Page 47 - Studio International - October 1970

programme, both Russian and American, has Standard with headlines like '20,000 dead'. Any J. G. BALLARD was born in Shanghai of English
failed to excite the public imagination in real of these large human disasters, Pakistan, parents in 1930 and lived there until he was
terms, and I think this may also have Ireland, but Dad, Dad still comes home and fifteen. During the war he was interned by the
something to do with missed opportunities by Mum's still fussing because he's fifteen Japanese and came to England in 1946. At
the mass media. To have been alive, to have minutes late. And that's what I mean by the Cambridge he read medicine but subsequently
watched Armstrong as his foot landed on the insulation against experience. became a copywriter and an RAF pilot, and
surface of the moon ... yet the effect on people's BALLARD: But technology in terms of video-tape began to write seriously in the late 1950s. He
imaginations was nil. Now why ? I think you're machines and so on may make it possible to have is well known to readers of the leading science-
getting a sort of radical social classification into a continuous alternative to direct experience, fiction magazines and is thought of especially
two groups of people: those who work within and I mean any alternative. You can have this highly by other writers working in the same area,
modern science and technology and modern played back in slow motion, or do you want it in although Ballard's work cannot adequately be
communications, who actually appreciate infra-red, or do you want it this or that. Take described by any term as limiting as 'science
what's going on, and those who are outside it. your pick, like a juke-box. Technology may fiction'. Collections of stories by Ballard include
And we are just members of the studio make it possible to have a continuous feedback The Terminal Beach and The Four-Dimensional
audience. We are watching the acrobats but to ourselves of information. But at the moment Nightmare, and his novels include The Crystal
have absolutely no understanding. We are like I think we are starved of information. I think World, The Drowned World, The Drought, and
a charabanc party that's arrived by mistake at that the biggest need of the painter or writer The Atrocity Exhibition. At present he is
Sadlers Wells and are watching a ballet we today is information. I'd love to have a tickertape engaged on a new work of fiction which is to be
don't understand. But I think it's the role of the machine in my study constantly churning out called Crash !
artist to connect the two. His subject-matter is material : abstracts from scientific journals, the
no longer the world of manners and the world of latest Hollywood gossip, the passenger list of a EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, born in Edinburgh in 1924
ordinary appearances. He has to illuminate the 707 that crashed in the Andes, the colour mixes of Italian parents, studied at Edinburgh College
real world for the ordinary person, the new of a new automobile varnish. In fact, Eduardo of Art and the Slade School and first exhibited
world which technology and communications and Iin our different ways are already gathering his sculpture at the Mayor Gallery in 1947.
have created. this kind of information, but we are using the Immediately afterwards he went to Paris for two
WHITFORD: But what is this reality ? Our clumsiest possible tool to do it : our own hands years where he met most of the artists living
experience of the world is now so often at and eyes. The technology of the information- there and took a special interest in the Surrealists
second hand, has been processed and retrieval system that we employ is incredibly and especially Duchamp's work. It was during
reprocessed by many kinds of high-and-low primitive. We fumble around in bookshops, we the 195os that Paolozzi became well known as a
definition reproduction methods, so that what buy magazines or subscribe to them. But I sculptor and his reputation has grown ever since
we often take to be the reality is simply the regard myself as starved of information. I am even though his work has experienced sudden
distorted reflection of it. What I'm trying to say getting a throughput of information in my and unexpected changes in style and direction
is something like this : a hi-fi enthusiast who imaginative life of one-hundredth of what I every few years. In the 1960s he also established
knows his Beethoven only from records is likely could use. I think there's an information a reputation as a print-maker and he continues
to be disappointed when he finally hears starvation at present and technology will create to work in several media. Although Paolozzi has
Beethoven live. The pianist makes mistakes, the the possibility of knowing everything about had retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of
audience coughs, he gets all kinds of things not everything. When Apollo 99 blasts off to Alpha Modern Art and most of the other big
on recordings which turns the whole thing into Centauri we will know everything about the international museums, this present exhibition
a totally different kind of experience. Or when crew all of the time. It's always struck me that at the Tate Gallery is, surprisingly, his first
people see a Van Eyck in a high-quality Eduardo's studio is lavishly equipped with large showing in this country. q
reproduction and then see the original they can photographic and recording equipment of
quite easily prefer the photograph. And I think various kinds. He spends a large part of his time 12 `Well... the bombs are my answer to the Brillo
that Eduardo is especially strong in exploiting on information collection and sorting, and an boxes.'
Bombs (as yet not finally titled) 1971
the subtle changes that occur, almost equal amount of time ensuring that he has a Painted aluminium
accidentally, from one translation into another ready access to all the material he has around Coll: the artist
Photo: Norman Cotterell
medium. So that in the Olivetti etchings you get him. It's a far cry from the nearest thing I can 13 The Artist with Bent Bomb (as yet not finally
the original, which is a photograph reproduced visualize which is books on shelves in a library titled) 1971
in a newspaper, which is then blown up in a where one has a kind of notional access to the Aluminium
new photograph, retouched, and then etched, material but no real access because it's not Coll : the artist
... the overlapping, jostling vocabularies of
and there is a dialogue all the time between the all scanning in front of your mind. And it 14
science, technology, advertising...'
image and the medium into which it's being struck me that the information system Eduardo BASH 1971
transferred. has designed for himself comes very close to the Original collage for silk-screen print published by the
PAOLOZZI : It's got to the point where I would sort of information-retrieval systems that a Galerie Leonhart, Munich
Photo: Cuming Wright-Watson
rather have a carpet made to look like the Mona scientist has. For instance, Dr Christopher 15 'He spends a large part of his time on information
Lisa than the real thing. It's got to that. But a Evans at the National Physical Laboratories collection and sorting ... '
multitude of experiences, of simultaneous uses very similar devices and has a similar The artist's studio, 1970
happenings often of very disparate kinds is a internal scanning system to make sure that he Photo : Artur Laskus
very 20th-century thing. You watch Apollo keeps up to date with whatever touches his 16 ...there is a dialogue all the time between the
image and the medium into which it's being
taking off on a TV in a bar in San Francisco, imagination. I know no writer, other than Len transferred.'
then go round the corner to have your shoes Deighton, who maintains this sort of system. Source photograph and final etching for one image
shined by a topless shoe-shine girl. These kind Most do not even grasp the fact that they need from Conditional Probability Machine 1970
Published by Editions Alecto.
of ironical juxtapositions happen in life all the information to keep their imagination up to par. Photos : Artur Laskus
time. But what we do know is that—and there Deighton used to have, perhaps still does have
are many good funny films about this—the mass a computer, a Telex and an electric typewriter
media demolish experience, negate real plugged into the system.
experience. You know, in the crowded PAOLOZZI : Just think that only two people in
underground train everyone's reading the Bucharest are going to read this. []
143