Page 55 - Studio International - April 1971

Rockne Krebs
Untitled 1970
Argon and helium-neon
lasers, mirrors, fog
Executed in collaboration
with Hewlett-Packard, Inc.
Courtesy: Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
Photo: Tami Komai
2 R. B. Kitaj
Component for Lives of the
Engineers 1969
Vacuum-formed plastic
48 X 120 X 48 in.
Executed in collaboration
with Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation
Courtesy : Los Angeles
County Museum of Art
Photo: Malcolm Lubliner

7. Teledyne, Inc. was made clear both in the corporation research at the Garrett Corporation's Life
8. The Garrett Corporation agreements and in the contract we were to make Sciences Department. I firmly believed,
9. Universal City Studios, Inc. with artists. moreover, that to schedule an exhibition, and
1o. Wyle Laboratories The issue of our intended exhibition of the thus work toward consignment deadlines, would
SPONSOR works made through Art and Technology was not only give us an advantageous psychological
1. Eldon Industries, Inc. more complicated. My primary motive in goal, but would prove helpful in eliciting co-
2. Hall Inc. Surgical Systems attempting to make the resources of industry operation from industry. By gearing our efforts
3. Hewlett-Packard available to artists was emphatically not simply toward a culminative event, a quality of
4. Norris Industries Inc. to mount an exhibition. I thought it would be excitement and an increased dedication were
5. Philco-Ford Corporation fascinating to observe a potentially vital brought to bear on our labours for this nebulous
6. The Rand Corporation reciprocal process, and expected personal and and prolonged endeavour. Art and Technology
7. TRW Systems professional gratification from my role as was an experiment—and it had to be made
CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR catalyst in establishing the vehicle for such coherent and explicit in order to be validated.
I. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation connections. I believed that it was the process The question of selecting artists for
BENEFACTORS of interchange between artist and company participation and deciding which artist should
1. Bank of America that was most significant, rather than whatever go where was a difficult one, and relates critically
2. North American Rockwell Corporation tangible results might quickly occur. Obviously to the problem of making possible true
Much of our energy now shifted from the probability that works of art would be `collaboration' as opposed to mere 'art-making'.
negotiations with companies to the task of created was not to be ignored—I knew that We wanted viable, productive connections to
selecting and touring artists. Our discussions many artists would want nothing more than come about, but it was important to us that
with artists were often strangely intense, and physically to realize aesthetic ideas that may these reciprocal endeavours be challenging and
there was more opposition on their part to the have remained in their minds only because of rewarding to both the artist and the scientist
goals of Art and Technology than we had the technical difficulty of executing them. In or engineer, by provoking them to reach beyond
expected to encounter. I had, for example, a short, one could reasonably expect that from habituated patterns. However, we did not
particularly emotional conversation with twenty artists, each working several months in suppose that artists of character, accustomed to
Robert Irwin, who told me that many artists twenty corporations, some kinds of exhibitable working with a particular vocabulary of forms,
resented certain aspects of the programme as things were likely to emerge. I did not regard would be likely to abandon suddenly the
they understood it: they felt that it was unfair the 'success' or 'failure' of the project as resting aesthetic means developed over a lifetime,
for the Museum to take possession of the works mainly with the quantity or even quality of the merely because they were cast into an unfamiliar
created; that the Museum was primarily `results'. But I also tried to indicate to Irwin situation by taking up residence in a company.
interested in producing an exhibition, rather that, given the rationale for such an experiment It was our intention simply to offer uncommon
than in arbitrating the process of interaction as (which he admitted willingly), and given that we opportunities for those artists inclined to
an end in itself; that artists would be pressed were an art museum of the county of Los Angeles, exercise them. How these opportunities might
by the Museum into making works for these it was only reasonable that the institution would be used was exclusively the artist's concern.
reasons; and that they would not in fact be attempt to show something to its audience for Our intention from the outset of Art and
given access to experimental situations within its efforts. I did not feel that this would result Technology was to pay artists for time spent
companies which were not demonstrably in undue pressure being placed on the artists to on the project, while they were in corporate
related to the materials or processes of their produce certifiable art objects. Interestingly, residence, and later when installing works at the
past work. It was not difficult to disabuse Irwin Irwin himself was to provide perhaps the Museum if their presence was needed. Funds
and others of their misconceptions about outstandingly valuable example of a purely raised from company donations allowed us to
property rights to the works of art, since the interactive situation, issuing in no exhibitable remunerate artists at a considerably higher rate
Museum, under the terms of the contracts, had object, although he did seriously contemplate than was conventionally allotted by non-profit
no right whatever to receive works of art; this making an environmental work based on his institutions —international symposia, print
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