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Hunters and Gatherers of the New

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Hunters and Gatherers of the New iIntroduction: Hunters and Gatherers of the New The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its trans- forming impact occurs. He, then, builds models or Noah's arks for facing the change that is at hand. Marshall McLuhan1 The primary purpose of this book is to uncover the history of the development, in Australia, of art that in some manner utilizes technological (and especially electronic) means in its realization. It covers the period from shortly after the inception of com- puters in Australia (around 1951) until 1975. In doing this, I will look at not only the artists and the artworks they produced but also at the evolution and use of computing technologies and video displays as they developed into the forms that artists could use to make images and the other things that artists make (e.g., videotapes, installa- tions, performances, etc.). This requires that I also look at the relationships that artists may have had with the application of these technologies andmost importantthe artworks that were made for them. Image production technologies are not the only technologies to be examined but, as my bias here is toward the visual arts, they form the primary focus. Although some of the artworks that I will be looking at are the product of existing electrical technologies, a major portion of the work produced during this early period of art and technology required the incorporation of recently developed electronic and computing devices into the art-making process and thus required a great deal of col- laboration between those who were able to handle the technologies and those whose interests lay in using the technology to make new artworks. The choice of a techno- logical realization and/or presentation medium, for most artists, entails collaboration with the technologists who develop, produce, and make those technical media avail- able. This may be either by teaching the artist how to use "the device" or by using it with or for the artist through the direct provision of a service. Ultimately, all art and technology is a collaborative process. My second purpose is thus, wherever possible, to indicate the interactions that took place between the artists, the technicians, the institutions, and the overall cultural frameworks within which they worked. 2 Chapter 1 A further purpose that will weave its way through the discussion is to elucidate some of the aesthetic issues that the works bring to the fore, both in looking at the cultural and political conditions of the times and in looking at questions of how art and technology relates to the mainstream of art theory and history as well as to how its productions might be critically appraised. At this point, I would like to indicate a way of understanding the relations that operate between the various individuals who may be active in the production of art and technology. To a large extent, this activity is a cybernetic process involving mul- tiple layers of conversation, probing, feedback, and learningbut it is not my inten- tion to do more than show the relations operating within some of these situations. Although I will canvass certain aspects of the use of technology in art that I consider to employ cybernetic principles, I am not suggesting that early electronic art was primarily cybernetic in its concept. Nevertheless some of it clearly was compatible with Jack Burnham's systems aesthetics2 or Roy Ascott's notion of art that behaves.3 Australian examples include David Smith's Kinetic Kaleidoscope and much of Philippa Cullen's dance performance work, both of which possessed a substantially interactive intent (see chapter 6). However, as the production of artworks made with technologi- cal media necessitates coupled systems of artists and engineers, and of artworks and technologies, entailing layers of interaction and feedbacks between the artists who are making the images and the engineers or programmers who are establishing the facili- ties with which the image or object may be produced, the context in which art and technology is made is, in itself, a cybernetic process. Thus much of the process of producing works in art and technology is collabora- tive; sometimes because the artist needs to learn how to use the technology, but more commonly because the technology needs to be developed or changed in some way to actually realize the artist's intentions. In the creative process, an artist may come upon a set of tools that will do much of what they wish to do in the execution of their ideas, but not everything. It is this gap between desire and reality that may then become the driving force in an artist's returning to the maker of the tool or system they used, or turning to another technologist whom they may know, to produce an enhanced version of those tools or a completely new instrument that will do more closely what they want. Of course, the reciprocal process may also operate, and occa- sionally it happens that the developer of some technology will turn to an artist to try out the technology so that they can issue feedback to the developer regarding its shortcomings and make suggestions as to its enhancements. One thing that should be said of collaboration is that the interaction between engineer and artist is not necessarily driven by an artist's needs. It is often the offer- ings of the engineer that stimulate ideas in the artist as much as it is the needs of the artist that stimulate the engineer to develop a solution (I will discuss at length one example of this in chapter 4). What we have here is something akin to a gift-based Introduction 3 social ecology, but not one where, as in the potlatch, obligation is assured through the gift giving;4 rather, it is one in which feedback in the form of comment, explora- tion, and suggestions for extension generated by the receiver of the gift is welcomed by its giver. It is a pure form of generosity, a gift in which there is little reward expected, other than its take-up and the recognition of its value to the receiver as well as the value that the progenitor held in it.5 This notion of the giftgenerally of infor- mation or knowledgeis fundamental to science. The knowledge necessary to make a technological instrument for use in the making of art itself often derives from the research of the scientist as materialized through the filters of the engineer. In the early period of art and technology, artists were often able to connect with engineers through some sort of sponsorship, either through the enthusiasm of a faculty member in a university or research organization, or through the generosity and interest of someone in a private or public company. Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski's support from the R&D branch of Philips Industries in Adelaide (see chapter 5) or, in the United States, the support provided by Bell Labs to Experiments in Art and Technology, are good examples of this. In more recent times, a great deal of the software that artists use for development of interactive or 3D digital art is made available through the Open Source network. But the primary gift is always between the artist and their collaborators, and sometimes this is the only reward that the technologist gains from the process. Importantly, this gift economy, as a social ecology, is a cybernetic process and, in certain situations, when it evolves, may form an autopoietic system running through some period as a collaborative unit. However it is the art and its making that I want to discuss and I shall leave the systems theoretic aspects of this implicit. Technology in the Culture The post-World War II reconstruction of the world during the 1950s saw the conver- sion to civil needs of much of what had been learned about electronics and computing during the war. Radar was adapted to civil aviation and many of the wartime-trained radar engineers went into computing. Computers became available in academic insti- tutions and gained more public presence through the press, open days at universities, and so forth. In the institutions, they were utilized in scientific calculation and data reduction, which led at first to the use of graphics for data visualization and later to graphics for their own purposes as computer art, figure animation and the design of objects (which became computer-aided design, or CAD) and then, much later, tonal images. The development process involved a sequence of collaborative relationships between engineer and scientist (in the 1950s and 1960s) and subsequently artists entered the mix (from the mid-1960s through to at least the early 1990s). Each new piece of technology developed for the computer was produced through a perceived need for the logical completeness and operationality of the machine and each new 4 Chapter 1 piece of the system has then enabled the production of new or enhanced kinds of outputs, either as scientific data visualization or artistic 2D or 3D image making or its more performative elements (dance, music, and the like). Meanwhile, through the burgeoning entertainment technologies of radio and tele- vision, electronics itself underwent a drive into miniaturization. This, in consequence, brought a considerable expansion of the possibilities for more advanced and more complex electronics. It also had, by 1970, two effects on the arts: on the one hand, making electronics more accessible to artists who could learn to solder and assemble small circuits that, for example, provided triggers for sequences of events or oscillators for early electronic music; and on the other, by producing technically trained people for whom the arts became an active interest.
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