SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Recorded Objects: Time-Based Technologically Reproducible Art, 1954-1964 A Dissertation Presented by Gerald Hartnett to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University August 2017 Stony Brook University 2017 Copyright by Gerald Hartnett 2017 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Gerald Hartnett We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Andrew V. Uroskie – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, Department of Art Jacob Gaboury – Chairperson of Defense Assistant Professor, Department of Art Brooke Belisle – Third Reader Assistant Professor, Department of Art Noam M. Elcott, Outside Reader Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Columbia University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Recorded Objects: Time-Based, Technologically Reproducible Art, 1954-1964 by Gerald Hartnett Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Criticism Stony Brook University 2017 Illuminating experimental, time-based, and technologically reproducible art objects produced between 1954 and 1964 to represent “the real,” this dissertation considers theories of mediation, ascertains vectors of influence between art and the cybernetic and computational sciences, and argues that the key practitioners responded to technological reproducibility in three ways. First of all, writers Guy Debord and William Burroughs reinvented appropriation art practice as a means of critiquing retrograde mass media entertainments and reportage. Second, Western art music composer Richard Maxfield mobilized chance techniques and indeterminacy to resist scientific and philosophical determinism’s pervasive influences upon post-1945 art and life. Third, author and playwright Samuel Beckett conjectured that ubiquitous recording might become problematic to the quality of experiential life in technologically mediated environments. This study analyzes musical, cinematic, theatrical, and computational works of art from an art historical perspective that is broadly informed by film history, media studies, the Frankfurt School, post-structuralism, gender studies, and queer theory. iii Table of Contents Introduction, Technological Representations of “the Real” Midway Between the Discourse Networks of 1900 and 2000.............................................................................................................1 Scholarship and Technological Reproducibility After 1945 .......................................................1 The Terminology of Recording: Indexicality, Suturing, Allegory, Metacriticism......................7 “New Media” Scholarship: Discourse Networks, Digitalization, the Necromancy Metaphor....................................................................................................................................10 Recording Technology and Immersion, Agency, and Surveillance ..........................................16 Recent Scholarship on Technological Reproducibility and Art ................................................19 The Miniaturization and Portability of Technological Reproducibility from 1948 to 1960 .....24 Methodology..............................................................................................................................29 Chapter 1, Détournement and Cut-up: Auditory Suturing in the Saint Germain-des-Prés, 1954-60..........................................................................................................................................34 Suture Selves: Working Around the Bifurcated Discourse Network at Mid-Century ..............35 Part I—On the Origins of Détournement: Guy Debord’s Historical Menagerie, 1954-1956 ...38 The Lettrist International Years: The Origins of Détournement ...............................................40 Détournement on the Airwaves: Equestrian Radio Sculpture and Hapless Aquatic Spectators.....................................................................................................................50 Educative Value and the Traditions of Radio Drama and Experimentation..............................54 Part II—William S. Burroughs’s Experimental Cut-Up Texts and Tape Recordings, 1958-1962..................................................................................................................................55 Sending-Receiving, Ventriloquism, Viruses, and Telepathy.....................................................57 Nova Express: Cyclotron Shit, Interrogation of a Death Dwarf, Recorded Objects as Weapons in the War with Minraud .......................................................................................63 Explicit Informatics: Coordinate Points and Juxtaposition Formulae.......................................66 “Here is the System According to Us”: Cut-Ups’ Origination and Expansion ........................67 The Move Into Auditory Suturing: Handkerchief Masks..........................................................75 Chapter 2, Original in Every Way it Matters: Recording, Automation, and Chance in Richard Maxfield’s New York City Art Music, 1958-62 ...........................................................................82 Agency and Automation: Maxfield’s Stake in Composition, Recording, and Performance.....84 Experiences at Princeton, Milton Babbitt on Chance................................................................91 Christian Wolff, the Fulbright Year Abroad, Bruno Maderna and Werner Meyer-Eppler .......93 David Tudor’s 1956 Darmstadt Seminar; New York City in 1957...........................................98 Sine Music and Stacked Deck Up Close; Recorded and Electronic Sounds at the New School..............................................................................................................................103 A Composer’s Confessions: Maxfield’s Writings on Recording, Electronics, and Performance ......................................................................................................................110 “The Only Possibility is to Hypothesize”: Maxfield on Uncertainty, Cryptology, and World Building ...................................................................................................................................118 Indeterminacy, Visual Art, Intermasters and Phasing: Fermentation and Amazing Grace ....127 iv Combination Tones: Psychoacoustics, Informatics, and the Natural Environment in Pastoral Symphony and Night Music .....................................................................................................131 Maxfield’s Death and Subsequent Influence...........................................................................136 Chapter 3, The Reality of Krapp’s Last Tape and Film: Samuel Beckett on a Future of Ubiquitous Recording, Externalized Memory, and Omnivorous Vision, 1957-1964 .................142 Part I—Krapp’s Last Tape: Recording, Externalized Memory, Indexing, and the “Body”....147 A Remedy for Overtaxed Memory: Vannevar Bush’s Memex...............................................152 Visions of Machine Recall: John von Neumann’s Mnemonic Architecture and the Cybernetic Memory of Norbert Wiener......................................................................155 Specialized Knowledge and Mnemonic Accentuation: Alain Resnais’ Archive Symphony Tout la Mémoire du Monde...................................................................................160 The Immodest Memory Science of Artificial Intelligence versus Krapp’s Last Tape............164 Part II—“Comic Foundered Precipitancy:” Film as Cinematic Allegory of Ubiquitous Recording.................................................................................................................................166 Film in Action: The Chase, the Baffling Perspective, the Apartment, the Disease of Vision.168 Film’s Archival Turn: Photographed Memories......................................................................174 Beckett’s Stake in the Cinema: Sound, Commerce and Art, the Tramp Archetype and Buster Keaton....................................................................................................................176 Beckett’s Dialogue with Vertov on “Life Caught Unawares”.................................................181 The Dialogue with Keaton on the Ethics of Surreptitious Recording, Commerce, and Fashion..............................................................................................................................186 Part III, Miniaturization Takes Command: Unifying Hearing and Vision to Capture “the Real”...............................................................................................................189 An Auditorially-Equipped Mikhail Kaufman, Angelo’s Bedroom, and Reconaissance at Renault.....................................................................................................................................191 Reality and the Politics of Gender, Topical Event Dinners, A Recollection of Auschwitz ....193 The Nagra Audiotape Recorder, Omnivorous Cinema,