Page 33 - Studio International - June 1971

both internal and external, against collaborative implacable and essentially inhuman, and that Although the 'systems-conscious' attitude is
activity between artists and industry are of two therefore humanist and artistic endeavour must increasingly felt to influence artists of various
sorts : first there is anti-technological sentiment function separated from it and even in persuasions, certainly including some of the
on political grounds and, second, there can be opposition to it. Nearly all the positions taken artists who worked in Art and Technology, it is
argued substantial precedent militating against by artists and by their scientific counterparts not by any means a shared attitude among all or
commonly held images of 'technological art' on with respect to the art/technology relationship most artists. One of the characterizing
aesthetic grounds. I shall deal here more are conditioned by one or the other of these sentiments expressed by both those artists and
extensively with the second than the first antithetical beliefs. scientist/engineers who are resistive to an
factor. My thought is to point selectively to a An increasingly prevalent concern of many information or systems aesthetic, has to do with
few components of what is an intricately artists and scientists is to overcome the a suspicion harboured by virtually everyone at
complex subject. With reference to the overtly traditional and presumably obsolete separation times that we are all victims of a technocratic
political question, the fact is that, despite a of academic and professional disciplines. macrostructure over which no-one or no
certain amount of reluctance by some of the Systems analysis, with its assumption that only institution has real control. In the light of this
artists we dealt with through Art and by starting from an interdisciplinary or inescapably sinister possibility, the traditional
Technology to participate with 'war-oriented' total-context approach can social institutions be privilege enjoyed by the artist to function
industries for reasons of moral objection, there made to operate productively, provides independently, and to remain, in a sense, one of
were no final refusals to participate in the procedural methods and models for such the last freelance agents in society, is not easily
programme on this ground alone. reform. In principle, the espousing of a systems relinquished.
The question of aesthetics in relation to aesthetic—illustrated pre-eminently under Art A natural outcome of an artistic/technological
technological/industrial art works is bound up and Technology in the Irwin/Turrell/Garrett endeavour which employs a systems philosophy
with certain attitudes about collective artistic Corporation endeavour—represents a less might be an art which conditions human sense
activity. These attitudes devolve naturally upon rhetorical theory than any (including the perception and radically sensitizes people. Along
several definable antitheses. Constructivist, Bauhaus and 'socialized art' with this might develop possibilities for
One of the fundamental dualisms inherent in manifestations) which has preceded it. It aesthetic forms that would in effect cultivate
the question of technology's uses in a humanist implies the grasp of a powerfully efficacious and enrich the 'man-made' nature which has
context has to do with the conflict between the means for revolutionizing art within the total already replaced nature to such a remarkable
belief that, in a word, technology is the cultural setting. (Jack Burnham gives an degree. For those who firmly believe that
metaphysics of this century, and therefore has extended analysis of what I am terming a society is undergoing a gradual but radical
to be accommodated from within, and the view systems aesthetic throughout his book Beyond reshaping of patterns of consciousness, the
that technology is somehow self-perpetuating, Modern Sculpture, Braziller, 1969.) changes predicted as issuing from a generation

Robert Irwin (left) and James Turrell
at UCLA anechoic chamber, 1969
Project executed in collaboration with the
Garrett Corporation
Photo: Malcolm Lubliner
2 Roy Lichtenstein
Untitled 1970
Film, executed in collaboration with Universal City
Studios and Cinnamon Productions
Courtesy: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Photo : Tami Komai
3 Robert Whitman
Installation Expo 7o
Executed in collaboration with Philco-Ford,
Newport Beach, California
Photo: Malcolm Lubliner

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