S A I N G D Art in the Information Age: G R C A U P L Technology and Conceptual Art H T U A R R E T ABSTRACT
Edward A. Shanken Art historians have generally drawn sharp distinctions be- tween conceptual art and art- and-technology. This essay reexamines the interrelationship of these tendencies as they developed in the 1960s, focus- n the mid-1960s, Marshall McLuhan prophesied protocols of computer software and ing on the art criticism of Jack I Burnham and the artists in- that electronic media were creating an increasingly intercon- the increasingly “dematerialized” cluded in the Software exhibition nected global village. Such pronouncements popularized the forms of experimental art, which that he curated. The historiciza- idea that the era of machine-age technology was drawing to a the critic interpreted, metaphori- tion of these practices as close, ushering in a new era of information technology. Sens- cally, as functioning like informa- distinct artistic categories is ing this shift, Pontus Hultén organized a simultaneously nos- tion processing systems. Software examined. By interpreting talgic and futuristic exhibition on art and mechanical included works by conceptual artists conceptual art and art-and- technology as reflections and technology at the Museum of Modern Art in New York such as Les Levine, Hans Haacke constituents of broad cultural (MOMA) in 1968. The Machine: As Seen at the End of the Me- and Joseph Kosuth, whose art was transformations during the chanical Age included work ranging from Leonardo da Vinci’s presented beside displays of tech- information age, the author 16th-century drawings of flying machines to contemporary nology including the first public ex- concludes that the two tenden- cies share important similarities, artist-engineer collaborations selected through a competition hibition of hypertext (Labyrinth, an and that this common ground organized by Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. (E.A.T.). electronic exhibition catalog de- offers useful insights into E.A.T. had emerged out of the enthusiasm generated by nine signed by Ned Woodman and Ted late–20th-century art. evenings: theatre and engineering, a festival of technologically en- Nelson) and a model of intelligent hanced performances that artist Robert Rauschenberg and architecture (SEEK, a reconfig- engineer Billy Klüver organized in New York in October 1966. urable environment for gerbils designed by Nicholas Negro- E.A.T. also lent its expertise to engineering a multimedia ex- ponte and the Architecture Machine Group at the Massachusetts travaganza designed for the Pepsi Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Institute of Technology) [1]. Fair in 1970. Simultaneously, the American Pavilion at Osaka Regardless of these points of intersection and the fact that included an exhibition of collaborative projects between artists conceptual art emerged during a moment of intensive artis- and industry that were produced under the aegis of the Art tic experimentation with technology, few scholars have ex- and Technology (A&T) Program at the Los Angeles County plored the relationship between technology and conceptual Museum of Art. art. Indeed, art-historical literature traditionally has drawn Ambitious as they were, few of the celebrated artist-engineer rigid categorical distinctions between conceptual art and art- collaborations of this period focused on the artistic use of in- and-technology. The following reexamination, however, chal- formation technologies, such as computers and telecommu- lenges the disciplinary boundaries that obscure significant nications. Taking an important step in that direction, Cybernetic parallels between these practices. The first part describes Burn- Serendipity, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in ham’s curatorial premises for the Software exhibition and in- 1968, was thematically centered on the relationship between terprets works in the show by Levine, Haacke and Kosuth. The computers and creativity. This show, however, remained fo- second part proposes several possible reasons why conceptual cused on the materiality of technological apparatuses and their art and art-and-technology became fixed as distinct, if not anti- products, such as robotic devices and computer graphics. thetical, categories. The conclusion suggests that the corre- Art critic Jack Burnham pushed the exploration of the rela- spondences shared by these two artistic tendencies offer tionship between art and information technology to an un- grounds for rethinking the relationship between them as con- precedented point. In 1970, he curated the exhibition Software, stituents of larger social transformations from the machine Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art, at the Jewish Mu- age of industrial society to the so-called information age of seum in New York. This show was the first major U.S. art-and- post-industrial society. technology exhibition that attempted to utilize computers in Before proceeding, some working definitions will clarify the a museum context. Software’s technological ambitions were terminology of conceptual art and art-and-technology in order matched by Burnham’s conceptually sophisticated vision, for to open up a discussion of their relatedness beyond the nar- the show drew parallels between the ephemeral programs