Page 37 - Studio International - June 1971

6 Boyd Mefford
Untitled 1970
Strobe lights, electronic
controls
Executed in
collaboration with
Universal, Gribin
and Exley Company
Courtesy : Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art
Photo: Tami Komai
7 Robert Rauschenberg
Mud-Muse 197o
(detail of model)
Mud in tank
Executed in
collaboration with
Teledyne
Photo: Malcolm
Lubliner
8 Andy Warhol
Untitled 197o
Xograph printing
process and rain
machine
Executed in
collaboration with
Cowles Communication
Inc.
Courtesy: Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art
Photo: Tami Komai

Communications, the element of participation technological personnel on every level in our even threaten to become a vehicle for
came to issue in a startlingly literal way. Warhol society. He suggests that the goal priorities commissioned works of art. If anything, the
agreed to design a work incorporating Cowles's assumed within the corporate job structure run artists were more concerned than the companies
3-D printing process. But he ended by acting counter to the positive nature of technological to come away with a finished work—yet most of
really as a kind of legitimizing aegis for the endeavour, which is innately a form of play and the artists made works transitory by definition.
enterprise rather than its sole author and participation. The artist, who has maintained his The development of the various experimental
designer. Although he conceived the work's traditional 'prerogative to use science and interchanges in Art and Technology was on the
basic structure, he then proceeded to function technique unofficially', might become a catalyst whole a polymorphous, discursive and non-
as an agent, prompting crucial involvement in toward the end of humanizing technique. organic process. Indeed it now appears simply
actual aesthetic decision-making phases by his Though Sypher's contentions in the abstract that the relationship between artists and
technical colleagues and even by ourselves. too far overreach the practical sense of what technological corporations is an intrinsically
Despite the fact that his piece at Expo was a occurred through Art and Technology to non-organic one—an least on an a priori basis.
distinguished, if somewhat bizarre, work of art, extrapolate here in extenso, his hypothesis offers The circumstance of corporation involvement
the object itself was in some ways less the single point of correlation uniting every in Art and Technology failed to embody a
important than what it represented of the artist who worked with us. Each of them—some unified patronal ethic comparable to that kind
multilateral aesthetic participation behind its more overtly than others—approached their of already 'humanized', and standardized,
creation. In a sense Warhol has not done various projects with a sense of playfulness, or morality inherent in past systems of academic
anything fundamentally unprecedented `unofficialness'. It was their option to serve in sponsorship. Concomitantly, the artist—in the
through the programme: he has for years used multifarious ways as humanizing agents. by now established absence of either academic
technique unofficially, as it were; it is after all One thing none of us foresaw when we or avant-garde provinces—is startlingly free
Warhol who, more than any other artist, made embarked on Art and Technology was what now from imposed sanctions. Contrary to the myth
respectable commercial methods for art making amounts to a nearly unanimous disregard for of the 'corporate image', there is seen to be no
such as inexpensive screen-printing techniques. permanent, officially-installed art monuments. programmatic framework in the present
The concept of unofficialness in the artist's mode If many of the corporations initially hoped their condition of corporation patronage to support
of working with corporate technology is of participation would result in an icon an official art of any description. A situation
pivotal consequence to the overall dynamics of representing their products and able to be owned allowing room for play and participation—the
Art and Technology. It corresponds immanently and displayed by them, those hopes were latter denoting a mode of activity in which
to the notion of what may be termed a unfulfilled. The significant fact is that the inheres a self-sufficient aesthetic statement—is
participatory aesthetic. companies did not insist upon proprietary established through the paradoxical open-
Wylie Sypher, in his book Literature and rights to the works made—and usually the endedness of the present state of corporate life.
Technology: The Alien Vision (Random House, proposals accepted by them for realization were The artist retains his options.
1968; pp 177; 216; 249), speaks of the state of known beforehand to be inappropriate for such
`alienation' and 'maladjustment' faced by purposes. The programme did not become or
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