PART I

Introduction

Moving Out

Yet the initial negative attitude turned positive with Robert Smithson’s site/non-site dialectic which became the theoretical foundation for a series of environmental works, relating internal and external aspects of the chosen site, such as the geology and human history (as exemplified by human destruction, for example), which eventually led to his thoughts on land reclamation as a future possible function of art. This quotation already shows that the flight outdoors did not just remain an attack on the art system. The curator of the first Earth Art exhibition (1967) at the Andrew Dickson White Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, may have recognized this early on, when he wrote about art’s being eventually reintegrated into the social system rather than remaining something distinct and remote from other activities. Once the transition to a socially integrated art is complete, we may see the full implementation of an art impulse in an advanced technological society. Earth artists just may fulfill an ideal stated earlier by John Cage to “set forth a view of the arts which does not separate them from the rest of life, but rather confuses the difference between Art and Life, just as it diminishes the distinctions between space and time.”[3]

Into Technology

Thus, around 1965/1966 there was a situation in which a group of New York artists expressed a growing interest in technology, looking for access and knowledge. When re-reading the writings in publications, newspapers, magazines one notices an incredibly optimistic belief in this technological progress. During the twentieth century there had already been a number of art movements that were characterized by the attention that was paid to the artistic possibilities of the latest techniques, following current scientific discoveries (Bauhaus, Constructivism). In the latter half of the sixties there was yet another peak, which happened to be congruent with the introduction of the technologies that have now permeated our daily existence. The heyday of this Art and Technology Movement lasted only four years (c.1968 until 1972). The relationship between art and technology and art and science was a much debated topic, but was mostly discussed in terms of similarities (creativity) and differences (methods and objectives). In 1966, writer John Gruen wrote enthusiastically of “artists and engineers deliberately joining forces. ... Their aim is to start a revolution. To overthrow old concepts, to reach into the unknown and produce art works that will combine the most advanced technological discoveries with the most daring, the most outrageous creative ideas an artist may be capable of dreaming up.”[4] Two years later, artist/writer Douglas Davis began an article euphorically with: “Living as they do, in a super technological society, American artists have quite naturally turned to the products, processes and imagery of science and industry. Some approach technology with traditional attitudes, others are using it to alter the very definition of art, but all who succumb to its fascination have responded with a new sense of exhilaration and discovery.”[5] It could have been just another of those art and science/technology waves that rippled the arts in the twentieth century, but even at the time the Art and Technology Movement was already perceived as being different from the previous ones.

In Search of Another Context

The Earth Art and Environmental Art, and the Art and Technology movements are said to have started from the premise “to break the boundaries of art,” to change the commercial art world structure. In review this is only partially true. Even if both ‘movements’ only existed a few years, they have initiated new thoughts about the function of art and the role of the artist. The changes that took place in the work of a number of artists since the mid-sixties in the United States and elsewhere might be interpreted as a beginning of a reorientation; as the germination of a search for another context, or function. The initial purpose to break the boundaries of art and the art system did not stop at enlarging the boundaries by including other territory. What happened was that the artists who went into the public environment sought contacts with and access to other disciplines to create a work of art that would be a part of the environment, so that the work might function through a relationship with or in context with ‘the real world.’ For the first time in a long time artists who ventured to investigate new media began to seek an equal collaboration with engineers and technicians, even if it was initially the only road which led to the knowledge and access of the new information and communication technologies, and born out of necessity. The positive aspect in the exploration of new structures was directed to ideally include art and artist in a new social system. This ideal in fact connected the new artistic ventures with the utopian and often rather vague notions of social and political change envisioned in the 1960s.

Indeed, the most important characteristic of the technologically oriented artists was a new type of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, scientists and technicians. Later on inter- and cross-disciplinary collaborations also became normal in the production of public environmental sculpture. This implied that the artist entered into a new relationship with the environment, space, public arena, onto the terrain of other sciences. The important thing is that the art work became a part of a larger context, that this contextualization of the art work became the starting point for a number of artists to create a work that was no longer an object, but one that consisted of elements that were related to one another as in a system.

Although there is no specific correlation between the developments in the visual arts and the sciences, it is noteworthy that the shifting interests in the arts also revolved around concepts of time and space as a time-bound reality (Albert Einstein), events and processes, used with implied randomness and a probability factor (Werner Heisenberg). At that time the ideas of a systems approach and cybernetics spread rapidly and found application in numerous disciplines, both in the natural and social sciences. A central element in both theories was the development of a (mathematical) language which would facilitate an understanding between different scientific disciplines, and interdisciplinarity. The descriptive language used here found its way into the brochures describing the features of new technologies like video and the computer (feedback, closed-circuit, random access memory, etc.). In addition, “seeing things in relations” - a concept borrowed from systems analysis - became an important phrase. I think it is important to recall that the new technologies were basically technical applications of a number of preceding scientific discoveries with such penetrating consequences as to force scientists to completely rethink the mechanical world model on which their research was hitherto based.

