Like I was saying, I’m developing a thesis for an exhibition and publication about contemporary artists working at the intersection of art/science/technology, to be presented at Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon in 2011/12. I’m particularly interested in the recent shift from artist/inventor dependent on industry or academy, to independent, even rogue agent (artists conducting scientific research or technological experiments outside the framework and discourse of an institution).

Cover of "A Report on the Art and Technology Program at Los Angeles County Museum of Art" explains why women artists were not entirely happy with this program

The proliferation of artist collaborations with engineers and scientists reached a fever pitch in the late 1960s embodied in efforts like the Art and Technology Program of LACMA, Experiments in Art and Technology, and the Artist Placement Group, each which aimed to pair or place artists within scientific or industrial environments, with various intentions including to provide access to state-of-the-art technologies, scientists, engineers, manufacturing processes, or corporate culture in general. This synchronicity of these like-minded projects could be attributed to the countercultural impulses of the ’60s, a growing interest in systems theories, and a desire for artists to intervene in the industrial sector (specifically around technologies associated with warfare). As evidence of the significance of art/science/technology collaborations, two of the above mentioned programs, A&T and E.A.T., were invited to exhibit at the world’s fair Expo 70, Osaka, Japan– the theme was Progress and Harmony for Mankind.

I’ve slowly been making my way through “A Report on the Art and Technology Program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,” the 397 page tome that documents LACMA’s ambitious program to place contemporary artists in residence within advanced industries (mostly in California) between 1967-1971. The entire report was put online as a free, downloadable PDF in 2008 as a result of growing requests for copies from LACMA’s archives. One of the reasons I’ve been reading it at such a leisurely pace is because the book reads like a legal deposition with documentary evidence: every correspondence and interview with an artist or a industry professional is presented in minute detail; hand-written notes, printed memos, and snapshots are included; interviews are transcribed; and winning and losing proposals are given equal time. It’s a fascinating approach to an art catalogue that more closely approximates a scientific research paper. On Friday, November 5, I had the good fortune of speaking with Maurice Tuchman, co-curator of Art & Technology, and asked him why the documentation surrounding the project was so detailed. Maurice said they wanted to create a real-time document, and to do so in a candid, objective manner. 36,000 copies of the report were printed and distributed to the museum trustees, participating sponsors, and the public. He also indicated that while E.A.T. and A&T were aware of each other (Robert Rauschenberg was a participant in both), there was no real communication about their distinct projects. He said that the marked difference between the two projects was that A&T had the goal of creating an exhibition, while E.A.T. was more theoretical and open-ended.

More on my conversation with Maurice later.

The focus of my research at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry has been artists working in scientific or technological environments during the last four decades (see Chronology of Artists in labs, tech industries, or science agencies). The mid 1960s marked an explosion of interest in cross-disciplinary projects– the paring of artists with engineers, or the placement of artists in scientific environments or industry– as exemplified by Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering, Art & Technology at LACMA, and the Artist Placement Group, all initiated in 1966. Contemporary artists working in scientific domains are heirs to the throne of these historic milestones, and have much in common with the prevailing spirit of the 1960s avant-garde. In her book Greenwich Village 1963, author Sally Banes argues that the work of the ’60s avant-garde had attributes of folk art, including the handmade & the functional, the incorporation of everyday materials, the inclusion of untrained and non-professionals in the creative process, and the refusal to participate in mainstream culture of mass production and consumption.

We call the art of traditional communities folk art– a term that implies not only function and form, but issues of training, subject matter, resources, and distribution. Folk art is embedded in the social process– it is art by the community for the community. Furthermore, it is made outside the sphere of professionalism: it need not compete in the contemporary market, and its makers are not trained toward that end. Whether this art is an object or a performance, it often appears unpolished and lively, since it is handmade and unique… What about the “tradition” forming in the Sixties artists– the avant-garde, which valued innovation over custom (the very opposite of folk art practice)? Is it possible to take folklore forms and folklore context out of their social milieu to consciously create a new American folklore from above, rather than from below?

The institutionalization of artists in scientific or technological environments never happened the way Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver had envisioned when they wrote the first statement of Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.) in 1967.

The purpose of Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. is to catalyze the inevitable involvement of industry, technology, and the arts… E.A.T. was founded on the strong belief that an industrially sponsored, effective working relationship between artists and engineers will lead to new possibilities that will benefit society as a whole.

