Spaces of generativity.    
Introduction to the art of Wojciech Bruszewski.  
Ryszard W. Kluszczyński 
Introduction 
The art of Wojciech Bruszewski, developed within a broadly understood field of 
media  art  and  new  media,  lies  among  the  most  precious  achievements  in  this 
area of artistic practices in Poland. The artist, who died in 2009, was artistically 
active  mostly  in  the  area  of  photography,  experimental  film,  video  and 
transmedia art created with the use of computer technologies (or without using 
them, but still in dialogue with their algorithmic logic). In Poland, in those two 
latter  domains,  he  was  one  of  their  main  originators.  He  was  also  one  of  the 
forerunners of interactive installation art in Poland, as well as generative art. In 
this  text,  due  to  its  modest  capacity,  I  cannot  even  be  tempted  to  analyse 
Bruszewski’s art in detail. By focusing on film, video, installations and computer 
art, I will attempt to point out to their most characteristic features.  Therefore, I 
am  analysing  not  individual  works  but  holistically  recognized  creation  and 
artistic approach (due to lack of space, I am not referring here to photographic 
achievements,  which  I  consider  slightly  less  significant  in  Bruszewski’s  works, 
although  full  analysis  of  his  works  obviously  must  not  leave  this  field  of  his 
artistic  life  out).  Reflections  taken  here  should  allow  to  outline  the  vision  of 
Wojciech Bruszewski’s art and emphasise its position in the context of the latest 
trends in artistic world. 
Searching for sense of the cinema 
If the beginnings of Wojciech Bruszewski’s artistic activities belong to the 60s of the
last century (by the end of that decade the artist joined Zero 61 – the Toruń
photographic group), his activity in the area of experimental film were begun in the
70s as part of his work in the avant-garde group “Workshop of Film Form” started in
1970. Members of the Workshop, aiming at full recognition and broadening the
expression possibilities of audio-visual arts, proclaimed the need to research the
properties of film as medium. The medium analysis carried out by them, placed
“Workshop of Film Form” within the current of conceptual art in its broad sense. In
the avant-garde cinema, this current was referred to by P. Adams Sitney as structural
film1
.
Established in the period of particular stress placed on conceptual tendencies in art
and development of the structural avant-garde film current, ”Workshop of Film
Form”, in a natural way, became part of artistic environment of artists who rejected
the natural aesthetic approach in favour of the cognitive one and – following the
positivists’ school of philosophy – acknowledged their own communication
possibilities as the only ones worth being interested in.
Members of “Workshop” discovered their own way within conceptual movement in
art in its broad sense, reaching into the constructivist Polish and Russian artistic
avant-garde tradition of the 20s and 30s of the last century. Thus, ideology and
practice of constructivism became for them a very important source of artistic and
theoretical inspirations. This heritage of constructivism can be seen particularly
clearly in the works of Józef Robakowski, Ryszard Waśko and Wojciech Bruszewski
precisely.
In the context of conceptual film current, and more precisely its variation referred to
in Poland as analytical film, Bruszewski particularly carefully considered the issue of
relation between reality and its audio-visual representation, and between the viewer
and reality and its representation (transferring these analyses later into the domain of
video art). He emphasized particularly the dualism of the concept of reality,
distinguishing its material aspect (what is beyond us) and mental one (what it means
                                                        
1
P. Adams Sitney, Structural Film, „Film Culture” 1969, Nr 47.
for us). This other meaning was treated by him as a culture product – a collection of
conventions leading to further conclusion that our contact with reality is not of direct
character, but is indirect through our language. Bruszewski also pointed out that
mechanical and electronic media (photography, film, video, etc.) work partly
independently of the regulations ruling our minds, that the image of the world
communicated by them is not identical to our own vision, clearly subordinate to the
existing cultural cognitive conventions.
In this situation, according to the artist, a perceptive mind is inclined to make use only
of that part of experience provided by media, which does not breech those
conventions. Bruszewski’s films, which are an insightful analysis of relations between
reality and its presentations in various forms, led to a confrontation between the
human mind and representations of reality that it would create against images of the
world created by the media technologies.
Not otherwise did Bruszewski refer to the issue of connections between sound and
image that he frequently brought up in his films. In his audiovisual experiments, e.g.
Teaspoon (1974) or Matchbox (audio-visual experiment, 1975), he attempted to show
that the connection between visual and acoustic perception is rather an impression
created by human mind than a long-lasting, independent fact.  
