EUGÈNE BURNAND:COLONIAL TROOPS IN WORLD WAR I

This very engaging and beautifully produced book begins with the story of a reunion through Friends Reunited, the precursor of Facebook, of two friends who had last met in primary school - the author of this book Shirley Darlington and Doug Jenkinson, who was intent on tracking down Swiss artist Eugène Burnand (1850-1921) to whom he thought he was distantly related. 

They both joined in a quest, Shirley offering to help with French translations, that has led to this book and  the uncovering of the story of this unique Swiss artist. Much documentation and lost paintings were discovered and the main results are now housed in a museum at Moudon in Switzerland and can also be seen on an extensive website put together and maintained by Doug.

www.eugene-burnand.com

 Burnand's bucolic paintings of the rural life, animals and landscapes of the Alps are beautiful but the most extraordinary aspect of his life and career is a set of 104 pastel portraits of "Military Types" of World War 1.

He began them in 1917, taking advantage of a diplomatic mission to Paris. He was also able to go to Montpelier and Marseilles where many soldiers were recuperating from their time at the Front. Portraits of generals and army elite are in  the minority. Most are "les poilui" , ground troops drawn from many European countries and far-flung colonies, many of whom worked as trench diggers or porters.

The portraits are executed in pencil and pastel, are almost life-size, with Burnand sitting "knee to knee" with this subjects, who were paid for the sitting, which often took place in his own home. Many were completed after the war when he and his family returned to Paris where there were still many military personnel. He managed to complete 102 portraits by the time he died in February 1921. The last painting, of a nurse.signed, was on his easel when he died.

Eugène Burnand: In Search of the Swiss Artist (1850-1921) [Uniform. 2016]

CAPTIONS: 

(Top left)  African Rifleman Martinez, from Prudon, department of Oran (now Algeria)  (Top right) Chasseur Alpin (Fernand Ruan, Cévenol)

(Centre left) Somali Ahmed Abokob (from Djibouti) (Centre right) Sikh NCO Sunder Sing Haldice

(Bottom left) Tonkinese Rifleman Lai Van Chau (from Saigon) (Bottom right) Fijian (from the British army Fijian Labour Corps.

*

COLONIAL TROOPS

In total there were 47 countries involved in the First World War and THE GENERALIST must admit to having given little thought to the colonial troops involved in the conflict. These numbers are staggering.

A good starting point is the British Library's World War One coverage and an essay entitled 'Experiences of colonial troops' by Dr Santanu Das  who edited 'Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge, 2011). 

'In 1914, the whole of Africa, except Ethiopia and Liberia, was under European rule and Great Britain and France controlled the two largest colonial empires. They would draw on them extensively during the war for both human and material resources. 

'Among the various colonies of the British empire, India contributed the largest number of men, with approximately 1.5 million recruited during the war up to December 1919. 

'The dominions (self-governing nations within the British Commonwealth) – including Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland – contributed a further 1.3 million men. New Zealand’s mobilisation of more than 100,000 men may seem relatively small compared to India’s, but in proportionate terms New Zealand made one of the largest contributions to the British empire, with five percent of its men aged 15-49 killed. Indian and New Zealand troops fought together in Gallipoli, where out of a total of 3000 Indian combatants, some 1624 were killed, a loss rate of more than 50 per cent. 

'In addition to the 90,000 troupes indigènes already under arms when the war started, France recruited between 1914 and 1918 nearly 500,000 colonial troops, including 166,000 West Africans, 46,000 Madagascans, 50,000 Indochinese, 140,000 Algerians, 47,000 Tunisians and 24,300 Moroccans. Most of these French colonial troops served in Europe. However, the majority of the Africans served as labourers or carriers in Africa. 

'In total, as Hew Strachan has noted, over 2 million Africans were involved in the conflict as soldiers or labourers; 10 percent of them died, and among the labourers serving in Africa, the death rates may have been as high as 20 percent. 

'Additionally, nearly 140,000 Chinese contract labourers were hired by the British and French governments [to clear WWI battlefields] forming a substantial part of the immigrant labour force working in France during the war. 

