Machine-inspired art can seem like a relatively recent phenomena, spurred on by the rise of artificial intelligence, yet a new exhibition reveals how it has been transforming the creative world for far longer.
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet at London’s Tate Modern, showcases more than 150 artworks produced between 1950 and the 1990s and examines how rapidly advancing technology and science might affect how we live. “This is a historical exhibition about the relationship between art and technology,” says exhibition curator Val Ravaglia. It is about “the way that artists chose to experiment with and collaborate with machines and scientific ways of thinking."
The societal impacts and corresponding artworks are wide-ranging — from how we perceive the world, explored in the form of optical art and dazzling illusions, to how we decide what constitutes art itself, with early experiments using programmed and algorithmic art, a past echo of today’s debates about AI-generated art.
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet is open until l June 2025 at Tate Modern, London.