A conceptual film (structural, structural‐materialistic, analytical), by taking the 
viewers’  attention  off  formal  shapes  and  subjective  aspect,  eventually 
encouraged them to undertake a reflection over media nature of the film. It is 
worth  noting,  however,  that  totally  depersonalised  character  of  conceptual 
cinema  is  more  (if  not  most  of  all)  of  a  theoretical  programme  than  a  real 
attribute of films of such kind. One could even risk a hypothesis that the most 
interesting conceptual films do not follow that at all. This observation allows us 
to  treat  films  made  by  individual  artists  representing  structural  cinema,  not 
solely  as  cognitive  instruments  and  sources  of  knowledge  about  film  medium, 
but also as a more detailed, individualized representations of original concepts 
and approaches2
.
                                                        
2
See Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Analysis and Expression. Meta-reflection in (Multi)media Art, in:
Analytical Tendencies in Modern Art, ed. Grzegorz Sztabiński, Lodz 1996, p. 57-72.
Things are no different in case of Polish analytical cinema, and Wojciech
Bruszewski’s art within it. This artist, by exploiting areas between reality and its
audio-visual representation, expressed, as if en passant, total reflective distrust
towards any message, any form of communication, any value given a priori. He
questioned any unambiguous assignment in communication space of works of art
towards their authors’ personality and expressive potential of art as well. He unveiled
the common and fundamental relativism that is usually camouflaged and neutralised
by providing conventions with autonomic value. Media art was to unveil the
conventionalism that rules perception of reality, according to Bruszewski. This
approach and consequent anti-expressionism that its inevitable part, eventually led
him to generative art and the concept of self-generating text as a source of endlessly
proliferating forms and meanings that do not in fact communicate anything (it
traditional sense of the word), because they represent nothing and no-one.
Works realising the programme of generative art appeared in Bruszewski’s creations
very early indeed, although in many cases the context of applied medium provided a
more symbolic touch to it that the one that was actually realised. This was precisely
the case with the cinema where artworks take on a form of audio-visual artefacts and
not processes, due to their media characteristic. Yet films like Apnoea (1972) on the
one hand, and YYAA (1973), Test – door (1974) or Teaspoon (1975) on the other, due
to their construction, seem more as structures generated by film systems than forms of
representation or expression. Such films question and reject narrative functions that
are imposed on them, suggesting structures that are less or more close to permutation
forms instead. On the other hand, an object New words, created in parallel, clearly
appears to be a form of permutation art and generative sui generis. Films themselves,
however, in their not obvious form, place themselves in hybrid space outlined by the
tension between (self)cognitive and generative-permuted perspective.
Videotraps
Wojciech Bruszewski together with a few other artists from “Workshop of Film 
Form” initiated the history of video art in Poland.  Apart from participating in the 
first  video  presentation  at  the  museum  in Poland –  a  collective  ”Action 
Workshop” (Museum of Art, Łódź 1973), he was also, in co‐operation with Piotr 
Biernacki, the author of the first work created on magnetic videotape.  Pictures 
Language  –  a  realisation  made  in  1973  was  an  attempt  to  transfer  abstract 
language  symbols  into  actual  pictures  of  objects (e.g.  A‐sand,  B‐  rock,  C‐road, 
etc.).  In  1974  Bruszewski  realised  another  of  his  works  –  Space  transmission, 
concentrating  this  time  on  the  issue  of  space  articulation.  This  work  emerged 
from  his  reflections  over  narration,  register  and  transmission  which  led  all
together to constituting ”an inscrutable situation”3. 
I  mentioned  earlier,  while  characterising  Bruszewski’s  films,  that  issues 
undertaken there are also present (in a form slightly modified by the parameters 
of the new medium) in his video activities.  They were analysed best by him in a 
series of tapes under a mutual title of Video touch, created between 1975 – 1977.  
Bruszewski analysed there problems from the area of relation between reality 
and  its  audio‐visual  representation,  referring  to  concepts  connected  with  the 
conflict between the idea of direct experience and a real experience mediatized 
by conventions ruling our cognition and organizing our knowledge into systems 
of  mental,  culturally  conditioned  representation  of  reality.  Paradoxically, 
directness  of  perception  is  in  his  vision  possible  solely  thanks  to  media 
(mechanical  and  electronic  means  of  communication).  Tapes  from  the  Video 
touch series were then, as intended by Bruszewski, forms of traps set for what 
exists  in  the  outer  and  inner  world,  which  were  in  that  way  discovering 
conventionality of our perception and the knowledge grounded in it. 
His video installations functioned in a similar way, for instance Outside (1976), 
or  Installation  for  Mr  Muybridge  (1977).  All  these  video  works,  just  as  films 
discussed earlier, grew out of conflict tension between cognitive aspirations and 
those sui generis generative ones. 
