José Luis Alexanco, Manuel Barbadillo, Ana Buenaventura, Luis De Pablo, José Miguel de Prada Poole, José Luís Gómez Perale, Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, Luis Garcia Núñez Lugán, Abel Martín, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Enrique Salamanca, Guillermo Searle, Eusebio Sempere, Francisco Javier Seguí de la Riva, Soledad Sevilla, José María Yturralde.
12/10/18 – 24/2/19
Frac Centre-Val de Loire | Orleans | France
The retrospective explores a pivotal moment in the cultural and intellectual history of Spain, when art, science and technology converge to redefine artistic practice. The exhibition focuses on the groundbreaking experience of the Computing Center of the University of Madrid, a unique experimental environment in which artists, architects, musicians, engineers and thinkers work side by side to investigate the creative potential of computer-generated calculation.
Rather than functioning as a conventional academic institution, the Computing Center operates as a laboratory of ideas. It fosters a collective spirit in which disciplines intersect and hierarchies dissolve, allowing new forms of artistic production to emerge. Computation is not treated as a mere technical tool, but as a conceptual framework that reshapes notions of authorship, form, process and perception. Algorithms, systems and programmed structures become generators of aesthetic experience, opening unprecedented paths between rational logic and poetic intuition.
The works presented reveal a shared interest in structure, repetition, seriality and transformation, while maintaining a remarkable diversity of approaches and media. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry and theoretical research coexist within a common experimental language. Geometry, kinetics, light, space and sound are explored through both manual and computational processes, reflecting a broader investigation into systems thinking and the aesthetics of information.
This experimental scene unfolds against a complex social and political backdrop, making its radical openness and international outlook all the more significant. The Computing Center becomes a site of intellectual freedom, where collaboration replaces individual isolation and where artistic practice anticipates later developments in digital art, generative systems and interdisciplinary research. Many of the questions posed during this period—regarding automation, authorship, and the relationship between human creativity and machines—remain strikingly relevant today.
By revisiting this collective adventure, the exhibition highlights the importance of a largely underrecognized chapter in the history of experimental art. It positions the Spanish experimental scene of the late 1960s not as a peripheral phenomenon, but as an essential contribution to the global discourse on art and technology. Madrid, October 68 reveals how a community working across disciplines asserts a new model of artistic production—one grounded in collaboration, research and the shared exploration of emerging technological realities.