'With the entry of the United States into the war, nearly 400,000 African-American troops were inducted into the US forces, of whom 200,000 served in Europe.' 

Three other valuable books on the same topic.

David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and film-maker who made a two-part BBC-TV series broadcast in 2014 and entitled 'The World's War'. A prime source.

'Black Poppies' (2014)  and 'The Motherland Calls' by Stephen Bourne:  

In 1914 there were at least 10,000 black Britons, many of African and West Indian heritage, fiercely loyal to their Mother Country. Despite being discouraged from serving in the British Army during the First World War, men managed to join all branches of the armed forces and black communities made a vital contribution, both on the front and at home. By 1918 it is estimated that the black population had trebled to 30,000, and after the war many black soldiers who had fought for Britain decided to make it their home. Poignantly, it concludes by examining the anti-black race riots of 1919 in cities like Cardiff and Liverpool, where black men and their families came under attack from returning white soldiers who resented their presence, in spite of what they had done for Britain during the war. With first-hand accounts and original photographs, Black Poppies is the essential guide to the military and civilian wartime experiences of black men and women, from the trenches to the music halls. Black Poppies is the first book of its kind to focus on the black British experience during the Great War; this new offering from Stephen Bourne is fascinating and eye-opening.

'The Motherland Calls'  is Stephen Bourne’s second book to unearth a hidden history of black Britain and the Second World War. This book highlights some of thousands of black British, Caribbean and West African servicemen and women who supported the British war effort from 1939-45. Black volunteers from across the British Empire enthusiastically joined the armed forces and played their part in fighting Nazi Germany and its allies. 'The Motherland Calls' complements Stephen's previous book 'Mother Country' which told the story of the contribution made by black Britons on the Home Front.Drawing on the author's expert knowledge of the subject, and many years of original research, 'The Motherland Calls' reveals the brave men and women who volunteered to fight the forces of Nazism. These include RAF personnel: Ulric Cross (Trinidad), Cy Grant (Guyana), Billy Strachan & Sam King (Jamaica), Peter Thomas (Nigeria) and Johnny Smythe (Sierra Leone). Army personnel who are highlighted in the book include ‘Joe’ Moody, Lilian Bader & Ramsay Bader (Britain), Connie Mark, who served in the ATS in Jamaica, and Isaac Fadoyebo (Nigeria). Navy personnel include Sid Graham (Britain) and Allan Wilmot (Jamaica).'

SHIRLEY COLLINS' LODESTAR

Photo credit: Eva Vermandel


“Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, 
one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble” 
- Stewart Lee

It is a great pleasure to be amongst the first journalists to be given the announcement that a new record by Shirley Collins is to be released on Domino Records on November 4th - her first album for 38 years. It was recorded in Shirley's cottage and I live just a few doors down but was completely unaware it was happening.

I first met Shirley in January 1969 when I was 18, long-haired and running, with other friends and freaks, the Worthing Workshop, what used to be called an Arts Lab. We did gigs, concerts, poetry readings, protests and sold underground newspapers in the street and smoked dope in the parks. For one reason or another we decided also to start a folk club (a venture that didn't last as it turned out) in one of the local pubs near the station. Somehow we got to book Shirley Collins. Not sure at all how that happened.

Anyway on the night, I was running the show and also playing. I remember the timing because it was some time  after 'Wee Tam and the Big Huge', the amazing double album by the Incredible String Band which had been released a couple of months before and I had learnt one of the most complicated songs on the album 'Ducks On A Pond' as a kind of party piece I played that night

I had the privilege of going to meet Shirley at the station and guide her to the venue. I was completely gobsmacked as Shirley was (and is) beautiful and magical. I wish I could say I remember more of the evening. Obviously Shirley sang and I may have led her back to the station but my strongest memory
is that first sight on the station platform. I was young.

Many years later, I met up with Shirley in Lewes in 2004 around the occasion of the release of her wonderful book 'America: Over The Water' about her trip to the Southern states when she was 19, as assistant the folk song hunter Alan Lomax. As id discovered, she'd been living down the road from me for some time and I hadn't even noticed. Full details and links in a Previous Post (3rd July 2005)

SHIRLEY COLLINS; OVER THE WATER & OVER THE ROAD 

The press release, which calls 'Lodestar', with some justice, 'the unlikeliest release of the century so far' provides an informative summary of the album itself and Shirley's life and times to date.

