Event overview
Lecture by Valentina Ravaglia, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern on The ‘Electric Dreams’ Exhibition at Tate Modern.
This lecture focuses on Tate Modern’s exhibition Electric Dreams. Art and Technology before the Internet (28 November 2024 - 1 June 2025), a major curatorial project presenting a network of stories about artists who found inspiration in the methods and tools of science and technology to amplify the formal possibilities and sensorial reach of their work. Large portions of the exhibitions focussed on the evolution of 'programmed’ and algorithmically-generated art between the 1950s and the early 1990s, connecting the work of early innovators in the fields of kinetic art and perceptual abstraction with the rise of digital art. In particular, the exhibition included sections on the international New Tendencies (NT) movement, whose series of exhibitions and events organised in Zagreb between 1961 and 1973 demonstrated how the analog ‘visual research’ of artists’ collectives and movement such the French Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel and Italian Arte Programmata directly connected to the first wave of computer-aided art. Electric Dreams shed light on the exhibitions Tendencije 4 and 5 (Zagreb, 1968-9 and 1973) as seminal gatherings of early digital artworks from across the globe, alongside the key exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, held in London in 1968, and the Arte y Cibernética group and exhibition emerging in Buenos Aires in 1969, among others. The lecture will consider the evolving influence of cybernetics on visual art discourse, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, and aspects of the intersection of art, technology and computational aesthetics spanning from the 1950s until the early 1990s, through the examples presented in the exhibition – from Wen Ying Tsai’s Cybernetic Sculptures to Sonia Landy Sheridan’s Generative Systems programme and Samia Halaby’s Kinetic Paintings.
Biography :
Val Ravaglia is Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, London. They have a special interest in transdisciplinary curatorial practices and recently curated Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet (2024-25), which ran at Tate Modern from 28 November 2024 until 1 June 2025 and in a reduced form at OGR, Turin from 31 October 2025 until 22 May 2026. Ravaglia assisted on the complete rehang of the museum’s displays in the run-up to the museum’s expansion in June 2016. They were the Assistant Curator for the 2017 Turbine Hall Commission by SUPERFLEX and for Tate Modern’s Nam June Paik retrospective in 2019, co-curated the free exhibit A Year in Art: Australia 1992 (2021-23) and lead on the touring Tate exhibition The Dynamic Eye: Beyond Op and Kinetic Art, for its versions in Porto (2023) and Istanbul (2024). Their next exhibition is a Julio Le Parc solo show, opening at Tate Modern on the 11 June 2026.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Dec 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
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