From “Generative Art Summit” to CONTACT ATTEMPT
The art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke can look back on an eventful 2024. Of course, the Generative Art Summit at the Berlin Akademie der Künste in July was the focus of this year’s activities. It celebrated pioneers of generative art from seven decades with almost seventy invited guests of honor and over 350 visitors. All participants were able to take away many wonderful memories from this global meet & greet, afterwards documented by much feedback to the foundation from all over the world. The event was made possible also thanks to the Web3 community. In the ZENTRUM project on the Proof platform in November 2023, we made an apple code written in Basic by Franke in the year 1982. The foundation would like to thank everyone who contributed to the realization and the success of the project, but especially Aaron Penne ftranforming tHerbert’s code and Anika Meier for the marketing support.
Four Days Program ot the Generative Art Summit
In a two-day conference, the pioneers of the 20th century were celebrated with the “Hall of Fame”. The Foundation has now made all these presentations and talks accessible to the public. They can be accessed in the program of the first day. The second day of the program focused on the 21st century – from art on the web3 to the controversially discussed art with artificial intelligence. These presentations and lectures are also available online for posterity – ffor the pioneers of the 20s century und die des 21st century.
The brilliant closing event Sandfiction 4K: The Orchid Cage, a painterly-concertante theater performance by the group Kaleidolux, revisited the topic of AI and placed it in an utopian setting. See a report of HYPERRAUM.TV here. It was based on scenes from the visionary novel The Orchid Cage, written by Herbert W. Franke back in 1961. In it, the intelligent art machine of today is further developed into an intelligent ethics and happiness machine – also showing vividly the dangers of this technology. Sixty years later, the topic of a world increasingly controlled by AI has moved much closer to humanity. The new English edition of the novel was also republished by Springer as a print and eBook to coincide with the performance.
The summit was rounded off with a day trip for the castle of Wolfsburg, where the Summit guests not only visited the Heidersberger Institute, which preserves the legacy of Heinrich Heidersberger, a pioneer of generative photography in the 1950s. The historic rooms were also the venue for the opening of the Code – Art – Constructions exhibition in cooperation with Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg on the history of generative art. See also a short video guiding through the rooms. On display was a selection from the Franke & Friends Foundation Collection, presenting art from physical works of seven decades of generative art to digital works from the Tribute to Herbert W. Franke.
CONTACT ATTEMPT – th 50s Anniversary of the Arecibo Message
The second major project of the outgoing year was CONTACT ATTEMPT. An open call for generative artists and a commissioned work THE MESSAGE by Sasha Stiles. The event celebrated 50 years of the Arecibo Message. Back then, the radio astronomer sent a message for alien intelligences into space from the world’s largest radio telescope in Arecibo at that time. The submissions to the Open Call showed just how large the community of fans still is. 155 artists and artist groups participated from 46 countries. An international jury selected the three winners from the 32 finalists. The foundation also awarded four additional special prizes out of competition. The finalists, special awards and Sasha’s THE MESSAGE where shown in two planetarium fulldome events at November 16 and 18.
Participation in Important Exhibitions from the USA to China
The Foundation is also very proud that Herbert’s works can be seen in three extraordinary international exhibitions around the world that opnened in autumn 2024.
Buffalo (USA) AKG Art Museum Electric Op (Nov 14, 2024 – Jan 27, 2025)
Peking (China) Creative Machine (Nov 24, 2024 – Feb 28, 2025)
Tate Modern (UK) Electric Dreams (Nov 28, 2024 – Jun 1, 2025)
What else was important 2024? From work digitization to publications
There were many other foundation activities in 2024, not all of which are listed here. However, it is worth mentioning those projects that are paving the way for the project focus of the coming years. One aspect is the digitization and restauration of Franke’s photographic work. This year almost 2000 analog photos were digitized- among them around 1000 oscillograms.
They will be published next year in the Herbert W. Franke Archive of ZKM Karlsruhe. There are still another 6.000 ngatives, slides and 6×6-transparancies that have to be processed. The Foundation is trying to establish a research project for this purpose.
Another focus in the next years is Franke’s literary work with translations and publications of books, partly in co-production with major partners. The foundation itself has already become an online publisher in 2023 – with the e-book publication of the complete German science fiction edition of Herbert W. Franke’s works, starting with Der grüne Komet and ending with Letzte Zuflucht Mars, as well as additional special volumes. In addition to the major publication projects with publishing partners, the aim will be to make further non-fiction texts written by Franke available to posterity via the own art meets science MEDIA publishing activities.
The Foundation would like to take this opportunity to wish all friends, supporters and partners a peaceful holiday season and relaxing days between the years. Here’s to a safe and sound reunion in the new year 2025!
To round off the year, a quote from a novel by Herbert W. Franke. I hope it will never become reality. We should try hard to maintain creativity and innovation in our world.
“In our state of uniformity and order, entropic influences must be eliminated from history. From this follows the need for precise planning of historical processes, which has become possible thanks to highly developed electronic simulation technology.”
Herbert W. Franke, SF novel “Ypsilon minus”, 1976