Frank Popper

For the American professor, seeFrank J. Popper.

Frank Popper
Popper in 2006
Born	(1918-04-17)17 April 1918 Prague,Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic)
Died	12 July 2020(2020-07-12)(aged 102) Lugano,Canton of Ticino, Switzerland
Nationality	French and British
Alma mater	Paris-Sorbonne University
Known for	Historianofartandtechnology
Scientific career
Fields	Aesthetics and the science of art

Frank Popper(17 April 1918– 12 July 2020) was a Czech-born French-Britishhistorianofartandtechnologyand Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at theUniversity of Paris VIII.He was decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government.He is author of the booksOrigins and Development of Kinetic Art,Art, Action, and Participation,Art of the Electronic AgeandFrom Technological to Virtual Art.

Popper documented the historical record of the relationship between technology and participatory forms of art, especially between the late 1960s and the early 1990s.

Kinetic Art and Op Art

In his booksOrigins and Development of Kinetic ArtandArt, Action and Participation,Popper showed howKinetic Artplayed an important part in pioneering the unambiguous use of optical movement and in fashioning links between science, technology, art and the environment.Popper was a champion of the humanizing effects of such an interdisciplinary synthesis.

Key to his initial thinking and activities as anaesthetician,cultural theorist,curator,teacher andart criticwas his encounter in the early 1950s with the kinetic artist (and author of the bookConstructivism)George Rickey.He subsequently encountered the artistsNicolas SchofferandFrank Malina,whose works were based on first or second-hand scientific knowledge. AlsoOp Artin the early 1960s had a powerful effect on him. Indeed, Op proved to be a strong predecessor to what he was callingVirtual Artin that Op Art called attention to the spectator's individual, constructive, and changing perceptions - and thus called upon the spectator to transfer the creative act increasingly upon him or herself. Op beckons forth a consideration of the enlargement of the audience's participatory role; both in regard to theperceptionof meaning and actual physical changes to the work of art. Popper also had many personal encounters in Paris withGroupe de Recherche d’Art Visual,Carlos Cruz-Diez,Yaacov Agam,Jesus-Rafael SotoandVictor Vasarely,which proved to have had a substantial impact on his view of art andart history.

Virtual art

Following this inclination Popper took interest in the works ofPiotr Kowalski,Roy Ascottand many others working with the early concept ofnetworking.These artists confirmed his interest in spectator participation, which brought him to the late 1980s and the 1990s whenimmersive virtual realityanddigital artbegan to become established. Popper began to investigate a range of works emerging in this era, including those ofShawn Brixey,Ebon Fisher,andJoseph Nechvatal.To explain and illustrate the emergence of a techno-aesthetic Popper stressed the panoramic and multi-generational reach of virtual art. As regards to virtual art, openness is stressed both from the point of view of the artists and their creativity and from that of the follow-up users in their reciprocating thoughts and actions. This commitment to the teeming openness found in virtual art can be traced to the theories ofUmberto Ecoand other aestheticians. During his late career Eco expressed a consideration of the computer as a spiritual tool.

Popper used the term,virtual art,in reference to all the art made with the technical media developed at the end of the 1980s (or a bit before, in some cases). These include human-machine interfaces such as visualization casks,stereoscopicspectacles and screens, generators of three-dimensional sound, data gloves, data clothes, position sensors, tactile and power feed-back systems, etc. All these technologies allowed immersion into the image andinteractionwith it. The impression of reality felt under these conditions was not only provided by vision and hearing, but also by the other bodily senses. This multiple sensing was so intensely experienced at times, that Popper could speak of it as animmersive virtual reality(VR).

Frank Popper in 2008

In his 2006 bookFrom Technological to Virtual Art,Popper traced the development of immersive, interactive new media art from its historical antecedents throughdigital art,computer art,cybernetic art,multimediaandnet art.Popper showed that contemporary virtual art is a further refinement of thetechnologicalart of the late twentieth century - and also a departure from it. What is new about thisnew media art,he argued, is its humanization of technology, its emphasis oninteractivity,itsphilosophicalinvestigation of the real and thevirtual,and its multisensory nature.He argued further that what distinguishes the artists who practice virtual art from traditional artists is their combined commitment toaestheticsandtechnology.Their "extra-artistic" goals - linked to theiraestheticintentions - concern not onlyscienceandsocietybut also basic human needs and drives.

