tailieunhanh - From “Beyond Modern Sculpture” – Jack Burnham

The views, opinions and findings contained in this book are those of the author. The publishers, editors, reviewers and author assume no responsibility or liability for errors or any consequences arising from the use of the information contained herein. Registered names and trademarks, etc., used in this publication, even without specific indication thereof, are not to be considered unprotected by the law. Mention of trade names of commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use by the publishers, editors or authors | From Beyond Modern Sculpture - Jack Burnham The Future of Responsive Systems in Art In the fall of 1966 the first festival of art and technology took place at the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory New York City. This 9 evenings theatre and engineering was housed in the same building that contained the historic Armory Show of 1913. Here was the first calculated large-scale attempt by engineers artists and dancers to pool their talents in the recognition that art and technology were no longer considered alien forces subverting each other. Billy Kluver coordinated the technics of the affair this is the same Bell Telephone physicist who has acted as adviser for many important Kinetic exhibitions since 1960. Because of numerous technical break-downs and lack of rehearsal time the 9 evenings were pretty much written off as an avant-garde catastrophe by the popular press. Not least among the accusations were those of naive use of electronics by the artists drawn-out repetition of unstructured events and a tendency to play up to the press ironically courting bad reviews as well as good. It did seem as Kluver subsequently indicated that the problems of the electronic systems had not been fully ironed out and there were initial emotional antagonisms among some of the more conventional technicians concerning the goals of the artists. For some viewers there were satisfying exceptions such as Robert Rauschenberg s open score badly played tennis game where rackets were wired for amplified sound. Then the indoor tennis court flooded with infrared light was projected onto three large screens for audience viewing by closed-circuit television. There the ghostly forms of five hundred people milling around the court filled the screens. Alex Hay gave a very austere solo dance accompanied by the amplified sounds of his brain waves heartbeat muscle and eye movements. With two assistants his work activity was to lay down and pick up one hundred numbered skin-colored cloth squares FIG. 133 . .