                                                        
3
Tomasz Samosionek, Rozmowa z Wojciechem Bruszewskim [Conversation with Wojciech
Bruszewski], „Zeszyty Artystyczne” nr 7, PWSSP, Poznań 1994.
Image/object as sound interface   
By the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Bruszewski created a series
of works focused greatly on sound that remained in autonomous relationship with the
image – for example installations Television music and Television hen, both from
1979 – where sensors, which were attached to the screen of the monitor, reacting to
changes of visual information steered the sound generator, or became partly
independent – for instance installation Sternmusik, 1979 – where sound camera
reacted to turning the pages of „Stern” magazine placed within its proximity, or
finally, gained total autonomy, as was the case with some installations-performances
that made the series Some music (1982). All these works may be described as
multimedia phenomena, as a connection of sound art, installation and performative
arts within video art environment, or – more broadly speaking – within the
environment of electronic media art. These projects, in connection with the theory
developed by Bruszewski and concerning artistic communication, later on laid
foundations to his generative radio installation The Infinite Talk (1988), realized in
„Ruine der Künste Berlin”, where synthetized voices of a pair of virtual interlocutors
carried on endless discussions on air, material to which was based on randomly
chosen by a computer fragments of classical philosophical works.
All these installations, due to their hybrid, multimedia and conceptual-interactive
character, take the role of pioneers towards currents of interactive arts developed in
the decades to come. Therefore, I wish to take a closer look at them. I also would like
to pay attention to manners through which Bruszewski realized his generative ideas
almost since the very beginning of his artistic work.  
In  installations  such  as  Sternmusik,  Television  music  and  Television  hen, 
Bruszewski dealt with the possibilities of generating sounds using images. At the 
same time, in the space of issues undertaken there, issues of perception analysed 
before come back, connected with the area of relation between the experiencing 
subject, reality and its media representation as outlined by the film and video 
works.    In  parallel,  in  this  space,  there  appear  also  references  to  stochastic 
processes in art and cognitive processes.  In this way, in the recalled installation
works of Bruszewski, three fields of artistic tendencies cross, developed within 
neo‐avant- garde formations and possessing crucial meaning for the character of 
works done by this artist: conceptual, generative and interactive art.    
Interactive  installation  Sternmusik  fits  interestingly  into  the  domain  of 
interactive  art.  As  Bruszewski  himself  put  it,  Sternmusik  is  „[i]nstallation  – 
acoustic  object  with  the  use  of  a  specially  prepared  camera.  The  camera 
transforms  image  into  stereophonic  sound.    Aimed  at  “Der  Stern”  magazine 
while turning the pages, it synchronously transforms the visual information of 
further pages into music.”4.  
Sternmusik  becomes  a  type  of  an  instrument  in  a  way,  on  which  the  audience 
may perform audio‐visual compositions, thus expanding or completing the work 
of  art  in  their  performances.    Three  layers  of  the  interactive  work  of  art5, 
extracted  by  Annick  Bureaud,  in  the  case  of  Bruszewski’s  art  outline  the 
architecture  of  connections  between  the  spheres  of  artistic  practises  shown 
above and present in his creations. The layer of perception is mainly connected 
with generative art,  the conceptual layer with conceptual art, and the layer of 
performance  with  interactive  art.  It  is  also  worth  noting  that  Sternmusik  and 
artistic  concepts  of  Bruszewski  play  a  pioneering  role  as  opposed  to  the 
experiments  of  David  Rokeby  from  the  1980s,  particularly  his  interactive 
installation  Very  Nervous  System  that  Rokeby  was  working  on  between  1986‐
1990.  In  the  systematic  of  interactive  art  strategy6  that  I  suggested,  both  
Sternmusik and Very Nervous System became part of works realising strategy of 
instrument  created  around  the  interface,  the  accentuated  aspect  of  interactive 
experience7.  
Two other works of Bruszewski – Television music and Television hen, find their 
place in the context of the system strategy that I described8. In these works, the 
                                                        
4
Wojciech Bruszewski: Phenomena of perception, catalogue of the exhibition in the City Art Gallery
in Łódź, eds. Elżbieta Fuchs, Janusz Zagrodzki, Łódź 2010, p. 150.
5
Annick Bureaud, Les Basiques: Art „multimédia“, www.olats.org/livresetudes/basiques/basiques.php
[2004].
6 Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Strategies of interactive art, "Journal of Aesthetics & Culture"
(Stockholm), Vol. 2, 2010, www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/5525
7
Ibidem.