My sense is that the practice has mostly moved outside rarified institutions and industries (the relationships were too complex and tied to capitalism and results-oriented economics), and into the hands of individuals and collectives (facilitated by networked communication which gave agency to maker culture, the open source movement, peer-to-peer sharing, crowdsourcing, etc.). From there, the types of activities exploded and yielded a variety of subtypes of Artists/Scientists/Technologists. Over the next week, I’ll fine tune this chart and add definitions, distinctions, and examples of each subtype.

Snapshot of Deskhibition-in-progress

There’s still plenty of real estate available on my desk! (See previous post about “Deskhibition” and how to submit entries.) On view are works by Dennis Nance, It’s Our Playground (Camille Le Houezec & Joey Villemont) & Jean-Nöel Reynders. (New works in transit from Amisha Gadani, Rebecca Gates, Eileen Maxson, & Your Name Here.)

After Double-Taker (Snout), Jean-Nöel Reynders. Photo: Golan Levin

UCS880-GM

WHAT: I’m curating an exhibition of works to sit on my desk at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry through December 20, 2010. The total available desk space is approximately 3 square feet. The desk is a Grey Mist Finish Bretford Model No. UCS880-GM, Mobile Multimedia Instructor Desk (specs here).

WHY: The STUDIO is regularly visited by students, visiting artists, scholars, engineers, scientists, technologists, curators, etc. My desk surface has high visibility and attracts attention. Currently on the surface is a bike helmet, a coffee mug, and paper.

DEADLINE: I’m here through December 20, so soon and ongoing. Send a jpeg image of your submission, plus the dimensions to gentleridevan<<<AT>>>gmail.com. If it fits, I’ll have you ship your work to the STUDIO.

The Art and Technology exhibition began as a “brave experiment.” The show, on view at LACMA from May 16 to August 29, 1971, was almost a by-product, and not the initial goal, of the project developed by the museum’s staff beginning in 1967, when senior curator of modern art Maurice Tuchman posed these questions: What if artists had access to the materials, expertise, and manufacturing processes of the day’s most advanced technologies? What if they were free to experiment with these materials and processes, and what if they could collaborate with the engineers and corporations who had developed them? –Kathy Talley-Jones on the Art & Technology program at LACMA

Based on my previous entry, I’m assembling a chronological list of artist-in-residence, or placement programs that invited artists to develop their work in partnership with labs, tech industries, or science agencies. Unlike permanent staff or consultants, in these instances artists were granted temporary access to a non-art field or were paired with a non-art professional, with varying goals– from bridging the two cultures of art and science to inspiring innovation through cross-disciplinary inquiry (or simply to illustrate and popularize science or technology, as in the case of NASA Art Program). This is a work-in-progress, and I welcome your shout outs.

Chronology of Artists in labs, tech industries, or science agencies (in progress)

1962

• NASA Art Program: The NASA Art Program was established in 1962 by the United States to commission artists, including Norman Rockwell and Robert Rauschenberg, for the purpose of recording history of space exploration through the eyes of artists. Using artist of different mediums and genres serves the purpose of educating different audiences about NASA and space exploration. The collection now includes 2,500 works by more than 350 artists. (Wikipedia)

1964

• Bell Laboratories: Bell Laboratories started an informal artist in residence program that evolved into the greatest art in technology programs in the country. It started with the beginnings of computer graphics, such as Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon’s Computer-generated “Nude” that processed a canned photograph by Max Mathews into a series of gray levels represented by mathematical and electronic symbols. Because of the incredible freedom at Bell Labs at the time, researchers were able to invite artists to collaborate and work with this new computerized imaging. Jerry Spivack, a pioneer in interactive graphics says, “We were in the privileged position back in the ’60s of being considered a national resource and an untouched monopoly. We had a freedom that few places had.” In 1963 Knowlton developed the Beflix (Bell Flicks) animation system, which was used to produce dozens of animated films with artists like Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz. From www.bostoncyberarts.com

1966

• Artist Placement Group (APG): Founded in London by John Latham and Barbara Steveni, the APG “pioneered the concept of art in the social context. From the outset their notion of ‘placement’ acknowledged the marginalised position of the artist and sought to improve the situation. By enabling artists to engage actively in non-art environments, the APG shifted the function of art towards ‘decision-making’.” From www.tate.org.uk

• Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.): “Founded in 1966 [in New York] by Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, E.A.T. was a non-profit group active primarily from the 1960s to the 1980s. Its aim: to mobilize the arts, industry and science around projects that involved participants from each field. E.A.T. promoted interdisciplinary collaborations through a program pairing artists and engineers.” From www.fondation-langlois.org

1967

James Turrell & Robert Irwin were in residence with Garrett Corporation as part of LACMA's Art & Technology program

• Art and Technology: “In 1966, Maurice Tuchman, curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California, introduced the Art and Technology (A&T) program. The mandate of this project, which was peripheral to the museum’s activities, was to promote an exchange between artists and the corporate world. Tuchman selected California companies capable of supporting art projects, either by contributing financially to the museum or by providing technical expertise, and in 1967 the museum’s corporate partnership proposal was officially launched to 250 companies.” From www.fondation-langlois.org

• IBM: John Whitney becomes IBM’s first artist-in-residence.

1974

• Arts/INDUSTRY – John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is notable for its arts/industry program, the primary component of which is a residency program at Kohler Company. Artists have the opportunity to spend two to six months creating works of art utilizing industrial materials and equipment. (Wikipedia)

1985

• ANAT: Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) supports artists and creative practitioners engaging with science and technology, within Australia and beyond, including immersive residencies.

1992

Interval Research Corporation: Founded in 1992 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., and David Liddle, a computer industry veteran with deep roots in research, Interval was a research setting “seeking to define the issues, map out the concepts and create the technology that will be important in the future.”  Intervals “think tank” included filmmakers, designers, musicians, cognitive psychologists, artists, computer scientists, journalists, entrepreneurs, engineers and software developers. The company also collaborates with other research groups and university laboratories, including the Royal College of Art, the MIT Media Lab, the Santa Fe Institute and Stanford University and many others.

1993

• XEROX PARC Artist-in-residence program: Established by Xerox PARC leader John Seely Brown and run by Rich Gold, a former Mattel toy designer, the PAIR program paired new media artists with Xerox engineers.

2005

• Factory Direct: New Haven: Factory Direct: New Haven was organized by Denise Markonish and paired 10 artists with manufacturing companies for 3 to 12 weeks, and exhibited the results at Artspace in New Haven, CT.

2007

• Artists in Labs (AIL): Artists in Labs is a Swiss partnership between the Zurich University of the Arts, the Institute of Cultural Studies (ICS) and the Bundesamt für Kultur BAK. The AIL programme aims to promote knowledge transfer between artists and scientists, reflecting on the implications of technological developments towards the society, encourage Swiss artists to acquire technical and scientific expertise and to mediate art and science into the public domain.

(Post updated September, 24 2010, thanks to information generously provided by Julie Martin, E.A.T.)

Click image to watch video. Variations V, 1965. "Engineers devised technical systems so that the movement of the dancers affected the sound. Performing at the table with the tape recorders and electronic sound modulation systems are John Cage, David Tudor, and Gordon Mumma, with the dancers in the background. The images are by Stan VanDerBeek and Nam June Paik, from a performance in Hamburg, Germany, for television filming." – Julie Martin

One of the things that has struck me most since being at CMU is that the creative use (or mis/use) of scientific principals is genuinely valued here. I have encountered a large number of art students who also hold college degrees in scientific disciplines– mostly in Applied or Formal Sciences– I have yet to meet a physicist/artist (physicartist?), but I’m sure there’s one around. I’ve attended a Rossum’s meeting (a working group for robotic artists and engineers), and a dorkbot meet-up (people who like to do strange things with electricity) which appeared to attract a cross-section of creatives and technologists. And during my first week working in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, The Moon Arts group (lead by space art pioneer and CMU Professor Lowry Burgess) met here regularly to propose a series of interactive art projects to accompany CMU’s Google Lunar X Prize entry into space. When I asked how the Moon Arts group convinced Field Robotics to take a conceptual art payload to the moon, I was told it was the other way around: the artists were invited by Field Robotics.

I also mentioned in an earlier post how fascinated I was with the collaboration between STUDIO fellow Axel Straschnoy and The Robotics Institute on a project Axel initiated titled “The New Artist.” I’m hard pressed to think of another university that would encourage their robotics staff to direct their time toward an artist’s project.