and row confines of extant discourses. Resisting the arch formal- ism that had become institutionalized by the 1960s, conceptual art has sought to analyze the ideas underlying the creation and Edward A. Shanken (art historian), Information Science Studies (ISIS), 17 John Hope Franklin Center, Box 90400, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, U.S.A. E-mail: reception of art, rather than to elaborate another stylistic con-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402760181259 by guest on 01 October 2021 S A I N G D languages as semiotic systems. In this re- Esthetics” (1968) and “Real Time simulations and representations—i.e. G gard, conceptual art is a meta-critical and Systems” (1969) [4], Burnham designed software—as opposed to first-hand, di- R C A U self-reflexive art process. It is engaged in Software to function as a testing ground rect, corporeal experiences of actual ob- P L H T theorizing the possibilities of significa- for public interaction with “information jects, places and events, i.e. hardware. U tion in art’s multiple contexts (including systems and their devices.” Many of the A R All activities which have no connection R E its history and criticism, exhibitions and displays were indeed interactive and T with object or material mass are the re- markets). In interrogating the relation- based on two-way communication be- sult of software. Images themselves are ship between ideas and art, conceptual tween the viewer and the exhibit. Software hardware. Information about these im- art de-emphasizes the value traditionally was predicated, moreover, on the ideas of ages is software. . . . The experience of seeing something first hand is no longer accorded to the materiality of art objects. “software” and “information technology” of value in a software controlled society, It focuses, rather, on examining the pre- as metaphors for art. Burnham conceived as anything seen through the media car- conditions for how meaning emerges in of “software” as parallel to the aesthetic ries just as much energy as first hand ex- art, seen as a semiotic system. principles, concepts or programs that un- perience. . . . In the same way, most of the Art-and-technology has focused its in- derlie the formal embodiment of actual art that is produced today ends up as in- formation about art [8]. quiry on the materials and/or concepts art objects, which in turn parallel “hard- of technology and science, which it rec- ware.” In this regard, he interpreted con- Levine conceived of the 31,000 indi- ognizes artists have historically incorpo- temporary experimental art practices, vidual photos as the residual effects or rated in their work. Its investigations including conceptual art, as predomi- “burn-off” of the information system he include: (1) the aesthetic examination of nantly concerned with the software aspect created—as the material manifestation the visual forms of science and technol- of aesthetic production. of software. In other words, Systems Burn- ogy, (2) the application of science and In his 1970 essay “Alice’s Head,” Burn- Off was an artwork that produced infor- technology in order to create visual forms ham suggested that, like the “grin with- mation (software) about the information and (3) the use of scientific concepts and out the cat” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in produced and disseminated by the media technological media both to question Wonderland, conceptual art was all but de- (software) about art (hardware). It of- their prescribed applications and to cre- void of the conventional materiality as- fered a critique of the systematic process ate new aesthetic models. In this third sociated with art objects. He subsequently through which art objects (hardware) be- case, art-and-technology, like conceptual explained Software in similar terms, as “an come transformed by the media into in- art, is also a meta-critical process. It chal- attempt to produce aesthetic sensations formation about art objects (software). lenges the systems of knowledge (and the without the intervening ‘object’” [5]. Whereas Levine stated that most art technologically mediated modes of Burnham theorized this artistic shift as “ends up as information about art,” Sys- knowing) that structure scientific meth- paralleling larger social transformations tems Burn-Off was art as information about ods and conventional aesthetic values. based in cybernetics and systems theory. information about art, adding a level of Further, it examines the social and aes- Here, the interactive feedback of infor- complexity and reflexivity onto that cycle thetic implications of technological mation amongst systems and their com- of transformations in media culture. media that define, package and distrib- ponents in global fields eradicated any Systems Burn-Off can be related to ute information. “separation between the mind of the per- Levine’s interactive video installations, ceiver and the environment” [6]. such as Iris (1968) and Contact: A Cyber- In the late 1960s, Les Levine was at the netic Sculpture (1969). In these works, ART AS SOFTWARE: BURNHAM, forefront of artistic experimentation video cameras captured various images LEVINE, HAACKE, KOSUTH using the interactive feedback of infor- of the viewer(s), which were fed back, The title for the Software exhibition was mation systems