8
Ibidem.
audience have no possibility to directly interfere with the event structure of the 
work, as it is each time outlined by a current TV programme that plays the role of 
a score for the sound performance both installations give. Thanks to Television 
music  and  Television  hen,  installations  that  have  such  clearly  generative 
character, Bruszewski took the position of a pioneer towards numerous works 
representing  in  interactive  art  systematics  I suggested  a  system  strategy,  e.g. 
towards the reward‐winning Listening Post (2001), installation of Mark Hansen 
and Ben Rubin.  
Audio‐visual object A four‐spoke turntable (1981) is placed, among the discussed 
works of Bruszewski, somewhere between the above‐mentioned positions, not 
fitting into any of the extremes designated by them. Similarly as Television music 
and Television hen – it can function as an object belonging to generative art, only 
perceived by the audience, representing the artist’s unequivocal choices – “Best 
results: Pablo Casals >>Cello quartet <<”9. Yet it takes a more interesting position 
when offered to the public “for service”. Its logic encourages to such interactive 
presentation. Then it becomes a generative‐interactive form. A similar status is 
held by another one of Bruszewski’s works – Music of behaviour (1982) – which 
used  to  take  on  a  form  of  an  original  performance  done  in  the  space  of 
installation, performance of which could be also suggested to the audience.  
Conclusion 
Creations of Wojciech Bruszewski – as I was arguing elsewhere10 – are examples 
of a process within which conceptual perspective in art, by entering the space of 
the culture of participation that is being shaped in parallel, is transformed into 
an interactive perspective.  Yet the basic role at that time was played by another 
tendency in this author’s works: generative strategy usually acting on the basis 
of  randomness.    It  is  precisely  generative  art  or  its  related  forms  (e.g. 
permutation structures) which is most broadly present in Bruszewski’s works. It 
                                                        
9
Wojciech Bruszewski: Phenomena of perception, op. cit., p. 166.
10
Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Konceptualizm i sztuka interaktywna. Analiza polskich przykładów
[Conceptual Art and Interactive Art. Analyses of Polish Examples], in: „Art and Documentation"
Spring 2012, nr 6, p. 73-78.
can be found in films, video works, objects, sound installations or computer art. 
It  is  also  a  significant  factor  of  his interactive  works  of  art.  Coming  to  that 
conclusion forces me to put forward a thesis that it is a complex created through 
co‐operation  of  three  connected  tendencies:    generative,  permutation  and 
stochastic one that outline the character of Wojciech Bruszewski’s art.  
All of the above mentioned tendencies that shape Bruszewski’s art – conceptual, 
generative, permutation, stochastic, interactive – appeared in his works in not 
chronological way; at times they did appear subsequently, sometimes in parallel, 
entangling in each case in relations with various media contexts.  Configuration 
of  reflection  that  I  imposed  here  over  the  works  of  the  author  of Video touch, 
determining the order of the text and the analyses undertaken here: from film, 
through  multimedia  activities,  does  not  determine,  in  any  significant  way,  the 
direction  of  development  or  transformation  of  Bruszewski’s  art,  but  it  only 
outlines its range, signalises the spectre of applied media, artistic disciplines that 
are entangled and structures that are created. Generative ideas and randomness 
are to be found both in the beginnings of his creations and in their final phase, in 
all  creative  periods.  Consequently  then,  all  works  of  the  author  of  Sonnets 
becomes a dialogue space, the area of endless conversation developing between 
the  tendencies  constituting  it.    However,  the  omnipresence  of  permutation‐
generative  concepts  is  what  makes  these  features  particularly  far‐reaching  for 
the character of Bruszewski’s art.  
In 1972, in the early phase of his artistic activities, apart from the permutational 
film  Apnoea  (linear  combination  of  various  systems  of  the  same  elements), 
Bruszewski also created a generative and at the same time permutational object 
New  words,  which  allowed  to  generate  256  different  combinations  of 
ingredients‐letters, most of which had no status in Polish language, they did have 
potential of words, though.  
By entering the synchronic relation of structural relationship with Apnoea, the 
device  –  as  Bruszewski  himself  called  New words  –  referred  also,  this  time  in 
diachronic system, to his later projects, to Poetic machine (1982) then existing 
only in the form of a concept/project apparatus generating texts in a randomly 
conditioned  continuous  way  and  to  Sonnets  (1992),  a  generator  of  poems 
founded on a digital platform (Atari computer). These three moments, appearing 
at  a  decade intervals,  reflect  the  basic  system  of  tendencies  appearing  in 
Bruszewski’s  works  and  at  the  same  time  show  how  decisive  a  role  the 
generative stream of art played in it.  Its co‐existence with another current – also 
significant for Bruszewski’s approach – interactive art – outlines the basic vector 
of his art, ranging from human performativity to performativity of machines.