'Lodestar' is a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the1950s, recorded at Shirley’s home in Lewes by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown of Cyclobe and produced and musically directed by Ian Kearey.

The first track to be shared from Lodestar is ‘Cruel Lincoln’. Shirley explains the history of the song: “This is an ancient ballad, found only rarely in England. The theory is that Cruel Lincoln was a masonwho was not paid for the work he did for ‘the Lord of the Manor’ and so extracted a terrible revenge”.It also features bird song recorded at the back of Shirley’s cottage.

Born in Hastings in 1935, Shirley was fascinated by folk songs as she was growing up, songs she heard on the radio or sung by her grandparents in Anderson shelters. She left home for London to immerse herself in the burgeoning folk scene; at a party held by Ewan MacColl she met Alan Lomax, and in 1959 she joined him in the USA on the renowned field trip ‘Southern Journey’, recording American folk songs and blues, a formative journey for her personally and professionally. 

On her return to England, Shirley cemented her role at the forefront of the Folk Revival, recording over a dozen albums including the influential Folk Roots, New Routes with avant-garde guitarist Davy Graham, and No Roses, from which The Albion Country Band was formed. 

However, in the 1980s, Shirley lost her singing voice – later diagnosed as a form of dysphonia - and withdrew from performing live. It was only in 2014, after coaxing from David Tibet (Current 93), that Shirley sang in public for the first time since 1982. 

Though Shirley Collins (MBE) has been absent from the music scene for many years, her impact has not diminished, the likes of Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Lee and Angel Olsen laud her and a documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins is currently in progress. Additionally, she was given the ‘Good Tradition’ award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008, elected President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society in the same year and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Sussex University this year. Shirley is currently working on her second book. 

Now Shirley Collins has sung once more (with a mischievous delight in defeating expectation), the accepted canon of her great recordings will have to be comprehensively recalibrated, yet again.

Lodestar will be available on limited edition deluxe vinyl with a 24 page 12” booklet featuring song notes by Shirley Collins and sleeve notes by Stewart Lee and a signed print (signed print is available exclusively via Dom Mart), limited edition deluxe CD with 28 page booklet and standard vinyl. For more details visit Dom Mart.

I have had the privilege of reading Stewart Lee's extensive sleeve notes. He is enchanted and besotted by Shirley and writes lyrically and perceptively explaining the depths and magic that he perceives in her and her singing.  Here's a taste:

'I first met Shirley in 2003, in the Hove flat where she lived alone, just as the reissue efforts of fans like David Tibet, the shape-shifting polymath of the English experimental underground, and Fledg’ling Records’ folk archivist David Suff, began to nudge knowledge of her work beyond the realm of record-collector adepts. Blissfully disconnected from the on-line information ocean, Shirley herself had been utterly unaware of how interest in her had been growing since she had finally forsworn singing in 1982.  

“All I did was perform the songs in a straightforward way,” she explained. “It’s the only way I can sing them, because when people start dramatising or enacting a song, I just become embarrassed. I think the best way is to draw people in, not to stand there and declaim it.”

To me, her egoless recordings resist stylistic flourishes, remove the obstacle of the performer’s personality, and directly channel the listener to the words and music, reconnecting traditional tunes with the strange worlds they emerged from. I put it to her that she didn’t inhabit a song so much as surrender to it. ' 

www.shirleycollins.co.uk

Photo credit: Eva Vermandel

OZ TRIAL ORIGINALS: LEST WE FORGET

[Original sticker and handouts from The Generalist Archive]

All Issues of OZ are now available on-line here

http://ro.uow.edu.au/ozlondon/

The i (UK daily paper) prints obit of Richard Neville with picture of Felix Dennis. Duh!

