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The
Great Northeastern Power Failure <1966>
"Well,
to begin with, the title of my talk is not going to
be entirely unrelated to what I am going to say. What
I will discuss is a new mode of interaction between
science and technology on the one hand and art and life
on the other. To use a scientific jargon that is currently
in, I will try to define a new interface between these
two areas.
Technology has always
been closely tied in to the development of art. For
Aristotle, Techne means both art and technology. As
they became different subjects they still fed on each
other. New technological discoveries were taken up and
used by artists and you are all familiar with the contributions
of artists to technology. The contemporary artist reads
with ease the technical trade magazines. The new chemical
material is hardly developed before it gets used by
an artist. Today the artist tends to adopt the new material
or the new industrial process as his insignia. We talk
about artists in terms that he works in such and such
a way or that he uses such and such materials. We hear
about artists being poisoned and hurt in their work.
In this century, artists have also embraced technology
as subject matter: the enthusiasm of the Futurists,
the experiments of Dada, the optimism of the Bauhaus
movement and the Constructivists, all have looked at
technology and science and found material for the artists.
But for all this interest, art remains a passive viewer
of technology. Art has only been interested in the fallout,
so to speak, of science and technology. The effect of
technology on art can apparently be even a negative
one: the invention of the camera helped kill off representational
painting, and we are now witnessing how the computer
is about to take care of music and non-representational
painting.
The
new interface I will define is one in which the artist
makes active use of the inventiveness and skills of
an engineer to achieve his purpose. The artist could
not complete his intentions without the help of an engineer.
The artist incorporates the work of the engineer in
the painting or the sculpture or the performance. A
characteristic of this kind of interaction is that generally
only one work of art results. In other words, the engineer
is not just inventing a new and special process for
the use of the artist. He does not just teach the artist
a new skill which the artist can use to extract new
aesthetic variations. Technology is well aware of its
own beauty and does not need the artist to elaborate
on this. I will argue that the use of the engineer by
the artist is not only unavoidable but necessary.
Before I try to justify
why I believe that this interface exists and why the
interaction between artists and engineers will become
stronger, let me give you a few simple examples of what
I mean in terms of works that already exist. I shall
be modest and limit myself to use examples from my own
experience. But there exist several others.
You
probably have heard about Jean Tinguely's self-destroying
machine, "Homage to New York",
which more or less destroyed itself on March 17, 1960,
in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York. In retrospect I think my modest contribution
to the machine was tot visit garbage dumps in New Jersey
to pick up bicycle wheels and to truck them to 53rd
Street. However,there were a few technical ideas hidden
in Tinguely's machine which incidentally were mainly
the contributions of my technical assistant at the time,
Harold Hodges. there were about eight electrical circuits
in the machine which closed successively as the machine
progressed toward its ultimate fate. Motors would start,
smoke would come out, smaller machines would leave the
big one to escape. In order to make the main structure
collapse, Harold had devised a scheme using supporting
sections of Wood's metal which would melt from the heat
of overheated resistors. At another point this method
was used to light a candle. Contrary to what I hear
frequently said, Tinguely's machine did not contain
many of these technical links. It was mostly Tinguely's
motors that did it.
A
better example is two neon light power supplies that
we made for two paintings by Jasper
Johns. In one case, the light was the letter A,
in the other the letter R. What was new was that Johns
wanted no cords to the painting. To stack up batteries
to 1200 volts would have been messy, dangerous and impractical.
So we started out with 12 volts of rechargeable batteries
and devised a multivibrator circuit which, together
with a transformer, would give us 1200 volts. The technical
equipment, all 400 dollars worth of it, was mounted
behind John's painting.
My
final example is Rauschenberg's large sculpture, "Oracle"
which was shown in New York last year. It was the result
of work carried out over three years during which time
two complete technical systems were finished and junked.
The final system enables the sound from five AM radios
to be heard from each of the five sculptures in the
group, but with each radio being controlled from a central
control unit, in one of the sculptures. There are no
connecting wires between the sculptures and they are
all freely movable, on wheels.
All these examples have on
thing in common: they are ridiculous from an engineers
point of view. Why would anyone want to spend 9000 dollars
to be able to control five AM radios simultaneously,
in one room? I want to emphasize that the examples contain
very simple engineering and should not be taken as very
original. But each of the projects required an engineer
or a technically skilled person to achieve what the
artist wanted. And an important point is that the artist
could not me quite sure about the outcome.