to interrogate the bound- often with time delays or other distor- suggested to Burnham by artist Les aries between viewer and environment. tions, onto a bank of monitors. As Levine Levine. Burnham himself had interacted He was represented in Software by three noted, “‘Iris’ . . . turns the viewer into in- directly with software as a fellow at the pieces, including Systems Burn-Off X Resid- formation . . . ‘Contact’ is a system that Center for Advanced Visual Studies ual Software (1969). The original instal- synthesizes man with his technology . . . (CAVS) at MIT during the 1968–1969 ac- lation at the Phyllis Kind Gallery in the people are the software” [9]. Al- ademic year. He reported on that expe- Chicago comprised 1,000 copies of 31 though these works demanded the di- rience in a public lecture organized by photographs taken by Levine at the rect, corporeal experience of the curator Edward Fry at the Guggenheim March 1969 opening of the highly pub- participant, it was the experience of see- Museum in 1969, later published as “The licized Earth Works exhibition in Ithaca, ing oneself as information—as trans- Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems.” Burn- New York. Numerous New York critics formed into software—that was of ham expressed his interest in how “a di- and journalists had been bused upstate primary concern to the artist. In this re- alogue evolves between the participants— for the event. Levine explained that most gard, Levine provocatively has noted the computer program and the human of the 31,000 photographs, which docu- that, “Simulation is more real than real- subject—so that both move beyond their mented the media spectacle, were “ran- ity. Reality is an over-rated hierarchy” original state” [2]. He further theorized domly distributed on the floor and [10]. For many artists working at the in- this bi-directional exchange as a model for covered with jello; some were stuck to the tersection of conceptual art and art- the “eventual two-way communication” wall with chewing gum; the rest were for and-technology, the particular visual that he anticipated emerging in art [3]. sale” [7]. manifestation of the artwork as an object Karl Katz, director of the Jewish Museum, Levine’s artist’s statement in the Soft- was secondary to the expression of an idea heard the talk and invited Burnham to ware exhibition catalog also outlined his that becomes reality by simulating it. curate an exhibition. concept of software and its relationship Conceptual artist Hans Haacke also Following up the ideas he outlined in to art. He argued that the proliferation utilized technology and mass media in “The Aesthetics of Intelligent Systems” of mass media was changing knowledge the production of art. Perhaps best and in related essays, including “Systems into a second-hand mental experience of known for his politically charged cri-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402760181259 by guest on 01 October 2021 S A I N tiques of art institutions and industry, his up to date and available. The constantly (4) to grasp the essential of a given G D work in the early 1960s evolved from ki- changing data is projected onto a large whole; to break up a given whole into G screen, so that it is accessible to a great R C netic sculpture and was included in a parts and to isolate them voluntarily A U number of people. Based on their own P L number of key Nouvelle Tendence exhi- information a statistical profile of the ex- (5) to generalize; to abstract common H T U bitions. These early works were predi- hibition’s visitors emerges [13]. properties; to plan ahead ideationally; to A R cated on the dynamism of natural assume an attitude toward the “mere pos- R E T systems, an idea that was integral to di- Like Levine, Haacke did not use tech- sible” and to think or perform symboli- verse strains of process and conceptual nology as an end in itself, but rather put cally art, as well as to art-and-technology. it in the service of the ideas that were cen- (6) to detach our ego from the outer Haacke considered himself a “sort of jun- tral to his artistic practice. As in earlier world ior partner” of the German-based Zero technologically enhanced works by Kosuth’s statement in the Software cata- group [11], renowned for their sky and Haacke, such as Photo-Electric Viewer- log emphasized his intention that the light works of the late 1950s. The Howard Programmed Coordinate System (1966–1968), work not be reducible to a mental image, Wise Gallery, the premier commercial technology was employed as a means to but that it exist as information free of any venue for the presentation of art-and- enable art to become a responsive, real- iconography: “The art consists of my ac- technology, gave Haacke solo exhibitions time system that “merges with the envi- tion of placing this activity (investigation) in 1966, 1968 and 1969. ronment in a relationship that is better in an art context (i.e. art as idea as idea)” A close friend of Burnham since 1962, understood as a ‘system’ of interdepen- [15]. Haacke contributed two pieces to the dent processes” [14]. Similarly, in the According to the software metaphor Software exhibition: News and Visitor’s Pro- Software version of Visitor’s Profile, a com- underlying Burnham’s exhibition, the art file. These works were part of the artist’s puter received, processed