[Thanks to Phil W for tipping me off]

THE NEW COUNTER-CULTURE IS IN THE AIR

Two landmark shows, one in its last month at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the other due to open shortly at the V&A in London. Younger generations are tuning into a counter-cultural frame of mind as we watch the ancien regimes struggle to control a world full of dramatic change. In retrospect, the late 50s to early 70s were the Western World's Arab Spring, the last time that the youth asserted themselves, changed their consciousness and invented many of the new ways of thinking and living that were transformational at the time and beyond. Seems to THE GENERALIST that the seeds of a new counter-culture are in the air or already sprouting. Are you ready for it?

CENTRE POMPIDOU

'Foreshadowing the youth culture and the cultural and sexual liberation of the 1960s, the emergence of the Beat Generation in the years following the Second World War, just as the Cold War was setting in, scandalised a puritan and Mc Carthyite America. Then seen as subversive rebels, the Beats appear today as the representatives of one of the most important cultural movements of the 20th century - a movement the Centre Pompidou's survey will examine in all its breadth and geographical amplitude, from New York to Los Angeles, from Paris to Tangier.

'The Centre Pompidou's exhibition maps both the shifting geographical focus of the movement and its ever-shifting contours. For the artistic practices of the Beat Generation - readings, performances, concerts and films - testify to a breaking down of artistic boundaries and a desire for interdisciplinary collaboration that puts the singularity of the artist into question.

'Alongside notable visual artists, mostly representative of the California scene (Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, George Herms, Jay DeFeo, Jess...), an important place is given to the literary dimension of the movement, to spoken poetry in its relationship to jazz, and more particularly to the Black American poetry (LeRoi Jones, Bob Kaufman...) that remains largely unknown in Europe, like the magazines in which it circulated (Beatitude, Umbra...). Photography was also an important medium, represented here by the productions of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs - mostly portraits - and a substantial body of photographs by Robert Frank (Les Américains, From the Bus...), Fred McDarrah, and John Cohen, all taken during the shooting of Pull my Daisy, as well
as work by Harold Chapman, who chronicled the life of the Beat Hotel in Paris between 1958 and 1963. The same was true of the films (Christopher MacLaine, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, Ron Rice...) that would both reflect and document the history and development of the movement.'
Source: Boutique Centre Pompidou


Reviews of the show:
'In Freedom's Playground' by James Campbell/The Guardian 9th July

'Paris has acquired the habit of mounting major exhibitions on literary subjects... but why the Beats and why now? "The idea is to show these freedoms, which were fought for then, and which are in danger of disappearing", say Philippe-Alain Michaud, who has curated the show...We wanted to show the multimedia nature of the movement - not just writing but painting and film as well - and how the idea of travel was central to it.'

'There is another good reason  for bringing the Beats to Paris.More than Tangier, which often gets the credit, the French capital was where Beat production reached its high point between 1957 an 1960. With the turn of the decade, what had been an underground movement rose the surface and was exposed to damaging commercial light.'

'At the Centre Pompidou' by Jeremy Harding/London Review of Books 8th Sept

[The] 'trophy exhibit is Kerouac's highway-scroll manuscript of On the Road, composed in 1951: at more than thirty metres, ut runs most of the length of the second room, inviting visitors on a pilgrim's route to the true north of the Beat kingdom.'

This major exhibition will explore the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s, expressed through some of the greatest music and performances of the 20th century alongside fashion, film, design and political activism.

A'Voices from the Underground' feature in The Times Review/Sept 24th 1988

 - the 20th anniversary of the events of 1968. This was always one of my

favourite pictures of that time, which originally I believe appeared on the cover of a 1967 issue of the  Observer Magazine that featured  inside an interview with Paul McCartney, illustrated by Alan Aldridge. It was the posters that really turned me on.

[The Generalist Archive]

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? : RECORDS AND REBELS 1966-1970 opens at the V&A this coming Saturday.

 How have the finished and unfinished revolutions of the late 1960s changed the way we live today and think about the future?

 This major exhibition will explore the era-defining significance and impact of the late 1960s, expressed through some of the greatest music and performances of the 20th century alongside fashion, film, design and political activism.

Being The Times it had to get an illustrator to amend the speech bubble of the 1963 Roy Lichtenstein painting 'Hopeless'. The original read as follows: 'THAT'S THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEGUN! BUT IT'S HOPELESS!