At any rate, the discoveries of two sciences were central in this constellation: general system theory and cybernetics. Through the writings of Norbert Wiener, Herbert Marshall McLuhan and R. Buckminster Fuller they also infiltrated into the art world. In particular those artists informed themselves who showed an inclination and curiosity in new technologies, like video, or computer graphics. Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media was widely read, and his “the medium is the message” became an adage, even if it was not always precisely understood.

Although it might seem at first sight that there is no continuity between the Environmental Art and the Art and Technology movements of the late sixties and the nineties’ developments in Art in Public Places and the Media Arts, which now include the new Virtual Reality and Cyber Arts, both have their roots in this period, for it is the search for a new context which connects the two periods. And although at first sight oppositional movements which might even work against each other, it is this search for a new context in which the arts could function differently and which would in turn involve a changing role of the artist, which constitutes a rarely discussed but central element in the development in both directions. How artists ventured onto new terrains and what this meant in terms of changing the conditions for the production, presentation and reception of the art works will be the central theme of this book. Secondly I will discuss the far-reaching consequences this had for the traditional analysis of the art work, which was predominantly based on style and form.

Contemporary Art Criticism

Yet, the new developments in art confronted both the spectator and critic/curator with an infinite variety of configurations that could hardly be described only stylistically or formally. Indeed, the multiplicity of directions in the visual arts have conveniently been defined as pluralist or postmodern. These terms in themselves do not mean very much except indicating 1. an overall tendency toward undefined diversity and 2. a ‘break’ with the previous period called modernism. Other terms to circumscribe the qualities of these media were introduced, such as intermedia, anti-form, dematerialization. When Jonas Mekas, filmmaker and critic, wrote enthusiastically “suddenly the intermedia shows are all over town,” referring to the light shows, multiple film and slide projections, and light and motion art forms that held the attendence of a group of artists, in 1966, he seems to have felt intuitively that the traditional language could no longer be used.[6] The so-called anti-form types of art included works in which the materials were subjected to processes, or actions like piling, hanging, stacking; works that investigated the properties of the materials themselves. However, the often used term anti-form was at best an indication of an attitude of denunciation. The materials were characterized by a non-precious, daily-life and often temporary quality, the research was characterized by elements of chance, randomness and indeterminacy.

Lucy R. Lippard and John Chandler introduced the term “dematerialization,” coming from physics, to circumscribe such ephemeral concepts as time and space, ideas as art, invisible systems, and so forth.[7] (The term dematerialization had been introduced into the sciences to denote the continuing mathematization of research into invisible structures of nature and reality.) One may argue that many of these aspects (such as time, process, randomness and chance, the relationships to environment and space) have correctly been mentioned by art critics and art scholars to explain in part the new directions of the times. However, the methods of interpretation generally remained within a concept of art history as a linear development of styles evolving from each other as reaction and opposition, or as a continuous change of realistic and abstract modes. Among the few exceptions who perceived the need for another theoretical approach was the English writer/critic Lawrence Alloway. Already in 1966, Alloway wrote an article titled “Systemic Painting,” in which he set out to outline a general theory denoting the use of systems in abstract painting, and in particular ‘field’ painting. While critically surveying the art-historical and critical approaches of such distinguished contemporary art writers as Harold Rosenberg, Irving Sandler, Barbara Rose, Meyer Schapiro, Clement Greenberg, among others, he himself proposed the introduction of a number of notions from system theory, such as process, pattern, field, time-space organization, dynamics, and to consider the relationship of the part to the whole.

Alloway wanted his theory of interpretation to reach beyond the formal and stylistic boundary of the art object, which he thought to have become a constricted “web of formal relations,” as opposed to “a system (which) is an organized whole, the parts of which demonstrate some regularities. A system is not antithetical to the values suggested by such art world word-clusters as humanist, organic and process. On the contrary, while the artist is engaged with it, a system is a process.”[8] Willoughby Sharp, who was the editor of the avant-garde magazine Avalanche (published from 1970-1976) and one of the main protagonists of the intermedia art movements in the late sixties, was also one of the first writers who discussed art works that used new materials and methods in a terminology that derived from the systems sciences.[9] Although Sharp’s essays come across as an unsystematic accumulation of systems terminology, he saw a connection between the ideas upon which the new science of systems analysis (initially developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, see below) was based and the new Earth Art. His essay for the Earth Art exhibition at Cornell University, “Notes Towards an Understanding of Earth Art,” was an attempt to describe these works as functions of a system. While Sharp did not further develop his ideas theoretically in this direction, Alloway introduced the notion of art as message, whereby he used the definition from cybernetics.[10] He held the point of view that “Cross-references in the arts now need an idea of sufficient generality to include, but not to discard the contribution of visualist art criticism. The theory of messages as proposed by Norbert Wiener (The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950) satisfies this condition: messages are themselves a form of pattern and organization. Thus the formal structure and the significative function of a work of art are comparable as pattern. Instead of opposing purely pictorial form to a ‘literary’ cargo, both aspects of art are comfortable to one idea of organization.”[11] In retrospect, Lawrence Alloway has turned out to be the only writer who continued to develop this direction of interpretation for a while, e.g. in his writings on Robert Smithson.