All this leads me to wonder what value is placed on the artist in high technology-focused environments? Do artists enhance the visibility and marketing potential of the research projects? Is the artist’s process of divergent thinking seen as conducive to innovation? Or does interdisciplinary participation yield greater productivity and better outcomes?

I’ve begun to look at earlier examples of artist-in-residence programs at technology-centered agencies, industries, or corporations to try to understand scientists’ motives for working with artists.

Cutting-edge artists aren’t supposed to work for the military-industrial complex, right? … Wrong.

Since the sixties, artists like John Whitney Sr., Stan VanDerBeek, and Robert Rauschenberg have collaborated with engineers from the likes of IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and Kohler. In fact, some of these companies have even sponsored artist-in residence programs.– from “Big Business Artist-in-residence Programs” by Elliot Feldmen

Help me build my list of well-known artists who have participated in industry-sponsored residency programs:

John Whitney, Sr. & IBM
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) & Bell Labs (Per Julie Martin, “E.A.T. never had a residency program with Bell Labs, although many Bell Labs engineers worked with artists on their own time.”)
Stan VanDerBeek & Bell Labs
Laurie Anderson & NASA
Natalie Jerimejenko & Xerox PARC Labs
Robert Wilson & VOOM HD Labs

Artists who worked within the technology industry:

Lillian Schwartz: consultant at the AT&T Bell Laboratories, IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory and at Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Innovations.
James Tenney: worked with Max Mathews and others at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s to develop programs for computer sound-generation and composition.

Artists commissioned to work with emerging technologies:

Andy Warhol & Amiga

Kevin Kelly also offers this outstanding list of current organizations that offer opportunities for artists to collaborate with scientists, technologists, or professionals in business or industry.

John Whitney's set-up for filming computer animation from a monitor screen, during an artist residency at IBM Labs, 1980s

I’ve written about the late Ant Farm member Doug Michels in a previous post, and his idea for a dolphin/human space colony which he called “Bluestar.” Whenever Doug used to update me with illustrations and brochures for his interspecies space station, I wondered if he was joking. I realize now that he was taking what was being revealed about dolphin intelligence (a neocortex more highly convoluted than our own), and thinking long term about its social implications. In Doug’s longsighted speculative future, dolphins would inhabit a watery sphere inside of a ring inhabited by humans, and interspecies communication via sonar would be fluid, so-to-speak.

Doug Michels explaining Bluestar on Japanese TV (Click to watch Tom Weinberg talk about Doug's "Visionary Architecture for the Future")

A 1967 publication The Mind of the Dolphin by  C. Lilly (a countercultural scientist) had inspired not just Doug, but the artist Stan VanDerBeek. This article by Jürgen Claus about VanDerBeek is published in MIT’s LEONARDO, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 229–232, 2003, and begins:

“In 1982 at the second Sky Art Conference in Linz, Austria, Stan VanDerBeek opened his lecture with this surprising statement: “I dedicate my lecture to the intelligence of the extraterrestrial whales.” Since the publication of John C. Lilly’s The Mind of the Dolphin in 1967, we had become accustomed to the idea of sharing an intelligent brother- and-sisterhood with the dolphins and the whales; but what did Stan mean by his dedication to “extraterrestrial whales”? One year before his sudden death in 1984, this realistic visionary already considered everything part of an interconnected space, one super- and extraterrestrial network.”

Movie-drome, Stony Point, NY, 1963–1965

VanDerBeek is primarily remembered for his MovieDrome, an immersive dome cinema created in Stony Point, New York. According to Jürgen Claus, “From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and, yes, even extraterrestrial intelligence.”

VanDerBeek’s interest in a universal visual language culminated in one of his last unrealized projects, Culture: Inter-com– an attempt to create a comprehensive picture language (read his proposal and manifesto). Another resource for all things Stan is the UMBC site, Where Is Stan VanDerBeek?