RICHARD NEVILLE

News comes this morning that we have lost one of the most vibrant and charismatic figures of the 1960s underground - Richard Neville - who was an inspiration. This brilliant cover of his first major book 'Play Power' was  executed by the marvellous Martin Sharp.                                           

 [Left] Richard with girlfriend Louise Ferrier, London, 1970

            

You can read a 4-post reprint of my 1980 NME Dick Tracy interview with Richard Neville about his book 'Bad Blood' which tells the story of Charles Sobhraj, the hippy trail serial killer. Click here and scroll down: http://hqinfo.blogspot.co.uk/2011_02_01_archive.html

CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY'S TRIBUTE

Richard Neville changed my life.

I mean that in the most specific and literal sense: if it hadn't been for Richard first co-founding OZ and then throwing the magazine open to smart discontented teens for what became the 'Schoolkids Issue' in 1970, I would not have had what I laughingly refer to as the 'career' which has rendered me old, broke, crazy and mildly notorious. Without Richard (and Jim Anderson, and the equally late Felix Dennis, the other two points of the classic OZ editorial triangle), I'd've had to settle for librarianship or the duller bits of the Civil Service. And I'd probably never have left Reading.

Richard wasn't a great writer, and he knew less about everything (art and politics as well as sex, drugs and rock & roll) than he would have liked us to think, but he MADE STUFF HAPPEN. Not only that, but he used his devastating charm and energy to attract people who could get the work done. Jim had him beat on the literary end, and Felix on the Biz, but Richard was both front man and facilitator.

In many ways, his greatest talent was his ability to enthuse, inspire and unite seemingly disparate people. 'Charisma' doesn't even begin to cover it. (Thank the power that drives the universe that he never went into bourgeois politics.) Around Richard, everybody became more ... themselves.

He saw something in me which nobody else ever had, and he nurtured and encouraged me to get the bad writing (the embarrassing teenage waffle) out of my system so I could get to the good stuff. Without the encouragement, mentoring, coaching and opportunities I got from Richard (and Jim, and Felix) I'd never have developed the confidence to believe that I could ever have turned pro as a writer. They sussed that I had a talent, and that what I needed was craft and discipline.

Without Richard, I'd be nothing and no-one. (I still remember handing in some copy, in the margin of which he scrawled 'Bold' and 'Unjustified.' I thought that was a little harsh -- I was, after all, a beginner -- but he later explained to me that those were simply instructions to the typesetter.)

(Young folks -- ask your grandma what a 'typesetter' was.)

The last time I saw Richard (and no, that's not an OVERT Joni Mitchell reference) was at a book launch (no idea whose) sometime in the 1980s when he was flirting outrageously with Paula Yates. Or was it the other way around?

He was also the first Bowie fan I ever met, and he took me to see DB at The Roundhouse in 1970.

When a bunch of us were gathered together a year or two back to mark the passing of Felix Dennis, Jim was there, but Richard wasn't. He was, apparently, too unwell to travel from Down Under. I was massively disappointed, because I wanted to thank him for the life I've had.

Influence? Well, not an influence in the same way that Bob Dylan, Raymond Chandler, John Lee Hooker, HST, Norman Mailer, Pauline Kael or Jimi Hendrix were, but ...

The main reason that I am who I am (whoever THAT is) and did what I did (whatever THAT was) ... is because Richard Neville gave me a chance.

RIP. If (a) heaven exists, (b) we both get there and (c) they have weed and Rizlas, I'll roll you one.

Final thoughtage: if I can now successfully masquerade as a Grand Old Man Of The Counter-Culture, it's because so many of the Real Guys are gone now. No more Felix Dennis, no more Mick Farren, no more Lemmy, no more Bowie ... If you're fortunate enough to run into Barry Miles, John Sinclair, Jeff Dexter, Dick Pountain, Ed Ward, Wayne Kramer, Su Small or John May, supply them with stimulants and get them to Tell You Stuff.

Get the most out of all of us while we're still here.

Will the last person out of the Enlightenment please turn the light back on?