and distributed in Kosuth’s work was not the billboard or Real Time Systems series, inspired in part information instantaneously so that the the other structural elements (hard- by conversations with Burnham, who in- piece could interact with participants in ware), but was manifested rather in the troduced Haacke to the idea of open bi- real time by responsively gathering and idea of contextualizing philosophical ological systems developed by Ludwig evaluating information about the sys- questions (software) within the context Von Bertalanffy and to Norbert Wiener’s tematic relationship between art and so- of visual art and simultaneously decon- theories of cybernetics. Burnham’s arti- ciety. In this regard, Haacke’s work shares textualizing them in various public, non- cle “Real Time Systems” differentiated common concerns with the conceptual art media. In this way, his work between “ideal time” and “real time” with goals underlying the work of many artists investigated the relationship between art respect to art, a distinction that Haacke associated with art-and-technology, in- and non-art ideas, the vehicles by which applied to his work. In ideal time, the aes- cluding Nicolas Schöffer’s CYSP series of they are expressed, and the semiotic net- thetic contemplation of beauty occurs in cybernetic sculptures of the mid-1950s, works that enable and delimit their theoretical isolation from the temporal James Seawright’s interactive robotic meanings in multiple contexts. contingencies of value; while in real time, sculptures beginning in the mid-1960s, Applying the parallel Burnham drew— value accrues on the basis of an immedi- Sonia Sheridan’s founding of the Gen- between how computer software controls ate, interactive, and necessarily contin- erative Systems program at the School of the hardware that runs it and how infor- gent exchange of information. the Art Institute of Chicago in 1970, mation directs the activity of the human News (1969) incorporated several Tele- Myron Kreuger’s “artificial reality” envi- mind—to Kosuth’s work, one can inter- type machines that delivered a perpetual ronments beginning in the early 1970s pret the artist’s propositions as operating flow of information about local, national and the veritable explosion of art com- like instructions in the mind of the and international events, printed out on bining computers and telecommunica- viewer. But whereas computer software continuous rolls of paper in real time. tions since 1980. has an instrumental relationship with The computerized Visitor’s Profile planned Like Levine and Haacke, Joseph Ko- hardware, coordinating its operation, the for Software was more technologically suth also has utilized mass media as a artist’s propositions function as meta- sophisticated than the manual version component in his work. However, unlike analyses of the phenomenological and installed at the Information exhibition those artists, Kosuth has not made ex- linguistic components of meaning. In the same year. The computer was pro- plicit use of technology such as video, other words, they demand that the viewer grammed to instantaneously cross-tabulate computers or telecommunications. examine the process of processing infor- demographic information about the mu- Nonetheless, the technological meta- mation, while in the process of doing so. seum audience (age, sex, education and phor of information processing offers an Although Kosuth did not explicitly so on) with their opinions on a variety insightful model for interpreting his draw on computer models of informa- of provocative subjects, ranging from work. His contribution to Software, the tion processing, his investigations follow “Should the use of marijuana be legal- Seventh Investigation (Art as Idea as Idea) similar modes of logic, while at the same ized, lightly or severely punished?” to “As- Proposition One (1970), included the same time demanding a self-reflexivity that ex- suming you were Indochinese, would you printed text in various international con- ceeds computational systems. By posing sympathize with the present Saigon texts: a billboard in English and Chinese propositions that required viewers to in- regime?” [12] Whereas the statistical data in the Chinatown neighborhood of lower vestigate the cognitive functioning of from the other versions of Visitor’s Profile Manhattan, an advertisement in The Daily their own minds with respect to the pro- were tabulated on a daily basis, the Soft- World and a banner in Turin. The text cessing of information and the creation ware version was designed to perform comprised a set of six propositions: of meaning, Kosuth’s Seventh Investigation these calculations in real time. As Haacke (1) to assume a mental set voluntarily sought to interrogate how and why what noted in his artist’s statement: (2) to shift voluntarily from one aspect he called the “language game” of art The processing speed of the computer of the situation to another functioned in a larger cultural frame- makes it possible that at any given time (3) to keep in mind simultaneously work. This critical project reflects the the statistical evaluation of all answers is various aspects shift from an industrial to a post-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402760181259 by guest on 01 October 2021 S A I N G D industrial economic base, characteristic