Background
Vladimir Bonacic was born on October 20, 1938 in Novi Sad, Serbia. He grew up in Zagreb, Croatia.
Vladimir Bonačić
Vladimir Bonacic was born on October 20, 1938 in Novi Sad, Serbia. He grew up in Zagreb, Croatia.
Bonacic studied nuclear electronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb and received his M.Sc. in 1964. He also completed postgraduate studies in London and Paris and earned his PhD in 1967 in the field of pattern recognition and hidden data structures at the University of Zagreb.
Bonacic worked in the Croatian National Research Ruder Boskovic Institute (RBI) in Zagreb from 1964, where he headed the Laboratory of Cybernetics from 1969 to 1973.
In 1968 he started to utilize computer systems for cybernetic art. In 1970-1972 he led the research project "Pattern Recognition and Processing" at the RBI. At that time the also began development of "Computer Controlled Dynamic Object" with the support of UNESCO; and in 1971 served as an advisor to the UNESCO on art and science matters.
Exhibited his first dynamic objects within New Tendencies exhibition in Zagreb in 1969, altogether 17 works, and then again in 1973. Bonacic also worked together with Ivan Picelj, and since 1967 with a software designer Miro A. Cimerman. On the basis of an agreement between the Ruder Boskovic Institute and the Israel Academy of Sciences Bonacic established a laboratory team for cybernetics, BCD, together with Cimerman and an architect and city planner Dunja Donassy in 1971. Besides, his first solo exhibition took place in Ljubljana in 1972.
The same year, BCD cybernetic art team moved to Israel and in 1973 founded the "Jerusalem Program in Art and Science", a research and training program for post-graduate interdisciplinary studies in art and science at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, which Bonacic directed until 1977, serving as a professor of computer-based art. On November 3, 1974, he organized an international Bat Sheva seminar on "The Interaction of Art and Science".
In 1978-1979 he was the head of development of the multimedia and electronic library at the national library of Croatia in Zagreb and the central library of the University of Zagreb.
Bonacic moved to Germany in 1980 where he undertook R&D projects primarily in visual communications used by German television for election night reporting.
He died on August 15, 1999 in Ittenbach, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.
Bonacic criticized the use of randomness in computer-based art, as he considers humans to be simply better in "making the ‘aesthetic program’ relevant for human beings". It was precisely his interest in science, focused on communication, theory of perception, cybernetics, electronics, and computers, that brought him to investigate optical structures, as well as programmed images and sounds.
Quotations: "The cybernetic art team BCD believes that the cybernetic art environment, initially involved with pattern recognition and artificial intelligence research in art and science, can make an important contribution to intersubjective communication and to the sharing of insight between people. The cybernetic sculpture Instantaneous, which was presented for the first time during the Rome colloquium, illustrates the existence of instantaneous communication on a truly parallel architecture based on 16 Compaq Deskpro 386 computers. It also signifies a true parallel processing mode (as experienced in extrasensory perception) in which 'time sequence', 'before' or 'after' hardly have meaning. The cybernetic sculpture instantaneous is seen as a contribution to a new communication medium between artists working interactively within the same system. This is a step towards intersubjective communication, through the process of reflection between artists and a transcendental Galois field."
In 1973 Bonacic became a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal "Leonardo".