COMPUTER ART / CYBERNETIC SERENDIPITY

This is a reprint of a story from 'Connected' The Daily Telegraph's then monthly digital supplement (see Previous Post), originally published on April 30th 1998. An update of an earlier post [9th April 2012]

          It was 30 years ago today, computers learnt to play

Thirty years ago, a ground-breaking show about comput­ers and the arts was staged at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.

Entitled "Cybernetic Serendipity" and orga­nised by Jasia Reichardt, it encom­passed a broad range of work in the fields of pure and applied graphics, electronic music, robotics, choreog­raphy and others.

The exhibition was described as demonstrating "how man can use the computer and new technology to extend his creativity and inventive­ness". In the catalogue Reichardt wrote: "The aim is to present an area of activity which manifests artists' involvement with science, and scien­tists' involvement with the arts; also to show the links between the ran­dom systems employed by artists, composers and poets, and those involved with the making and use of cybernetic devices.''

To this end the exhibition was divided in three main sections: Com­puter-generated graphics, computer-animated films, music composed and played on computers, and computer poems and texts; Cybernetic devices as works of art, cybernetic environ­ments, remote-control robots and painting machines; Machines dem­onstrating the use of computers and an environment dealing with the his­tory of cybernetics.

"Cybernetic Serendipity," wrote Reichardt, "is prematurely optimis­tic. There are no heroic claims to be made because computers have so far neither revolutionised music, nor art, nor poetry, in the same way that they have revolutionised science."

Thirty years later, how far have we come in realising these visions? Is it possible now to make "heroic claims" for a revolution in the arts through computer and communica­tion technologies? Have science and art become more integrated as a result of digital technologies?

Let's begin on firm ground. We live in a world of computer-generated graphics. The black-and-white pen plotter images and early wire-frame and ray-tracing experiments dis­played at the ICA look primeval today, like paintings from the Las-caux caves of Aquitaine. Movies, television, advertising, games, graphics and art itself are saturated with images either generated or ma­nipulated by computers.

A similar revolution has occurred in the sciences. "Scientific visualisa­tion" using computers has enabled us to model molecular structures, the inside of a thunderstorm, the birth of stars and the destruction of the ozone layer — producing images and ani­mations of great beauty. This inte­gration of science and art, imagina­tion and technology is the most explosive development since the invention of photography and will be just as destabilising.

Photography radicalised painting, relieved it from the burden of just depicting reality and allowed abstraction, cubism, surrealism and other developments to follow. Now photography is being radicalised by digital technology. In the move from film to disk, from chemical to silicon, photography is freed to explore a big­ger canvas. The synergy between photography and computers via scanners and Photoshop has already produced a flood of powerful new images and techniques that stretch and manipulate reality.

What about music? Music compos­ed and played on computers was in its infancy in the Sixties. The first Moogs were finding their way into the hands of rock musicians and clas­sical composers. Now computers and other digital technologies rule music. The pre-Millennium soundtrack is dominated by electronic tones and beats; by digitally enhanced remixes of earlier grooves.

Computer poetry and prose may not have taken off, but the effect of computers on writing of all kinds has been seminal. Not only have millions changed their working practices, moving to word processing as a com­position tool, but developments in multimedia have also highlighted the increasing interest in hypertext and other non-linear narratives. The In­ternet has spurred the development of interactive fiction, with writers all over the world contributing electron­ically to the narrative drive.

Computing has also contributed a heap of new language which is being woven into the fabric of our general language. Email on the Internet is the biggest boom in note and letter writing since the birth of the postal service and the invention of the post­card in the 19th century.

Cinema and TV are facing similar radical change. Rare is the movie that has not been tweaked by com­puters. Digital editing is becoming industry standard, digital cameras will become increasingly common. The whole process — from concep­tion to realisation, from distribution to exhibition — will soon be a contin­uous digital stream. On the content side, we are returning to the grand cinema of spectacle and illusion; moving forward to television that is multi-channel and interactive.