be a viable direction for many artists in Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object G of the information age. Here meaning the 1970s. Critics opined that it was dom- from 1966 to 1972 [19], Ascott’s anticipa- R C A U and value are not embedded in objects, inated by the materiality and spectacle of tion of and contribution to the formation P L H T institutions, or individuals so much as mechanical apparatus, which was anath- of conceptual art in Britain has received U scant recognition, perhaps (and ironi- A R they are abstracted in the production, ema to the conceptual project. Techni- R E manipulation and distribution of signs cal failures of art and technology cally) because his work was too closely al- T and information. exhibitions, like Software (which, ironi- lied with art-and-technology. In this cally, was plagued with software prob- regard, Ascott’s use of the thesaurus in lems), contributed to waning public 1963 drew an explicit parallel between ESISTANCE TO ARALLELS R P interest, just at the moment that a suc- the taxonomic qualities of verbal and vi- BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL ART cession of large, successful exhibitions of sual languages, a concept that would be AND ART-AND-TECHNOLOGY conceptual art were mounted. Wide- taken up in Joseph Kosuth’s Second In- In Art into Ideas, Robert C. Morgan cred- spread skepticism towards the military- vestigation, Proposition 1 (1968) and Mel ited Burnham’s “Systems Esthetics” with industrial complex after May 1968 and Ramsden’s Elements of an Incomplete Map having clarified the “feeling that art had amidst the Vietnam War, the Cold War (1968). traversed from the object to the idea, from and mounting ecological concerns all Sol Lewitt’s influential essay “Para- a material definition of art to that of a sys- contributed to problematizing the artistic graphs of Conceptual Art” (1967) further tem of thought.” Morgan then described use of technology—and the production exemplifies the complications and con- conceptual art as “a significant and inno- of aesthetic objects in general—within flicts at the intersection of conceptual art vative method or type (not a style) of artis- the context of commodity capitalism and art-and-technology. In the second tic practice on the eve of the Informational [17]. Conceptual art, on the other hand, paragraph he described conceptual art Age” and noted a “parallel socioeconomic with its assault on the modernist object, as a quasi-mechanical process: “In con- phenomenon . . . the penumbra between became increasingly influential to a vari- ceptual art the idea of concept is the most industry and postindustry” [16]. ety of au courant artistic discourses, in- important aspect of the work . . . [t]he Burnham had already drawn a similar cluding photography, performance and idea becomes a machine that makes the parallel in “Systems Esthetics,” which re- installation. It stands to reason that art.” Several paragraphs later, however, ferred to the shift in industry from the artists, critics, dealers, curators and col- he warned that “new materials are one of control of production to the control of lectors invested in internationally presti- the great afflictions of contemporary information that John Kenneth Gal- gious conceptual art would want to art. . . . The danger is, I think, in making braith described in The New Industrial distance themselves from associations the physicality of the materials so impor- State. However, in “Systems Esthetics” he with art-and-technology, which appeared tant that it becomes the idea of the work also drew explicit parallels between con- increasingly peripheral to contemporary (another kind of expressionism)” [20]. ceptual art and developments in systems artistic concerns, if not simply passé. Although the idea of unifying art and theory and computer information pro- These factors all contributed to exac- technology held substantial cultural cur- cessing. For Burnham, these scientific erbating distinctions between the artistic rency for much of the 20th century, many and technological advances were insepa- tendencies, rather than revealing the flu- artists, critics and historians came to per- rable from the sweeping economic and idity and continuity between them. It ceive the junction as weighted down by social changes that Galbraith and others would be a mistake, however, to under- (in Lewitt’s words) the “physicality of the were identifying and forecasting. estimate the commonalities between con- materials,” which dominated the “idea of Morgan’s alliance with Burnham ceptual artists and artists like Schöffer, the work.” In her introduction to Con- ceases precisely at the point of drawing Seawright, Sheridan, Krueger and nu- ceptual Art, Ursula Meyer appropriated a an explicit parallel between conceptual merous others, who, like other mid- and technological metaphor and wrote, art and information technology. No art late–20th-century artists associated with “Conceptual Art is diametrically opposed historian since Burnham has made that art-and-technology, were concerned with to hardware art” [21]. connection so emphatically; and nearly process, real-time interaction and dy- This sentiment was held perhaps more all have sought to dismiss it. However, it namic systems. Moreover, artists who ap- strongly in conceptual art circles, where