It remains difficult to assess the discontinuation of these theoretical attempts in the United States after 1975. One reason might be that many artists returned to the confines of the art system. Another that the Earth Art and Art and Technology movements have always been described as movements with a (more or less) clear beginning and end, leaving no necessity for further evaluation. A third that the interests of art had moved into different directions by now and thus those of the critics and curators. Yet another plausible reason is that the artists, who kept working in the domain of public and media art forms, were outside the mainstream of the official art system.

However, meanwhile voices about the ‘death’ of the avantgarde also became a little louder. Sociologist Niklas Luhmann put it succinctly when he said that the arts had arrived at a point where development was no longer possible, and that art had reached a point of its own “autopoietische Selbstproduktion” (autopoetic self-production), because art had become purely selfreferential and immanent, operating from within as ‘art about art.’ Michael Lingner, quoting Luhmann, argues: “Während bisher die Fortsetzbarkeit der Kunst in die Gesellschaftsstruktur eingehängt und dadurch garantiert war, muß die Kunst ihr Überleben allein aus sich selbst heraus sichern, seitdem sie sich wie autopoietische, selbstreferentielle Systeme verhält, welche die Elemente aus denen sie bestehen, durch die Elemente, aus denen sie bestehen zu produzieren haben.” (Whilst until now the continuity of art was embedded in the structure of society and thus warranted, art has to secure its survival from within, since it behaves like an autopoetic selfreferential system which has to produce the elements it is composed of by itself.)[12] So, according to Luhmann and Lingner, the visual arts as they exist have reached a dead end. Michael Lingner also concluded that: “Die postmoderne Kunst ist vielmehr als die letzte Stufe konzeptioneller Autonomie zu Begreifen.” (Postmodern art can only be seen as the last step of a conceptual autonomy.)[13] In other words, these authors argue that the visual arts are in need of a complete reorientation; a change of paradigm, to speak with Thomas Kuhn.

The art in the land ‘movement’ continued and a few specialists in the field, like John Beardsley and Michael Auping, kept writing and organizing exhibitions. The National Endowment for the Arts published an inventory of its art in public places program, for example. A few theoretical attempts were made to situate the larger context of these works. Rosalind Krauss made a structuralist attempt in an October article titled “Sculpture in the expanded field.” Lucy R. Lippard’s book Overlay described a much wider array of activities, mostly from a formal (as well as feminist) perspective relating outdoor works to prehistoric forms of art. Mythic and ritual aspects from cultures past also came into play. Again, what we see is an ‘overlay’ of one or two elements leaving out the idea of the work of art constituting a multiple set of relationships in context as the starting point for the interpretation and meaning of the work as a whole.[14] Recently current public art activities and public art activist activities have been traced back to their roots in the sixities in three publications, setting the stage for a new theoretical approach.[15]

Technology-based art works have a similar history of publications. As multi-media spectacles disappeared from the scene, and increasing sophistication of the advanced technologies almost forced the artist to specialize, video art was soon singled out by the art world as art. As a consequence, its major feature as communications medium was largely overlooked by critics, and so were the initial onsets to discuss the medium in a larger context of media theory or information theory, for example. Here, too, there are a few exceptions, such as Gene Youngblood’s continuing concern with broader social functions of art and artist, as mediator for change. Or, in Germany, Wolfgang Preikschat’s vision of a media aesthetics in his Video Art: Poesie der Neuen Medien. Meanwhile, the history of computer art forms fell by the wayside until recently.[16] The expansion of digital technologies, followed by the virtual reality and cyberspace inventions, as well as the rapid and unforeseen popularization of world-wide communication networks like Internet, have recently changed this.