We have moved from cybernetic serendipity to computer creativity and connectedness — for let us not forget that all of the above move­ments and tendencies are reflected and enshrined on the Internet, itself a whole new medium of expression, the bastard offspring of the nuclear bomb, the silicon explosion and the global telephone network.

So, 30 years on, heroic claims are indeed in order. Digital technologies are catalysing, empowering and transforming the business, practice and content of art. Their impact will intensify in the next few years. But one thing has not changed: the atti­tude of the art and educational establishments. Digital art may have taken over in the real world but intellectually and critically it remains to be recognised. (Indeed, they are still arguing over whether photography is art.)

This is not an argument for abandoning the pencil and easel, the chisel and book, nor for abandoning centuries of craft skills and art prac­tices that continue to thrive.

It is rather an argument for expanding our perspective, for understanding how the lives of cre­ative people are being affected by the immersive nature and pervasive spread of digital and technologies, for redefining the role of the artist in a digital world.'

FROM THE GENERALIST ARCHIVE

 

The original programme for ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’, published in 1968 as a special edition of the magazine Studio International. Price was 25 shillings. Cover design by Franciszka Themerson (in two bits because too big for my scanner)

This multi-authored study, ‘Cybernetics, Art and Ideas’ was published in hardback by Studio Vista in 1971. The cover illustration is based on Return to Square B. Computer Technique Group, Tokyo.

According to Wikipedia, Jasia Reichardt (1933- )edited Art News and Review, the weekly paper devoted to the fine arts in the 1950s. She was assistant director at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (ICA) 1963-1971, where she organized the exhibit Cybernetic Serendipity and wrote the book of the same name. She served as director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery 1974-1976.

UPDATE 

'Homage a Paul Klee' by Frieder Nake. Germany 1965.

This neat little book waa given to The Generalist by The V&A's archivist for digital art Dougas Dodds, who visited the Archive. It has a whole section of early digital stuff but not early enough. This book is focused on the pioneering work and has grace and beauty. A disc in the back means you can play with some of the patterns.

These two beauties which open the book are actually produced using analog cathode ray oscilioscope, created in the USA in 1952.

'The artist Ben Laposky manipulated the electronic wave forms and then photographed the results. Laposky created some of he first graphics generated using an electronic machine and helped to pave the way for the truly digital pioneers who followed.'

IBM: ANATOMY OF A COMPUTER

This an oddity within the collection. Its a 1968 publication for IBM, a chunky landscape format, which brings together eight different booklets, previously issued separately I would guess.

It begins with 'Anatomy of A Computer'; the opening text reads: 

'In this, the first booklet of the series, the rapidly increasing growth of computing speeds and methods is described, and the basic concepts of modern high-speed computers are introduced. A certain amount of historical background is also included in order to sow that, as in any other technological field, the almost unbelievable achievements of our time are simply the outcome of many earlier step-by-step developments.'

The seven other titles in the series are:  (2) Input/Output. Tele-processors; (3) Storage; (4) Files; (5) Programming; (6) Basic Applications; (7) Advanced applications; (8) Its Place in the Company.

What makes it so special is the illustration, graphic design, typography and the print job. Each booklet combines a card cover front and back, next some strange  see-through textured paper, then olive green textured paper and then straight white. Some text only but mainly full of graphics all treated in different ways. It's fab gear man, a great showcase of design and illustration of the period. Exactly how all effects were produced back in the day is hard to tell. It must of cost a lot of money. Here's a few examples.

Credits for this interesting work:

Design: Gavin Healy FSIA

Photography: Enzo Ragazzini

Print: Mears Caldwell Hacker Limited

COMPUTER GRAPHICS/ A NEW PICTURE OF REALITY

 

Cover design by Richard Adams (ADCO). Image by David Zeltzer/Ohio State University.

This is a book I produced in 1984/1985 for the British publishers Secker & Warburg. The edited manuscript and all the pics were delivered ready to go. For reasons that were never quite clear, the book never saw the light of day and the manuscript and all the picture material have been in a storage box ever since.  

Researching and producing such a book at that time was a more formidable task than now. No computers, no internet, no fax – only the post and the phone. The whole book was elaborately storyboarded in pencil. [Click (left) to see detail]

Those were early days to be producing such a book. Computer graphics were in their infancy compared to their ubiquitous presence today in all forms of media, science, business, defence and many other fields. 