is unclear how the relationship that Mor- plied a conceptual approach to exploring the battle against the formalism of mod- gan recognizes between conceptual art, technological ideas did not easily fit ei- ernist objects (and their complicity as the information age and post-industrial ther category. The example of Roy Ascott commodities in reinforcing capitalist ide- society can be explained without re- powerfully demonstrates the significant ology) was being waged most fervently. course to the specific technologies that intersections between conceptual art and From this anti-formalist perspective, the emerged with them. If those relation- art-and-technology, exploding the con- bells and whistles of art-and-technology ships are going to be drawn (and I argue ventional autonomy of these art- appeared to be gaudy, expressionistic for doing so), then it will be necessary to historical categories. and commercial excesses that were ex- address, as Burnham did, the scientific Ascott, the British artist most closely as- traneous and antithetical to the aesthetic and technological advances that con- sociated with cybernetic art in England, investigation of superstructural ideas and tributed to broader cultural and social was not included in Cybernetic Serendipity questions of semiosis that defined key changes. because his use of cybernetics was pri- agendas of conceptual art. Nonetheless, it is understandable why marily conceptual and did not explicitly The writing of art historian and critic conceptual art and art-and-technology utilize technology [18]. Conversely, al- Charles Harrison, a member of Art & have been identified as distinct categories though his essay on the application of cy- Language (A&L) since 1969, demands of artistic practice. Art-and-technology, bernetics to art and art pedagogy, “The close and careful analysis in this regard which had offered a useful path of aes- Construction of Change” (1964), was because of its centrality to the discourses thetic experimentation throughout the quoted on the dedication page (to Sol of conceptual art. Harrison has written, 1950s and 1960s, no longer appeared to Lewitt) of Lucy Lippard’s seminal Six “The rapprochement of art and tech-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402760181259 by guest on 01 October 2021 S A I N nology . . . tended to suffer from a trivial French Army (1967) [31], exemplify criti- technology characterizes a wide variety G D equation of ‘modernity’ with scientific cal concerns at the heart of art-and- of artistic inquiries in the domain of art- G R C and mechanical development. It tended technology. and-technology since the 1950s. Key A U P L also to be co-opted by the very represen- Hurrell’s spurious computer program monuments include Gustav Metzger’s H T U tational technologies it set out to exploit” for interactively generating color refused theory of auto-destructive art (1959), A R [22]. He also stated that during this “time to allow the user to interact beyond the Tinguely’s Homage to New York (1960), R E T of E.A.T.... and of Cybernetic Serendip- rigid banality of binary input. If the user Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe’s Robot ity . . . it seemed to some as if fascination input a number other than 0 or 1, the pro- K-456 (1964) and Oyvind Fahlstrom’s with design and technology might be sig- gram proffered the message: “YOU HAVE Kisses Sweeter than Wine (1966). The work nificantly injected into artistic mod- NOTHING, OBEY INSTRUCTIONS!” If of Stelarc, Lynn Hershman, Survival Re- ernism. The boot was on the other foot, the user input a non-number, Cybernetic search Laboratories, Julia Scher, Jodi.org however” [23]. Paraphrasing A&L co- Art Work told him or her that there was an and others continue this tradition of founder Michael Baldwin, Harrison “ERROR AT STEP 3.2.” Lecher System jux- art-and-technology in a manner that wrote that the “legacies of Pop-Art-and- taposed a “‘sculptural morphology’ and challenges modernist aesthetics and technology were never part of the Art & an ‘electromagnetic morphology.’” The technocracy. Language agenda,” [24] and further perceptual experience of interacting with Equating art-and-technology with ma- claimed that they never “furnished much the sculptural aspect of the system was in- chine aesthetics, kinetic gadgets, and better than chronic distractions from the tended to result in knowledge about the other spectacles that feed on and sustain more interesting and intractable prob- electromagnetic aspect of the system that, modernist discourses rather than inter- lems of modern art” [25]. in turn, would create knowledge about rogate them, Harrison and other critics Although Pop art and art-and- the sculptural aspects. 