Tina Rivers Ryan
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McLuhan’s Bulbs: Light Art and the Dawn of New Media Tina Rivers Ryan Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Tina Rivers Ryan All rights reserved ABSTRACT McLuhan’s Bulbs: Light Art and the Dawn of New Media Tina Rivers Ryan “McLuhan’s Bulbs” argues that the 1960s movement of “light art” is the primary site of negotiation between the discourses of “medium” and “media” in postwar art. In dialogue with the contemporaneous work of Marshall McLuhan, who privileged electric light as the ur- example of media theory, light art eschewed the traditional symbolism of light in Western art, deploying it instead as a cipher for electronic media. By embracing both these new forms of electronic media and also McLuhan’s media theory, light art ultimately becomes a limit term of the Greenbergian notion of medium-specificity, heralding the transformation of “medium” into “media” on both a technological and a theoretical level. This leads to a new understanding of the concept of media as not peripheral, but rather, central to the history and theory of contemporary art. Drawing on extensive archival research to offer the first major history of light art, the project focuses in particular on the work of leading light artist Otto Piene, whose sculptural “light ballets,” “intermedia” environments, and early video projects responded to the increasing technological blurring of media formats by bringing together sound and image, only to insist on the separation between the two. Piene’s position would be superseded by the work of light artists who used electronic transducers to technologically translate between light and other phenomena, particularly sounds. These artists are represented here by Piene’s close friend and colleague, Wen-Ying Tsai. In the spirit of earlier examples of “computer art,” Tsai’s “cybernetic sculptures” used light to announce that art would no longer be defined by its material substrates, anticipating the fluid condition of media that we associate with new media art, and digital technology more broadly, today. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTER ONE: MEDIATING THE MEDIUM 1 “Some More Beginnings” 1 Understanding Media 15 Theories of New Media 24 Narratives of New Media Art 32 The Medium in Crisis 43 Outline of Chapters 53 CHAPTER TWO: LIGHT BECOMES THE MEDIUM 57 A Short History of Electric Light 60 Light on Display 69 From Kineticism to Luminism 77 Not “Just Another Instrument”: Art and Technology 89 “Artistic Machines” 97 The Howard Wise Gallery: “The Semi-Official Power Center for AC Art” 106 CHAPTER THREE: THE PROLIFERATION OF THE SUN 116 Countdown to Yesterday 116 “Light Ballets” 124 Intermedia 134 The Proliferation of the Sun 144 From Lamps to Scan Lines 153 “Knowing What It Is” 163 CHAPTER FOUR: CYBERNETIC LIGHT 171 “Portrait of the Machine as a Young Artist” 171 i “Electric Interiors”: Lowell Nesbitt’s Computer Paintings 177 The Invention of Computer-Generated Pictures 182 “Tsaibernetics” 190 At the End of the Tunnel 200 BIBLIOGRAPHY 204 APPENDICES 219 1. Chronology of Exhibitions of Kinetic and Light Art c. 1955-1985 219 2. Howard Wise and His Gallery: A Brief Introduction 223 3. Chronology of Exhibitions held at the Howard Wise Gallery 232 SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS: ILLUSTRATIONS 237 Chapter One 237 Chapter Two 243 Chapter Three 266 Chapter Four 294 Appendix 324 ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHAPTER ONE: MEDIATING THE MEDIUM Fig. 1.1. Theodore (Ted) Victoria, Light Bulbs, 1968/1974. Fig. 1.2. Two covers of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, 1964 and 1965. Fig. 1.3. Picasso, Guernica, 1936. Fig. 1.4.. Illustration showing an enlarged integrated circuit in Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage, 1968. Fig. 1.5. Illustration diagramming electric circuitry from The Medium is the Massage. Fig 1.6. Cover of Understanding Media, 1966. CHAPTER TWO: LIGHT BECOMES THE MEDIUM Fig. 2.1. Thomas Alva Edison’s patent of the incandescent bulb, 1880. Fig. 2.2. Philips Arga color lithograph poster advertisement, 1917. Fig. 2.3. Giacomo Balla, Street Light, c. 1910-11. Fig. 2.4. Winslow Homer, The Fountains at Night, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. Fig. 2.5. Postcard of the Palais de l’eléctricité et Fontaines luminieuses [sic] at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900. Fig. 2.6. Images of the General Electric and Electric Power and Light Pavilions, New York World’s Fair, 1964. Fig. 2.7. Albert Speer’s “Cathedral of Light,” Nuremberg, 1936. Fig. 2.8. Scientific American cover of the issue devoted to light, September 1968. Fig. 2.9. Thomas Wilfred, diagram of “Lumia,” undated. Fig. 2.10. Thomas Wilfred, Lumia, Counterpoint in Space, Opus 146, 1956. Fig. 2.11. László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator, 