hard drives, and generative artists’ algorithms grew increasingly sophisticated, producing visually pleasing outputs.
In this short span of decades, during which technological development became a central interpretive element of societal change, it is natural to observe how art was similarly influenced. Kinetic and programmed art, along with generative art, were two sides of the same coin, parallel narratives of a world increasingly centered on humanity—a sort of new technological Renaissance, seeking fresh forms of intellectual lyricism and creative storytelling, where humans and code embarked on a journey together.
The two art forms shared many elements: dynamism, the use of technology (kinetic art using physical and motor mechanisms, generative art using circuits, algorithms, and software), and the transformation of the artwork’s immaterial aspect.
Recent developments in art and technology have led to the emergence of a new form of computer-based art: digital art. With the advent of blockchain and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), digital art has entered a new phase. NFTs allow for the creation of unique, verifiable digital artworks that can be traded on decentralized platforms. This development has democratized art, enabling artists to sell directly to collectors without intermediaries. NFTs have found perfect synergy with generative art. Artists like Tyler Hobbs use algorithms to create unique works recorded as NFTs on the blockchain, combining generative art’s variability and uniqueness with blockchain’s traceability and ownership.
Looking at this journey as a whole, one can trace an ideal line connecting the first kinetic art experiments to the subsequent development of art intertwined with technology. Digital art represents the latest and perhaps most extreme manifestation, but the underlying approach remains the same: art is dynamic and mutable, linked to the perceptual laws of our daily life. Art is a trace of mystery flowing through the hidden codes of the physical world, from the orbit of an atom to the swift journey of a photon, to the silicon molecule, the primitive unit of digital substance.
Today, with the advent of AI technologies, these concepts have been pushed to their extreme. One now questions whether it even makes sense to speak of art when a machine creates a work. The creative capacity of algorithms is astonishing, and the creative process is increasingly moving away from mere imitation of human output. Humans program the machine, which programs the tool that produces the artwork—humans become the creators of creators.
In conclusion, from the perspective of a viewer experiencing this art, the indefinability of a work finds its counterpart in the surprise and amazement at the human capacity to discover and create ever-new forms of creativity. From the hunter resting his bow by the fire to the extreme and immaterial creativity of algorithms designed by programmers, one constant remains: man, the wise investigator of the world’s codes, as above, so below.