Definition

Defining virtual art broadly as art that allows us, through an interface withtechnology,to immerse ourselves incomputer artand interact with it, Popper identified an aesthetic-technological logic of creation that allows artistic expression through integration with technology. After describing artistic forerunners of virtual art from 1918 to 1983 - including art that used light, movement, andelectronics- Popper looked at contemporarynew media artforms and artists. He surveyed works that are digital based but materialized, multimedia offline works, interactive digital installations, and multimedia online works (net art) by many artists.

Virtual art, he argued, offers a new model for thinking about humanist values in a technological age. Virtual art, as Popper saw it, is more than just an injection of the usual aesthetic material into a newmedium,but a deep investigation into theontological,psychologicalandecologicalsignificance of such technologies. The aesthetic-technological relationship produces an unprecedented artform.

Sharing Popper's focus on art and technology areJack Burnham(Beyond Modern Sculpture1968) andGene Youngblood(Expanded Cinema1970). They show how art has become, in Popper's terms, virtualized.

Bibliography

• Origins and Development of Kinetic Art, New York Graphic Society/Studio Vista, 1968
• Kinetics, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1970
• Art—Action and Participation, New York University Press, 1975
• (in German)Die kinetische Kunst: Licht und Bewegung, Umweltkunst und Aktion, DuMont Schauberg, 1975
• (in French)Le déclin de l'objet, Le Chêne, 1975
• (in French)Art, action et participation: L'artiste et la creativité aujourd'hui, Klincksieck, 1980
• (in Spanish)Arte, Acción Y Participación: El Artista Y La Creatividad De Hoy, Akal Ediciones, 1989
• Agam, Harry N. Abrams, 1990
• Art of the Electronic Age, Thames & Hudson, 1997
• (in French)Reflexions sur l'exil, l'art et l'Europe: Entretiens avec Aline Dallier, Klincksieck, 1998
• From Technological to Virtual Art, Leonardo Books, MIT Press, 2006
• (in French)Écrire sur l'art: De l'art optique a l'art virtuel, L'Harmattan, 2007
• Yvaral (with Britta Vetter & Emma Healey), Robert Sandelson Ltd., 2007

References

• Roy Ascott,Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision,in Cybernetica, Vol. IX, No. 4, 1966; Vol. X, No. 1, 1967: 29.
• (in French)Naissance de l'art cinétique,Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1967
• Origins and Development of Kinetic Art,Studio Vista and New York Graphic Society, 1968
• (in Italian)L'Arte cinetica,Einaudi, Turin, 1970
• (in German)Die Kinetische Kunst-Licht und Bewegung, Umweltkunst und Aktion,Dumont Schauberg, 1975
• (in French)Le déclin de l'objet,Le Chêne, 1975
• Art, Action and Participation,Studio Vista and New York University Press, 1975
• Yaacov Agam,monographie,Abrams, New York, 1976
• (in French)Art, action et participation: l'artiste et la créativité aujourd'hui,Klincksieck, 1980
• (in German)Kunst zwischen Natur und Technologie. Ein Gespräch mit Frank Popper,Jürgen Claus, Treffpunkt Kunst. Keil Verlag Bonn, 1982, pp. 19–22
• (in German)Künstler und sozialer Wandel, Gespräch mit Frank Popper,Jürgen Claus,ChippppKunst, Ullstein Materialien, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, Bd. 35232, 1985, pp. 116–120
• (in French)Réflexions sur l'exil, l'art et l'Europe: Entretiens avec Aline Dallier,Klincksieck, 1998
• Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper conducted byJoseph Nechvatal,CAA Art Journal, Spring 2004, pp. 62–77
• Joseph Nechvatal,Frank Popper and Virtualised Art,Tema Celeste Magazine: Winter 2004 issue #101, pp. 48–53
• Charlie Gere,Art, Time and Technology: Histories of the Disappearing Body,Berg, 2005, p. 146
• Margaret Boden,Mind As Machine,Oxford University Press,2006, p. 1089
• (in German)Lieser, Wolf.Digital Art.Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann, 2009, p. 283
• Kristine Stiles & Peter Selz,Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings(Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by Kristine Stiles) University of California Press 2012, p. 450
• (in German)Jürgen Claus, "Frank Popper", in: "Liebe die Kunst. Eine Autobiografie in einundzwanzig Begegnungen", Kerber/ZKM, 2013, pp. 178–186,ISBN978-3-86678-788-9
• Christiane Paul,Digital Art,Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2015, p. 219

External links

• Claus, Jürgen (12 April 2018)."Frank Popper, Spirit Rector of Kinetic Art, is celebrating his 100th birthday".Leonardo.
• (in French)Centre d'Art Contemporain Frank Popper, Marcigny, France
• From Technological to Virtual Art book by Frank Popper
• Frank Popper interviewedbyJoseph Nechvatal