The images I was collecting together then were primitive by today’s standards. Now they look intriguing and have a great deal of interest and charm.

I corresponded with places like the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the University of Utah, numerous corporations, institutes and individuals. Tronhad recently come out and I interviewed Judson Rosebush, one of the co-founders of Digital Effects, the first commercial computer graphics company in New York, who had done the titles and animated BIT for the film. Also John Halas, the veteran animator who had, at the time, recently completed his first computer-assisted animated film. The intro for the book ran like this:

               COMPUTER GRAPHICS             

is an account of a voyage of discovery to a world where the real and the unreal meet, where words run out and pictures begin, a place where the only limitation is your imagination.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

is about a new pictorial lan­guage which we can use to simulate reality with stunning exactness or create imaginary landscapes. Visual represent­ations of mathematical formu­lations they provide a window into the world of the comp­uter.. Like Cubism and the camera, they provide the eye and,brain with a whole new way of looking at the world and will have equally radical implications.

COMPUTER GRAPHICS

will take you on a journey to the electronic battlefield, on a trip beyond the rings of Saturn, to visit the last great airport in the world, inside a virus, across the largest single-span bridge, to the Hall of Scientific Art and the Factory of the Future and beyond...into the 4th Dimension.

Popular in style, pictorial, fast-paced-this is a new kind of book on computers which. is not for the experts but for the ET/Star Wars generations, the new electronic culture. Above all for the broad, general readership who realise that a base understanding of comp­uters is essential in the modern world.

This is a book for people who are interested in the future.

[Back cover image: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Caption from their booklet reads: ‘A computer graphics color system that gives an easily specified range of colors is available to users of LASL’s Central Computing Facility. The pattern was generated while experimenting with color variations on circles of varying sizes and positions.’

Not exactly a high school textbook! Here are a few images and original copy from the book which I hope you enjoy.

Pictured is CASSIM (the Cardiff ship simulator at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology), the only computer-generated imagery simulator of its kind to be equally committed to both training and research. It contains mathematical models of eight ship types, ranging from a general cargo vessel of 18,000 tonnes displacement to a loaded VLCC (very large cruise carrier). New scenarios and backgrounds are continually being added and updated and new scenarios introduced. Helicopters, ferries and lighthouses are just some of the extraneous detail available.

Source: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

Like some strange species of jellyfish or an interstellar craft, this is a computer image showing structural details of the tomato bushy stunt virus.

What you are looking bat is a hemisphere of 90 of the 180 amino acid subunits that go to make up the protein coat. The subunits – atoms of oxygen (red), carbon (dark blue) and nitrogen (light blue) -  are in turn made up of hundreds of chemically identical amino acid chains. One such chain is shown in yellow, each of its spheres representing a single amino acid. These chains link the virus together.

To produce such an image requires a powerful computer and complex software. The program is called ATOMILL, a sophisticated development of the ATOMS program developed by Bell Laboratories. It contains a hidden-surface algorithm which compute what surfaces fo which spheres will not be visible to the observer as the image moves and the spheres overlap. These are then deleted.

These calculations were done on a CDC 7600. Colour shading and highlights were calculated n a Sperry-Univac V75 minicomputer and plotted on a Diocomed D48 colour film recorder.

At the Washington University Medical Center in St Louis, a surgeon and a radiologist with experience of computer graphics combined forces to tackle the problem of converting CT brain slices into a 3-D image. They linked up with a computer graphics system at nearby McDonnell Douglas, used by the company for designing aircraft, and were able to generate a three-dimensional contour map of the skull. The McDonnell computer was linked directly to an NC milling machine that manufactured a model skull out of aluminium sheets.

Source: Evans & Sutherland

A CAD visualisation of one stage of the cycle of operation of a four-stroke engine.

Source: Boeing Software Support Center

A computer simulation of an air-launched Cruise missile. This scene, showing depth, colour and realistic detail was created entirely on a VAX 11/780 computer.

Originally posted 9th April 2012