1922-30; replica 1970. Fig. 2.12. Covers of Art in America showing work by Stephen Antonakos and László Moholy-Nagy’s Light Space Modulator, March/April and May/June 1967. Fig. 2.13. Cover of Artscanada special issue devoted to “Light,” December 1968. Fig. 2.14. Illustration featuring Earl Reiback’s work from “Techniques: Luminal Music,” Time, April 28, 1967. Fig. 2.15. John Zimmerman, “Light Becomes the Medium,” American Home, October 1969. Fig. 2.16. Ad for lamps including light art objects by Otto Piene and others, The New York Times, September 25, 1966. Fig. 2.17. Robert Irwin, Untitled, c. 1966-67. Fig. 2.18. Installation view of “Dan Flavin: Fluorescent Light,” Green Gallery, New York, 1964. Fig. 2.19. Lucio Fontana, Ambienti Spaziale a Luce Nero (Spatial Environment in Black Light), 1949/1976; installation view of work restaged at the Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2012. Fig. 2.20. “Plug-In Art,” Cheetah, January 1968. Fig. 2.21. Ads for the Howard Wise Gallery in Art and Artists, December 1966 and Studio International, Christmas 1967. iii Fig. 2.22. Illustrations from “Light: The Radiant Revolution,” House and Garden, October 1968. Fig. 2.23. Howard Wise, “Kinetic Light Art,” American Home, October 1969. CHAPTER THREE: THE PROLIFERATION OF THE SUN Fig. 3.1. Installation view of “Group ZERO,” Guggenheim Museum, 2014, showing Otto Piene, Light Drum, 1969 and Light Satellite, 1969. Fig. 3.2. Installation view of “Group Zero,” Howard Wise Gallery, November 12-December 5, 1964. Fig. 3.3. Installation view of “Otto Piene: Lichtballett,” MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2011. Fig. 3.4. A sample of illustrations for newspaper reviews of “Light/Motion/Space” that depict Otto Piene and his works, 1967. Fig. 3.5. Otto Piene, “Present Light Art” (Group Zero entry), Kunst Licht Kunst exhibition catalog, Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, 1966. Fig. 3.6. Otto Piene performing his first “light ballet” by hand at the opening of his first show at the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf, 1959. Fig. 3.7. Otto Piene performing his “light ballet” by hand at Galerie Dato in Frankfurt, 1960. Fig. 3.8. Otto Piene, Lichtballett, Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, date unknown. Fig. 3.9. Otto Piene, New York, New York, Deutscher Kunstlerbund exhibition, Art Association of Baden, 1967. Fig. 3.10. Installation view of Otto Piene works at the Black Gate, New York, 1968. Fig. 3.11. Poster advertising the first Black Gate event, 1967. Fig. 312. Otto Piene, The Proliferation of the Sun, The Black Gate, New York, performed March 17, 18, 24, 25, 1967. Fig. 3.13. Otto Piene, The Proliferation of the Sun, Walker Art Center, April 8, 1967. Fig. 3.14. Otto Piene, The Proliferation of the Sun, Galerie Art Intermedia, Cologne, 1967. Fig. 3.15. Otto Piene, Die Sonne kommt naeher, ars integra festival, University of Bochum, Westphalia, Germany, November 1967. Fig. 3.16. Pages from Otto Piene, “The Proliferation of the Sun,” Arts magazine, Summer 1967. Fig. 3.17. Black Gate broadsheet, issue 1, April 1967. Fig. 3.18. Documentary photo of Otto Piene and Aldo Tambellini, Black Gate Cologne, recorded August 20, 1968 and broadcast on WDR Köln, January 26, 1969. Fig. 3.19. Still from Otto Piene, Electronic Light Ballet, broadcast on “The Medium is the Medium,” WGBH Boston, 1969. Fig. 3.20. Ad for “Otto Piene: Elements,” Howard Wise Gallery, March 8-April 5, 1969, Art in America, March-April 1969. Fig. 3.21. Otto Piene, Venus of Willendorf, 2014 (1969) and Light Ghost, 2012, at “ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s-60s,” Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2014. Fig. 3.22. Illustrations of work by Otto Piene and Nam June Paik, “The Movement Movement,” Time, January 28, 1966. Fig. 3.23. Nam June Paik and Otto Piene, Untitled, 1968. Fig. 3.24. Photograph of USCO’s Murray the K’s World, Long Island, NY, in the cover article “Wild New Flashy Bedlam of the Discothèque,” Life, May 27, 1966. iv Fig. 3.25. Photograph of The Electric Circus, New York City, with lighting design by Tony Martin, c. 1968. Fig. 3.26. Flyer for “Intermedia ‘68.” Fig. 3.27. Aldo Tambellini, Black Zero, 1965/1968/2009. Fig. 3.28. USCO, Fanflashstic, 1968. CHAPTER FOUR: CYBERNETIC LIGHT Fig. 4.1. Installation view of Lowell Nesbitt, “Flowers, Façades, and IBM Machines,” Howard Wise Gallery, September 21-October 9, 1965. Fig. 4.2. Lowell Nesbitt, IBM #729, 1965. Fig. 4.3. Lowell Nesbitt, IBM-1302, 1965. Fig. 4.4. Lowell Nesbitt, IBM-RAMAC 305, 1965. Fig. 4.5. Lowell Nesbitt, IBM 6400, 1965. Fig. 4.6. Lowell Nesbitt, IBM 1440, 1965. Fig. 4.7. IBM 305 RAMAC. Fig. 4.8. Page from the IBM marketing brochure, “IBM 1440: New low cost Data Processing System,” 1962. Fig. 4.9. Lowell Nesbitt, Apollo Mission: Firing Room, 1969. Fig. 4.10. Béla Julesz, cover of Scientific American, February 1965.