We
have been taught by Robert Rauschenberg that the painting
is an object among other objects, subjected to the same
psychological and physical influences as other objects.
During a musical piece by John
Cage, we are forced to accept the equality of all
the sounds we hear as part of the composition. In his
happenings, Claes Oldenburg
lets the actors play themselves although in most instances
the actors are unaware of this. He writes his happenings
with a particular person in mind, allowing the specific
shyness, nervousness, sensuality of the person to become
part of the happening. The tradition in art can, therefore,
not tell us anything else but that the technical elements
involved in the works I have described are just as much
a part of the work of art as the paint in the painting.
It is impossible to treat the sound as part of "Oracle"
and not the radios. Jasper
Johns has already shown us the backside of the canvas
and I am afraid he will have to accept the not-so-elegant
backsides of "Field Painting" and "Zone" as well. But
if the radios and the amplifiers are part of the work
- what about the engineer who designs them? In the same
way as Oldenburg works with the peculiarities of people
in his happenings, the artist has to work with the peculiarities
and the foreign mode of operation of the engineer. On
the basis of this observation, I hereby declare myself
to be a work of art - or rather an integral part of
the works of art I have just described. I am definitely
not a violin player who interprets and feels for the
work of his master. I know nothing about art or the
artists involved. I am an engineer and as such, only
raw material for the artist.
But how can I claim
that this new interface between art and technology does
in fact exist? Maybe I wanted to become a work of art
and devised this ingenious scheme for my own ends? Well,
I think that we don't have to look too far. We all know
how technology has become part of our lives. And now
we can see absolutely no reason why it should not become
more so. No sound has been heard from another culture
to oppose Western technology. The faster the underdeveloped
countries can have it, the faster they want it. On the
other end of the spectrum, we now have systems where
we don't know quite where the machine ends and the human
being begins. I am thinking of the space program which
has introduced the new and maybe inhuman objective:
the system has to work, no failures are allowed, no
personal emotions or mistake may interfere with the
success of the project. The space program is developing
a new managerial type which is totally responsible.
I read recently that President Johnson has let the contract
to solve the Appalachian problem to the electronics
industry. We are now getting the fallout from cape Kennedy
and can expect more.
The
great initiator of all this technological soul-searching
is the computer. Laboriously we are translating every
aspect of human activity into computer language. In
fact, I believe the computer will turn out to be the
greatest psychoanalyst of all times. Now where does
all this leave us? The engineers may be psychoanalysts
but they are not visionaries. John
Cage has recently written a wonderful article called
"How to Improve the World". As a blind engineer, one
of his observations gave me a real jolt. Cage points
out that there exist systems of interaction between
human beings which work without any police or power
structure whatsoever. In fact, there are hundreds of
agreements between the countries of the world that work
perfectly well. In particular, technological questions
are dealt with without any complications. It seems that
technology breeds agreement. This is such a simple observation
that it frightens you that you did not think of it.
I believe that Cage's discovery fully justifies the
statement that technology will force the solution of
such problems as food distribution and housing. There
is no other stable optimum but to give people food and
housing. The Dadaists' suggestion of free food and Buckminster
Fuller's suggestion of free housing for the people of
the world will happen. But the alternatives that the
engineer can imagine for the full use of the fantastic
capacity of technology are even so few and limited.
He is, as I said, no visionary about life. But the artist
is a visionary about life. Only he can create disorder
and still get away with it. Only he can use technology
to its fullest capacity. John Cage has suggested: Let
the engineer take care of order and art (in the traditional
sense) and let the artists take care of disorder and
life. And I am adding technology. This to sum up: First
the artists have to create with technology because technology
is becoming inseparable from our lives. "Technology
is the extension of our nervous system," as McLuhan
says. Second, the artists should use technology because
technology needs the artists. Technology needs to be
revealed and looked at - much like we undress a woman.
The artist's work is
like that of a scientist. It is an investigation which
may or may not yield meaningful results, in many cases
we only know many years later. What I am suggesting
is that the use of the engineer by the artist will stimulate
new ways of looking at technology and dealing with life
in the future.
What about power failure?
I wish we knew more about what happened. We heard a
lot about how people became friendly and helped each
other out. The whole thing could have been an artist's
idea - to make us aware of something. In the future
there will exist technological systems as complicated
and as large as the Northeastern power grid whose sole
purpose will be to intensify our lives through increased
awareness."
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