Page 31 - Studio International - May 1970

Control Magazine No. 5 is now on sale. Contri- Technology way will give chrome-nickel steel or whatever it is
butors include Michael Sandle, Roy Ascott and that is necessary to regenerate you, that is not
Rick Oginz.There is also information about Control lethal. So this is simply due to our ignorance and
Manual. The address is: Control Magazine, 5 and art 14 our specialization. There comes into our possession
London Mews, London W2. Price 9s. with every process some chemistry that we don't
know what to do with and we call it pollution,
In June this year an international art fair will take whereas this is absolutely essential chemistry for
place in Basle and will be repeated each year. The the functions over here. So the very word 'pollution'.
fair, which stands under the patronage of the Presi- is a word of ignorance...And we then use [the
dent of the Swiss Confederation, Professor H. P. chemistry] diffusely, that is we send it up through
Tschudi, will take place under the name 'Art' from a nozzle where it's highly concentrated or through
June 12 to 16. a stack where it's highly concentrated and diffuse
it in the atmosphere or diffuse it in the waters.
The ICA is planning in 1971 an exhibition in the When you want to mine, you have to concentrate.
form of an autonomous light environment, pro- So here's a chemistry that's highly concentrated
visionally entitled 'Electric Circus' (with due ac- and therefore in the most favourable condition to
knowledgement to the original in New York). The be packaged and put into the other place where it
exhibition is concerned with the interaction be- is needed ...so nothing could be more wasteful
tween the spectator and the environment. The than man's letting things go out through stacks and
predominant element will be the control of space through nozzles loosely when the chemistry has
by means of light and the related use of sound. been concentrated ... I hope that these words like
Artists and others who feel that they could con- ecology and environment that are beginning to
tribute to these proposals should contact the ICA crop up in this language are symptomatic of the
(Electric Circus), 12 Carlton House Terrace, Lon- fact that he is catching on fast enough and will
don SW1. begin to make some important sense. I think that
the education that's going on in general society is
The exhibition 'Manufactured Art' at the Cam- completely transcendental to the university; the
den Arts Centre, May 1-31, refers to non-functional university being really a guardian of generalized
art forms which either require manufactured pro- principles and a guardian of the beautiful tools
cesses or aspire to them. Included, but not directly of the dictionary, what the meanings are of the
connected with the exhibition, is recent work by the sounds we make. They really are guardians of the
Centre for the Studies of Science in Art. This takes communication tools, to keep them really sharp
the form of environmental projects applicable to and useful. But generally speaking men are being
Art College and University environmental or able to use that very broadly because people get
science-in-art courses. their jobs on the television and radio, which is a
great educating and communicating system, get
A new gallery has opened, the Great King Street them by virtue of their vocabulary, and their
Gallery, at 12 Great King Street, Edinburgh, diction and their versatility and adaptability to
Scotland. Main object of the gallery is to exhibit various programs. They really are like bumblebees,
new work. the way a bumblebee goes after its honey and in-
advertently its tail is pollenizing, keeping the
vegetable life going: in the same way the general
system, just television say (maybe it's paid for, for
THE advertising; maybe it's entertainment), this inad-
vertently is proliferating beautiful vocabularies
and giving each of the new children more and more
ST VD 1 0 lovely tools to work with to communicate. So with
that high communications capability then there
suddenly do appear such words as ecology: the
Buckminster Fuller was in England recently for the science of the household, really being the total life-
launching of the Buckminster Fuller Reader', edited by pattern of the various living species, a very beautiful
75 years ago James Meller (Jonathan Cape, 48s), and to discuss plans word. I'm astonished at the thought that's gone
English industrial art may be proud of the remark- for his first architectural project in this country, the into the words, and to me the dictionary is the
able results it is producing in Berlin. On all hands Samuel Beckett theatre at Oxford. On March 7 I inter- most extraordinary memorial man has: that there
English fashions are quite the rage here. Look viewed Professor Fuller on the train to Oxford from have been 50,000 agreements, and finding out how
where you will you see English furniture, English London. difficult it is for him to agree on anything, that he
cretonnes, English velveteens, and English wall- The following are extracts of the tape I recorded. The could agree on that many words! and he could
papers. In Berlin we welcome this healthy sign, as extracts have been edited as lightly as possible, with a agree that there are that many nuances of experi-
giving promise of an improvement in taste, view to capturing the flavour of Fuller's conversational ence to require description...
especially in all that concerns the interior of our style. BENTHALL I'm very interested in your phrase the
houses. (From 'Studio Talk', p. 185, vol. vi.) The theme of our interview was Fuller's theory of a `metaphysical mastering of the physical', which you
`design revolution' whereby man consciously participates say is the task of humanity.
in evolution by reforming the environment... FULLER Seems to be. I'm just observing what his
50 years ago function is and proclivity...
After an interval of six years the displays of FULLER ...If you're thinking about a design by BENTHALL This seems to provide an important
International art in the galleries of the Carnegie virtue of which mind would become operative and link between your ideas on the physical environ-
Institute, among the most spacious and best discover itself, our own human species's experience ment and the cultural environment.
appointed in America, were resumed on April 29 is exactly the kind of way I would see that given FULLER That's all I've been talking about...has
last with the opening of the Nineteenth Annual the trial-and-error way of discovering what is been the function of man in the universe to employ
Exhibition. The number of works gathered together heavy, what is cold, what is wet, what is dry, how his metaphysical capability, because all that's
from all quarters was 373. England was represented do you satisfy this without killing yourself, etc.— going on between you and me is absolutely
by 83 canvases, France by 53, and the remaining after discovering them you begin to discover the weightless— I'm talking about patterns, and patterns
167 foreign works were distributed between Sweden, great orderliness that really is operative underlying weigh nothing. There is conceptuality, pattern
Denmark, Italy, Spain, Norway, Russia, Belgium, it all. And that is what we are beginning to do. It's conceptuality independent of size ...And this is
Switzerland and Canada.... The gold medal carry- a question of whether we're going to do it in time... extremely important when we get on to under-
ing with it a prize of fifteen hundred dollars was for instance, just using this word 'pollution': it's a stand how the human mind can discover general-
awarded to Mr Abbott H. Thayer, of New Hamp- word of utter ignorance because the universe is ized principles in total experience. When I say 'a
shire, for his three-quarter figure of A Young Woman designed with this inventory of chemical elements triangle', I don't mean any one experience, it has
in Olive Plush. (From 'Studio Talk', p. 31, vol. lxxx; each one of which all have their unique advantages, to be common to any three points in the universe,
See this month's News and Notes.) unique behaviour, which employed in the right and their relationship with one another.