Art in The Information Age - Technology and Conceptual Art - Leonardo - Shanken - 2002
Art in The Information Age - Technology and Conceptual Art - Leonardo - Shanken - 2002
Art in The Information Age - Technology and Conceptual Art - Leonardo - Shanken - 2002
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O 2002 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 433-438, 2002 433
F
S| technological theories and developments Information processing technology in- 17. Edward A. Shanken, "Gemini Rising, Moon in
that contributed to larger social forma- fluences our notions about creativity, Apollo: Attitudes TowardsArt and Technology in the
Ig tions that impacted all aspects of mate- perception and the limits of art.... It... US, 1966-1971," in ISEA97 (Proceedings of Inter-
national Society for Electronic Art) (Chicago:
| rial culture.
is probably not the province of comput-
ers and other telecommunication de- ISEA97, 1998); reprinted on-line in LeonardoElec-
| vices to produce works of art as we know
it; but they will, in fact, be instrumental
tronicAlmanac6,No. 12 (January1999), <http://mit-
press.mit.edu/ejournals/LEA/ARTICLES/gemini.
html>.
CONCLUSION in redefining the entire area of esthetic
awareness [35]. 18.Jasia Reichardt, interview with the author, 30July
The continuities between art-and- 1998, London.
technology and conceptual art are more 19. Lucy R. Lippard ed., Six Years:TheDematerializa-
readily apparent from a historical dis- tion of the Art Objectfrom 1966 to 1972 (New York:
tance of three decades, removed from Acknowledgment Praeger, 1973).
the aesthetico-political debates of that Dedicated toJudy Fishman, for nurturing my love of 20. Sol Lewitt, "Paragraphson Conceptual Art," in
time. Advances in electronics, comput- art. Stiles and Selz, TheoriesandDocumentsof Contemporary
Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
ing and telecommunications-and espe- p. 825.
cially the advent of the Internet-have
21. Ursula Meyer, ConceptualArt (New York:Dutton,
provided tools that enable artists to in- References and Notes 1972) p. xvi.
terrogate the conventional materiality l.Judith Benjamin Burnham, ed., Software,Informa- 22. Charles Harrison, Essayson Art & Language(Lon-
and semiotic complexity of art objects in tion Technology:
ItsNewMeaningforArt(New York:The don: Basil Blackwell, 1991; Cambridge, Mass: MIT
ways that were not available 30 years ago. Jewish Museum, 1971). Press, 2001) p. 17.
Such developments also bring into relief 2. Jack Burnham, "The Aesthetics of Intelligent 23. Harrison [22] p. 260, n. 25.
the failure of critical discourses to rec- Systems," in On theFuture of Art (New York:Viking,
1970) p. 119. 24. Harrison [22] p. 261, n. 30.
oncile how the work of an artist could be
allied simultaneously with both art-and- 3. Jack Burnham, "Notes on Art and Information 25. Charles Harrison, "The Late Sixties in London
Processing," in Burnham [1] p. 10. and Elsewhere," in Hillary Gresty,ed., 1965-1972-
technology and conceptual art. Haacke, WhenAttitudesBecameForm, (Cambridge, U.K.: Ket-
for example, exhibited at the Howard 4. Jack Burnham, "Systems Esthetics," Artforum7, tle's YardGallery, 1984) pp. 10-11.
No. 1, 30-35 (September 1968); Jack Burnham,
Wise Gallery,and his work features promi- "Real Time Systems"Artforum8, No 1, 49-55 (Sep- 26. Michael Baldwin, e-mail correspondence with the
nently in key monographs on kinetic art tember 1969). author, 9 April 2002.
and art-and-technology.Nonetheless, his 5. Jack Burnham, correspondence with the author, 27.Jack Burnham, "Stepsin the Formulation of Real-
work has been canonized primarily 23 April 1998. Time Political Art," in Kaspar Koenig, ed., Hans
within the context of Conceptual Art. Haacke:Framingand BeingFramed,7 Works1970-1975
6. Jack Burnham, "Alice's Head," Artforum8, No. 6
(Halifax, Canada: The Press of the Nova Scotia Col-
Other artists, such as Ascott, remained (February 1970), reprinted inJack Burnham, Great lege of Art and Design, 1975) pp. 128-129.
WesternSalt Works(New York:George Braziller, 1974)
simultaneously visible and invisible to p. 47. 28. Illustrated in Harrison [22] p. 58.
each camp throughout the 1960s and
7. Burnham [1] p. 60. 29. Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, Michael Bald-
1970s, because of his close affinities to
win, and Harold Hurrell, "LecherSystem,"StudioIn-
both. The critical reception and histori- 8. Les Levine, artist'sstatement, in Burnham [1] p. 61. ternational 180, No. 924 (July-August 1970);
cization of Haacke and Ascott says less 9. Levine quoted in Gene Youngblood, ExpandedCin- reprinted in Meyer [21] pp. 22-25.
about their work than it does about the ema (New York:Dutton, 1970) p. 340. 30. Harrison [22] p. 56.
institutional mechanisms that have cre- 10. Les Levine, telephone interview with the author, 31. Detail illustrated in Harrison [22] p. 52. Full text
ated and reinforced categorical distinc- 21January 1999. Curiously,this recent statement em- on the CD-ROMin Art &Language, TooDarktoRead:
tions between art-and-technology and ploys rhetoric that belies Levine's anticipation of Bau- MotifsRetrospectifs 2002-1965 (Lille, France: Musee
drillard's theory of simulacra. d'art moderne Lille Metropole, Villeneuve d'Ascq.,
conceptual art at the expense of identi- 2002).
11. Hans Haacke, interview with the author, 2Janu-
fying continuities between them. ary 1999. 32. Roy Ascott, "BehaviouristArt and the Cybernetic
By respecting the differences between 10 (1967) pp. 25-56.
Vision," Cybernetica
12. Haacke [11] explained that the Softwareques-
these artistic tendencies, while at the tionnaire was almost identical to the version he pro- 33. Harrison [22] p. 72.
same time understanding some of the posed for his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim
common theoretical threads that they Museum in 1971, which the museum canceled. See 34. Compare, for example, Harrison [22] pp. 72-73
also Brian Wallis, ed., Hans Haacke:UnfinishedBusi- with Burnham [3] p. 12.
have shared, a more comprehensive ac- ness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986) pp. 82-87.
count of art since the mid-20th century 35. Burnham [3] p. 11.
13. Hans Haacke, artist's statement in Burnham [1]
can be formulated. Such a history will ac- p. 34.
knowledge cybernetics, information the-
14. Hans Haacke, artist's statement in Hans Haacke, EdwardShankenisExecutiveDirector oftheIn-
ory and systems theory as foundational exh. cat. (New York: Howard Wise Gallery, 1968); formationScience+ InformationStudiespro-
intellectual models that, in combination quoted in Burnham "Systems Esthetics" [4] p. 35.
gram(ISIS)at DukeUniversity. He is editorof
with the advent of digital computing and 15. Joseph Kosuth, artist's statement, in Burnham a collectionof essays by Roy Ascottentitled
telecommunications, played a significant [1] p. 68. Telematic Embrace:VisionaryTheories of
role in shaping culture. As Burnham 16. Robert C. Morgan, Art intoIdeas(New York:Cam- Art, Technology, and Consciousness,forth-
wrote in 1970, bridge Univ. Press, 1996) pp. 2-3. comingfromtheUniversityof CaliforniaPress.