Cut Pathways

AI chatbots such as ChatGPT have been making headlines recently, leading to speculation about the future of AI. In this special episode, we hear from computer scientists about their hopes for the next ten, twenty, and fifty years of the field. Joseph Newcomer, Tom Mitchell, Manuela Veloso, José Moura, Roger Dannenberg, James Morris, Pamela McCorduck, and Alex Waibel—all well-known for their research in AI—discuss the potential of the field and the ethical, sociopolitical, and environmental impacts we may see in the coming years. 

Artificial intelligence has deep roots at Carnegie Mellon University—it was home to founders Herbert Simon and Allen Newell—and the university continues to be at the center of its development. In some versions of the future, your alarm clock app will be able to adjust itself based on the weather. In others, chatbots will read, answer, and manage overflowing email inboxes, and an AI singer might form an AI band to make AI music. As this technology becomes more ubiquitous, it will continue impacting our world in ways we cannot always predict.

In 1976, punk started making headlines in New York and England, and by 1977, punk was central to a growing community of Pittsburghers in the neighborhood of Oakland. The punk scene spanned communities. The riotous onslaught of earnestly played guitars ringed through houses, bars, and the halls of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. Flyers sprung up on telephone polls. At Pittsburgh Filmmakers, 8mm cameras brought in a new era of low-budget narrative filmmaking that broke from the Structuralist trends of the 1970s while still avoiding the trappings of Hollywood. This is a story about the first wave of punk in Pittsburgh.

In 1975, Sally Dixon left the Carnegie Museum of Art. But Bill Judson took over the Film Section, expanded the program’s offerings, and introduced video art into the galleries. Judson guided the program until it was shuttered in 2003. In this episode, we zoom in on certain details of this era. Graphic designer Maria Paul Kyros discusses the process of designing the Film Section posters. Lindsay Mattock and Ben Ogrodnik discuss the importance of the Travel Sheet. This is the continuing story of the Film Section.

Carnegie Mellon is often a place where art and technology meet. This episode looks at two such instances. In the late 1960s, Duane Palyka was writing programs for a Bendix G-20 computer to make art. Layers of text characters creating sweeping vector-like printed images. A decade later, computer scientist Roger Dannenberg arrived on campus. He quickly co-founded the Computer Music Project, developed MIDI-based software, and later co-created Audacity. These are stories about art and technology at CMU.

The Buchla synthesizer experienced a cultural reemergence through new records from composers Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani, but for Pittsburgh, the Buchla first arrived in 1969 when composer Morton Subotnick founded the University of Pittsburgh’s Electronic Music Studio. This episode charts the studio’s history from analog to digital. We hear stories about complications with CBS Musical Instruments, a lost George Romero film, and computers that could play synthesizers. This is the story of the University of Pittsburgh’s Electronic Music Studio.

Renowned sculptor Selma Burke arrived in Pittsburgh in the late 1960s to found the Selma Burke Art Center, an important hub for arts in East Liberty. With classes, lectures, and performances, the SBAC was an important meeting place for youth, local artists, and visiting creators. While not in Oakland, the SBAC is tied to our story through its funders, the Mellon Trust and the Carnegie Institute. This is the story of the Selma Burke Art Center.

Initially an offshoot of the Film Section, Pittsburgh Filmmakers became one of the first and largest media arts centers in the U.S., fostering a community dedicated to experimental film and photography. The organization began as an equipment in the Carnegie Museum of Art, then found space in the basement of the Selma Burke Art Center. A more permanent location was found in the Oakland neighborhood. Some call Filmmakers in the 1970s the glory days, others point to internal tensions and stresses of growing and solidifying an organization. Two things can be true. This is the story of the early days of Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Avant-garde cinema found an unlikely home in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland. DIY screening events at the Crumbling Wall and New Cinema Workshop led to Sally Dixon founding the Film Section at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Throughout the 1970s and for decades after, filmmakers like Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Hollis Frampton, and Werner Herzog visited the city, screening their films and lecturing about their work. This is the story of the Film Section.

“Steel City Outsiders and the Institutional Avant-Garde,” the third season of Cut Pathways, a podcast produced by the Carnegie Mellon University Oral History Program, investigates the history of avant-garde arts organizations and communities in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood in and around the 1970s. 

In the 1970s, Oakland emerged as an unlikely center for avant-garde arts. Pittsburgh prided itself on its blue-collared nature, a work ethic born in the flames of the steel mills and reflected in its successful sports teams. Still, fueled by social and political tensions and newly available technology, a growing audience in the city craved experimental filmmaking, abstract sculpture, computer-generated art, and other new artforms. Influential Oakland institutions like Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh, along with emerging arts organizations like Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Selma Burke Art Center, began producing spaces where artists could experiment and establish communities built around non-mainstream ideas. 

Through oral history interviews and commentary from special guests, hosts Katherine Barbera and David Bernabo examine the sometimes invigorating, sometimes uneasy relationships among the artists, communities, and institutions in Oakland during the 1970s. The podcast looks at influential leaders like Sally Dixon, whose societal privilege and passion for avant-garde film cemented the institutional connections needed to found the Film Section at Carnegie Museum of Art and Pittsburgh Filmmakers; and Duane Palyka, who faced rejection for his experiments with computer-generated art at Carnegie Mellon University until he received unexpected encouragement from a founder of artificial intelligence.

“The Wild West of Computing” Live! An Oral History Podcast Performance from Cut Pathways

This episode is a live recording of an event held on April 7. Hosts Katherine Barbera and David Bernabo take you on a 68-minute journey through the fascinating history of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. Hear voices like Raj Reddy, Jesse Quatse, and Sherri Nichols, and stories about the DARPA grant that started it all, the Coke machine that inspired the Internet of Things, and more. Guest appearances by historian Andrew Meade McGee and curator Sam Lemley, who presents early computing machines. Live electronic music by How Things Are Made and real-time story illustrations (sorry you can't see these on the podcast) by multidisciplinary artist and designer Maggie Lynn Negrete.