22 Sentences in- of conceptual art were unaware of, unim- technology intersected at certain points, cluded a key to abbreviations for the pressed by, or disinterested in this criti- they also represent two very different French Army (FA), the Collection of Men cal aspect of artists’ use of technology. legacies. By collapsing them together, and Machines (CMM), and the Group of Yet, Harrison’s early-1980s description of Baldwin and Harrison reduce the unique Regiments (GR), then described the Art & Language’s Index 01 (1972) [33] qualities and goals of each to their least inter-relationships between them: explicitly referred to the fields of artifi- common denominator, namely the use cial intelligence and what has come to be The FA is regarded as the same CMM as of technology as a formal element the GR and the GR is the same CMM as known as neurophilosophy, with strong wielded in the interest of appealing to (e.g.) “a new order” FA (e.g. Morpho- overtones of cybernetics and systems the- the masses. Indeed, Baldwin had in mind logically a member of another class of ory. In this regard, his discussion of the the “art-democratised-as-light-shows-or- objects): by transitivity the FA is the systematic approaches of conceptual art same CMM as the “New Shape/Order cyberneticised-life-style machine” events one.” is remarkably similar to Burnham’s the- of the UK group Fine Artz, with whom ories on the systematic relationship be- A&L co-founder David Bainbridge was af- This ironic passage reduced to ab- tween technology and conceptual art as filiated [26]. Burnham also denigrated surdity the sort of systematic relation- exemplified in Software [34]. A&L’s Index, the “chic superficiality that sur- ships between individuals, groups, and moreover, can be thought of as a kind of rounded . . . many of the kinetic per- institutions characteristic of cybernetics manual hypertext system that allows for formances and ‘light events,’” which he (it is surprisingly similar to the ana- the interactive associative linking of equated with the sensation of “the up- grammatic rhetoric of Ascott’s “cyber- ideas. As mentioned above, the first pub- town discotheque” [27]. However, Burn- netic art matrix” [32]). Although not lic exhibition of hypertext took place in ham, being much more interested in and explicitly stated in the work, the artistic Burnham’s exhibition. In these ways, knowledgeable about art-and-technology, avant-garde is also morphologically con- both the practice and criticism of con- also recognized that its more theoreti- nected to the French military, from ceptual art and art-and-technology are cally sophisticated aspects—i.e. its con- which the term comes. So the relations much more closely related than the his- cern with process and systems, the articulated in the work must also be toricization of these artistic tendencies as relationship between technological and mapped onto art relations. It is worth distinct categories would lead one to be- aesthetic structures of knowledge, and an noting, moreover, that the French Army lieve. interactive, two-way exchange of is “decimated,” in eight of the 22 sen- Harrison’s accounts of Art & Language information—were closely related to cen- tences, hardly a coincidence, given the tend to focus on identifying the philo- tral features of conceptual art. war then being waged in the former sophical and political foundations of the Despite his indifference to art-and- French colony of Viet Nam. group’s challenges to the aesthetic dis- technology, Harrison acknowledged the Because these works by A&L members courses of modernism. But by limiting its interest in technology shared by A&L were infused with irony, their techno- foil to pre-war notions of materiality and founding members Harold Hurrell and logical or pseudo-technological compo- production and formalist aesthetic issues, David Bainbridge. He described the for- nents must be interpreted as parodies of his history of A&L (like the art criticism mer’s Cybernetic Artwork that Nobody Broke scientific structures of knowledge and of conceptual art in general) is unneces- (1969) [28] and the latter’s Lecher System their uncritical application in art and sarily narrow in its implications because (1969–1970) [29] as “flailing about— society in general. In challenging the it fails to address the relationship of products of the search for practical and systems of knowledge (and the techno- late–20th-century experimental art to the intellectual tools which had not already logically mediated modes of knowing) information age of post-industrial soci- been compromised and rendered eu- that structure scientific methods and ety. In addition to the relevant philo- phemistic in Modernist use” [30]. But conventional aesthetic values, these works sophical, political and aesthetic issues, a there is much more to these works than have much in common with the objec- more comprehensive account of that. I suggest that they, as well as Terry tives of art-and-technology. Indeed, the post–World War II art must also take into Atkinson and Baldwin’s 22 Sentences: The critical questioning of the implications of consideration the specific scientific and
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402760181259 by guest on 01 October 2021 S A I N G D technological theories and developments Information processing technology in- 17. Edward A. Shanken, “Gemini Rising, Moon in G that contributed to larger social forma- fluences our notions about creativity, Apollo: Attitudes Towards Art and Technology in the R C perception and the limits of art. . . . It . . . US, 1966–1971,” in ISEA97 (Proceedings of Inter- A U tions that impacted all aspects of mate- is probably not the province of comput- national Society for Electronic Art) (Chicago: P L ISEA97, 1998); reprinted on-line in Leonardo Elec- H T rial culture. ers and other telecommunication de- U tronic Almanac 6, No. 12 (January 1999),
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