PIONEERS &PATHBREAKERS
Technological art has a past, but does it have a memory ?

The history of contemporary art, more often than not, ignores art practices related to new technologies or
does not take into account this emerging trend in contemporary artmaking.

There is a need to have accessible information about the work of pioniers and pathbreakers in art and technology. This is needed in order to relate technological art to its own history and, more largely, within the context of contemporary creation. It is also needed to establish the links and ruptures —conceptual, aesthetical, technical—necessary to an understanding of recent work.

The aim of the Leonardo Pioneers & Pathbreakers project is to establish reliable, selected, on line documentation about the artists of the XXth Century those works and thoughts have been seminal for technological art. The project is being carried out through a collaborative working group of art historians, scholars and researchers. It is artists both dealing with art and technology per se (the pioneers) but also artists who, sometimes even before the technology was available, have opened new directions (the pathbreakers).

Pioneers & Pathbreakers is composed of links to existing web sites, hosting of sites (like for instance on Nicolas Schöffer) and development of new works iniated by OLATS.

 The selection of the artists and the sites is done by the members of the Frieda Ackerman Working Group.