Recursive Apologies
Janet Zweig's Text Generating Sculptures 1990-2010
Will be published approx. on 30. July 2026
Book
Hardback
144 pages
978-1-941753-93-4 (ISBN)
Description
A guide to Zweig's algorithmically generated sculptures that anticipated contemporary Large Language Models
In the early 1990s, when personal computing was young and artificial intelligence was not yet a part of the popular imagination, American artist Janet Zweig (born 1950) made extraordinary and prescient creations: sculptures that married early computers, simple algorithms and dot-matrix printers with mechanical parts to auto-generate streams of poetic text that moved objects. Richly illustrated, Recursive Apologies presents these sculptures alongside the sources that inspired them. Sporting a recursive design that mirrors the very concepts it explores, the volume offers both a visual archive and a reflection on our ongoing relationship with thinking machines. It also features essays by artists and scholars Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Jena Osman and Johanna Drucker that evince how Zweig's witty contraptions were an early premonition of our current technological reality: an atmosphere of disinformation, fake news and digital hallucinations.
In the early 1990s, when personal computing was young and artificial intelligence was not yet a part of the popular imagination, American artist Janet Zweig (born 1950) made extraordinary and prescient creations: sculptures that married early computers, simple algorithms and dot-matrix printers with mechanical parts to auto-generate streams of poetic text that moved objects. Richly illustrated, Recursive Apologies presents these sculptures alongside the sources that inspired them. Sporting a recursive design that mirrors the very concepts it explores, the volume offers both a visual archive and a reflection on our ongoing relationship with thinking machines. It also features essays by artists and scholars Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Jena Osman and Johanna Drucker that evince how Zweig's witty contraptions were an early premonition of our current technological reality: an atmosphere of disinformation, fake news and digital hallucinations.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
NY
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
54 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 231 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
726 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-941753-93-4 (9781941753934)
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Schweitzer Classification