Hiroshi Kawano. The Philosopher at the Computer

The Japanese philosopher, Hiroshi Kawano (*1925), is one of the most important pioneers in the conquest of computer technology for the arts. With the exhibition Hiroshi Kawano. The Philosopher at the Computer the ZKM is dedicating a first retrospective to his work. The exhibition comprises numerous works and documents which have never before been presented outside Japan, and draws on the rich Hiroshi-Kawano archive located at the ZKM since 2010. The retrospective emphasizes Kawano's special role in the circle of pioneers in »computer art«: he was neither artist, who discovered the computer as a new production medium and theme, nor engineer who came to art via the new machine, but a philosopher, who left his desk for the computer center to experiment with theoretical models.