“What if we could extract nutritional value from non-human foods using a combination of synthetic biology and new digestive devices inspired by digestive systems of other mammals, birds, fish and insects?”– Dunne & Raby

Assuming that the UN’s estimate of world population topping 9 billion by 2050 is accurate, the largest problem to be addressed is food production. Rather than rethink agricultural production, designers Dunne & Raby speculate on ways that the human body could be modified to extract nutritional value from its existing surroundings. Their proposition includes the “use [of] synthetic biology to create “microbial stomach bacteria”, along with electronic and mechanical devices, to maximise the nutritional value of the urban environment, making-up for any shortcomings in the commercially available but increasingly limited diet.”

In a fascinating interview on the OK Do site, Dunne & Raby explain:

One of our ongoing projects looks at the future of food. The idea is that, as the planet becomes over-populated and food becomes an issue, rather than relying on governments and big industries to solve it, small groups of people – “foragers” – would get together. These teams would include hackers, guerilla gardeners, amateur horticulturalists and synthetic biologists, and they would develop devices to externalise their digestive system in order to be able to digest leaves, grass and other things that are undigestible at the moment. Alternatively, leaves and grass could be modified so that they would suit our systems.

Earlier this year I was tossing around the idea of creating a “human disco ball” with my friend Mark Allen. From the many occasions when I’ve worn sequins, I imagined that an entire room full of people/volunteers/performers in sequins with directed light had the potential to create a Busby-Berkeley-meets-Joshua-Light-Show singular psychedelic experience. But Marge Meyers at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry just informed me that someone already did something like this almost twenty years ago at Carnegie Mellon University… Click image below to watch the fantastic video.

Seth Riskin, 1992

We’re living in Pittsburgh, PA, where I’ve begun my Warhol Curatorial Fellowship at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. The good folks at the STUDIO have set me up with a desk, a stipend, and a new iMac.

The STUDIO's mission is to support creation and exploration in the arts, especially interdisciplinary projects that bring together the arts, sciences, technology, and the humanities, and impact local and global communities.

My 17 minute ‘on foot’ commute from Wilkins Avenue is heavenly. We’re renting a wonderful three-story (plus finished basement) furnished home from two computer scientists who are living abroad. As such, we’ve got an elevator, full gym, water bed, dart board, outdoor grill, and a jacuzzi that’s sadly off limits (but perhaps could perform as an ‘encounter zone’). Just kidding, landlords. :)

My fellowship here is an outgrowth of the exhibition, 29 Chains to The Moon, that I curated for Miller Gallery in 2009. The exhibit title is a reference to Buckminster Fuller’s first book, 9 Chains to the Moon, – the title itself a metaphor for cooperation toward solving socio-economic woes. The exhibit considers how artists can contribute to rethinking the production of food, shelter, transportation and energy for a rapidly increasing global population. During my fellowship, I’ll develop a traveling version of the exhibit, and oversee a book sprint (more details on that later). The notion that overpopulation can be addressed before imminent catastrophe is gleamingly optimistic, and nods toward Fuller, and his radical ideas for improving the quality of life for all humankind via progressive design and maximization of the world’s finite resources. I’m also interested in understanding that same sort of humanistic, utopian aesthetic brandished by 20th Century World Fairs, the NASA Space Art Program, and poetic gestures like the Voyager Golden Record.

"Bernal Sphere" space colony, Gerard K. O'Neill, 1977

The first part of my fellowship will be a getting-to-know-you series of meetings with interesting people doing interdisciplinary projects on campus at Carnegie Mellon. I just met former STUDIO fellow, Axel Straschnoy, whose project here involved working with The Robotics Institute to create The New Artist or “art done by robots for robots.” It was fascinating to hear how Axel’s abstract concept (a robot creating art for another robot) was embraced by The Robotics Institute and approached as an empirical problem that could be solved using scientific inquiry. Axel is going to introduce me to the resulting robots this week.

From STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Flickr site: "The New Artist" is a project to develop art by and for robots undertaken by Ben Brown, Garth Zeglin, Geoff Gordon, Iheanyi Umez-Eronini, Marek Michalowski, Paul Scerri and Sue Ann Hong and Axel Straschnoy. It is being produced by Piritta Puhto.

As for Carlos, he’s been working at The Waffle Shop (an artist-run restaurant and TV show) and bringing home delicious wraps from their adjacent Kubideh Kitchen. He’ll be hosting a bi-monthly, yet-to-be-named TV show about music. Certainly, shades of his former KPFT Pacifica radio show, Moontower Radio, will be present.

Carlos' first go of it as a talk show host at The Waffle Shop.