Treatment

In 1968, Jack Burnham - artist, writer and curator of exhibitions - published a book in which he set out to delineate the relationships between art and technology during the twentieth century as reflected in the change from objet d’art to système d’art. Burnham drew a parallel between the discoveries in the sciences (such as quantum physics) of an invisible conceptual, mathematical world based on interrelated ‘open systems,’ and the idea that the world was moving toward a systems-oriented structure (communication networks, for example) with the visual arts changing from object to non-object, from material to immaterial, from literal to conceptual.[17] The thesis of Beyond Modern Sculpture is not undisputed, yet it remains an important document of the (at times utopian) ideas of those times about the function of a future art within a broader context. Just as important is that it exemplifies that Burnham’s considerations came out of, or one might say were part of, a constellation of scientific, theoretical and technological notions which rapidly spread among different disciplines at the time. Jack Burnham’s writings and his curatorial activities indisputably portray a section of the puzzle that pictures the events of the late sixties and early seventies. Although Burnham himself soon switched to another theoretical approach, attempting a structuralist analysis of painting, he can be considered a catalyst in promoting the Art and Technology Movement, as theorist and organizer of exhibitions.[18]

In Part I, the developments of Environmental Art forms and the Art and Technology Movement are therefore dealt with practically as well as theoretically in relationship to the new ideas and concepts of systems analysis and cybernetics. This includes a discussion of the organizations which were founded as collaborative ventures with scientists and technicians, allowing artists to familiarize themselves with and obtain access to the current state-of-the-art technological developments and scientific theories and the interdisciplinary activities resulting from this. In Part I also try to explain the filtering down of concepts from systems analysis and cybernetics into different types of art.

Part II deals with artists who moved into the environment, and whose work can be interpreted as a layering of different but related elements. Hans Haacke, who is not now associated with the Earth Art movement, but who began to experiment with natural systems in the early sixties and participated in the first earth art exhibition in 1967, decided to deal with the art system from the inside and made it his life work to critically deal with the museum structure in all its ramifications: economic, social and political, aesthetic, and historical alike. California-based artists Newton Harrison and Robert Irwin left their respective studios after the Art & Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1970. Although Newton Harrison’s initial move resulted from (then) felt restrictions imposed on the designation ‘artist,’ he soon focused on possibilities for art to function as a problem solving activity, and turned to interdisciplinary research of self-sustaining ecosystems.[19] Robert Irwin, who gave up his Venice (California) studio in 1970, spent the next 2 to 3 years traveling and lecturing to develop his thoughts on the function of art. He even stopped making art objects altogether, saying “To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perception.”[20]

Artists like Robert Smithson, Hans Haacke, Helen and Newton Harrison, and Robert Irwin as well as Nancy Holt, James Turrell and Alan Sonfist, belong to the ‘first generation’ who worked in the natural environment with natural systems and who - with the exception of Robert Smithson, who died in an airplane accident - have continued to develop the premises with which they started into a new framework: It will be discussed how this frame of mind includes the human and natural environment as a complex “set of relationships in action,” albeit a different context in each case. The starting point became “seeing things in relations.”[21]

The chapters in Part III should make clear that the introduction of media like video and the computer, and subsequently other digital technologies, into the visual arts profoundly influenced the modes of production, distribution (presentation) and reception of the work. The works of artists Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, the Vasulkas, and Paul Ryan show the different directions in which artists moved to investigate aspects of these media that are related to the technological functions as well as the social and operational structure. Father of video art, Nam June Paik has often emphasized the communication aspects of video / television. Others, like Bill Viola and Woody and Steina Vasulka have investigated the perceptual and internal structure of video/computer systems. Paul Ryan has from the start sought to integrate his video works in the ecological environmental context. Yet all of them also perceive their work within the larger context of the expanding communication and information networks. These artists have continued to purposively investigate the obligations of the artist in a society like ours, by placing their work and activities outside the studio in the world, as it were, not as a simple object, but in order to set up a relationship with its environment, including the spectator. Moving onto the terrain of other disciplines, inter- and cross-disciplinary efforts and research became almost standard. And sometimes this resulted in a work which was not even recognizable as art.

Starting from the premise that art is a reflection of the society that bears it, it seems legitimate to ask if these developments are in any way related to the increasing complexity of Western society; to ask the question whether the Art in Public Places as well as the electronic Media Arts are not the formal appearance of similar tendencies, requiring an approach or interpretation that takes into account aspects other than only the stylistic or formal qualities. Especially if the artists themselves set out to set up a complex relationship with the public space at large.

The book makes an attempt to contextualize the development of a number of artists, in order to reassess the function of the art works as well as the position of the artist. It is not intended to construct a well-defined theory, only to put forth some theorems that explicate the interdependency of certain developments in the visual arts and those in an information/knowledge society of “organized complexity” (Daniel Bell). I have purposively selected those artists whose writing sustains this thesis, realizing that I have left out others whose work would also fall within the scope of this book.

I have also chosen to discuss the works of the selected artists as a whole, and not thematically. The reader will notice that certain aspects keep recurring, such as time-space, process, chance or indeterminacy, references to the history of the site, and so on. There are also themes like the maze, or the garden, or geometric patterns like the circle or spiral which are used regularly. However, this would mean that the different aspects would be dealt with as unrelated, whereas they function as interdependent entities. As in chemistry the exchange of one molecule will cause a substance to transform into another, so it is with these art works.