As artificial intelligence （AI） chatbots such as ChatGPT reopen fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and creativity， it’s worth looking to the past to find answers about the future. In the 1950s and 1960s， an epoch of rapid social and technological change swept the globe.

当ChatGPT等人工智能（AI）聊天机器人再度引发关于作者身份和创作本质的根本问题时，我们有必要回顾过去以寻找关于未来的答案。20世纪50年代和60年代，社会与技术变革的浪潮席卷全球。

New institutions and nations arose from the ashes of the Second World War. The quest to decode secret German military communications resulted in the development of the world’s first electronic computer， Colossus. War-time innovations， such as the use of microwave radiation for radar systems and synthetic nylon fibre for military uniforms， started to find their way into daily life in the form of ovens and clothing fabrics. How artists responded to this moment—when the possibilities opened up by modern technology seemed almost limitless—is the subject of Electric Dreams， a wide-ranging exhibition run at the Tate Modern1 art gallery in London.

在二战的废墟之上，新的机构与国家纷纷崛起。破译德国军事机密通信的不懈努力带来了世界首台电子计算机“巨人”诞生。战时的诸多创新成果，例如用于雷达系统的微波辐射与用于制作军服的合成尼龙纤维，逐渐以烤箱与服装面料的形式融入人们的日常生活。在现代科技开辟的可能性近乎无穷无尽的时代背景下，艺术家们如何回应？伦敦泰特现代美术馆为此举办了一场主题为“电子梦”的大型特展。

The 150-odd pieces of vintage2 tech art on display explore the emergence of innovative techniques and materials that resulted in an explosion in kinetic and optical art3， works that move or give the illusion of movement.

展览共呈现了150余件复古科技艺术作品，探寻创新技术与材料的诞生如何推动动态艺术和欧普艺术的蓬勃发展。这些作品或是运动变化的，或是营造出动态的视觉效果。

The dawn of4 modern computing elicited a range of reactions. For visual artist Samia Halaby5， the answer was to learn programming to incorporate computer algorithms into her practice as an artist. In an interview with the Tate’s curatorial staff， Halaby recalled seeing images on a computer screen for the first time and thinking， “my paintings are dull compared with this screen”.

现代计算机的曙光引发了一系列回响。对于视觉艺术家萨米娅·哈拉比而言，解决之道在于学习编程，将计算机算法融入自己的艺术实践。在接受泰特现代美术馆策展团队的访谈时，哈拉比回忆起首次在计算机屏幕上看到图像时的想法：“相比起这个屏幕，我的画布是如此沉闷无聊。”

Halaby arrived in the United States in the early 1950s， just as the world of visual art was coming into contact with modern computing. Computer-generated patterns reminded her of her distant homeland—evoking memories of the geometry of medieval Arabic art. Her paintings from subsequent decades are filled with abstract patterns that pulse6 with movement.

哈拉比于20世纪50年代初来到美国，彼时正值视觉艺术界与现代计算机技术产生交集。计算机生成的图案让她想起遥远的家乡，唤起了她对中世纪阿拉伯艺术中几何图形的记忆。此后数十年间，她的画作中充满了富有动感的抽象图案。

But some artists were more circumspect about readily adopting information and communication technologies originally developed by the military or corporate entities， using their work to explore the tension7 between artistic creativity and the cold， logic-based precision of machines.

然而，一些艺术家对轻易采用最初由军方或企业开发的信息和通信技术持更为谨慎的态度，他们通过作品探讨了艺术创造力与机器冰冷、基于逻辑的精密性之间的矛盾关系。