Stephen Wilson, Director, Conceptual Information
Arts Program, San Francisco State University
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/
Paper presented at College Art
Association Meetings, NYC, 2000
I have spent the last 20 years as an
artist and as a writer reflecting on the issues of art and technology and art
and science. I have been an editor of the Leonardo international journal of art
& science for 15 years. For much of that time the field was marginalized as
a minor footnote to the mainstream of art. There are signs that this is
changing. Mainstream institutions and academics are showing more interest. There
are 7 sessions this year on art/science and art/technology. It is entirely
possible in 10 years the balance of sessions at the CAA will be exactly
opposite of what it is now with the majority reflecting on art addressing
science and technology.
We are at an important cusp as the arts
try to figure out what to do about the realities of the 21st century. There are
great opportunities and also much possibility of misunderstanding the moment. I
would like today to try to clarify some of the confusion and throw light on the
opportunities and challenges. More details about what I have to say will be
available in my book Information Arts which is going to be published by MIT Press this Fall and also on my
websites.
Today I will concentrate on myths and
confusions in thinking about art/science/technology.
There is much confusion because artists
approach science and technology in a variety of radically different ways. Even though
they are sometimes interrelated it is useful to highlight the differences.
- Continued modernist practice: Some artists seek to appropriate contemporary technologies to create new kinds of images, sounds, installations and performances - for example, digitally processed photography, computer music, or computer controlled sculptures. They see the new technologies as tools that give profound new ways of doing what artists have historically done. Certainly new issues must be addressed, but the agenda is not radically different from historical practice. Artists focus on creating objects and events in specialized art settings such as museums and galleries, which they hope will enter the world of art discourse and the art marketplace. Even technological art such as interactive computer media, immersive virtual reality, and web art can be easily assimilated to the fundamentals of the model.
-
Critical practice: Some artists believe that the centrality of science and
technology requires a radically different response from the arts. In this they
continue and update traditions of conceptual, performance and situationist
non-object based art. In this view the arts main role should be to deconstruct
cultural patterns of integrating science and technology to clarify underlying
meanings ignored in the over-hyped flow of normal technological and commercial
life. Artists acquire expertise in the technical worlds in order to understand
them better and to use the technologies to subvert and analyze them. These
artists often seek to place their art in everyday technological mediated
settings rather than specialized art locales. (more on this model later)
-
Art as research: Some artists believe the most powerful response is to become
researchers themselves. They attempt to enter into the heart of scientific
inquiry and technological innovation to address research agendas ignored by the
mainstream and to integrate commentary and play into the research enterprise. I
believe this opens up enormous opportunities for the arts.
Technically sophisticated artists are
ideally suited to function as commentators. They are relatively free of the
utilitarian and disciplinary blinders that keep those that work at the heart of
the techno/scientific mainstream from understanding the subtexts and unexplored
implications of their own innovations. In fact this critical perspective has
become a major position for artists and theorists working with emerging
technologies. While this is an extremely powerful role for the arts, there are
some dangers. If the arts relegate themselves to the sidelines as the snipers,
I fear they marginalize and isolate themselves from the possibilities of
helping to shape research agendas.
Also the position often has its own
blindness. Almost all research and technological innovation is written off as
the playing out of dark forces of commercial, military, and governmental
domination and exploitation. Researchers and the institutions of science are caricatured
as either evil or naive. The possibility of genuine innovation or insight is
dismissed as nearly impossible. While much of this analysis is cogent, it is
not the whole story. Many of the artists and theorists working from this
perspective may have never set foot inside a research lab. Many researchers
(especially those working on basic research) start from interesting places of
curiosity, celebration, defiance of accepted wisdom, desire to explore that
which does not yet exist, and the desire to create new possibilities and
understandings. In these they actually function much like artists. Also, most
researchers have a very different worldview than the postmodern critique of the
possibilities of universal knowledge and progress; they do not share the
radical epistemological doubts that many critical theorists posit as the true
meaning of our times. I fear that the orthodoxy of critical technological
critique may be the current iteration of the classic two-culture problem
described by CP Snow. That is, the arts/humanities and science/technologies are
talking different languages and do not understand each other.
Some of the artists I studied have staked
out a different role for themselves. They did not accept the role of artist as
consumer of gizmos Indeed, they chose to work in areas where the research has
not yet solidified. Also did not accept critique and deconstruction as their
only role. Let me give a few examples:
- Ken Rinaldo & Nell Tenhaaf - explorations in Artificial Life
-
Naoka Tosa - Digital entities that can understand human emotion
-
Eduardo Kac - Genetic engineering of a florescent dog
-
Tissue and Culture - sculpture constructed from stem cells
-
Ken Goldberg - Telepresence
-
Kitsou Dubois - Dance in zero-gravity
-
My own - Information Visualizaiton - Crimezyland
While integrating many of the doubts and
perspectives of critical theory they are more open ended about the
possibilities of science and technology, not seeing it as doomed to perpetuate
the past in only one way. These artists see science and technology as key
languages of our age and see enormous possibilities for the arts to become
vital actors in these worlds. They attempt to learn enough so they themselves
can become researchers. They pursue research agendas ignored and abandoned by
mainstream commerce and science as unprofitable, uninteresting, or in
questionable taste. My book elaborates on details of this approach, which I
cannot explore today.
Note that this approach has its own
pitfalls. How can artists learn enough to become literate in these fields? How
do they get access to the tools needed to conduct research? How do they
integrate art and research perspectives and avoid the conceptual and economic
seductions of the techno-scientific world? Already efforts underway - Xerox
PARC, Interval, Interactive Institute in Sweden, Arts Catalyst..
Genetic engineering promises to be major
techno-cultural issue for the near future.
-Artists working within the classic
modernist process often ignore it because it does not lend itself to object
making. Ironically, in the near future once the technology diffuses to consumer
culture, I can foresee biological sculpture assimilated into classic sculptural
process.
-Artists working within the critical tradition
has mostly positioned themselves against it, creating interventions that
question the dominant claims about its status as progressive technological
marvel. They explore the interleaving of the research with multinational
capitalism. Often these artists must become quite sophisticated about the
research. For example, one of my ex-graduate students is a member of the bay
area "Hexterminators" artist group which seeks to create public
awareness by street performance. They dressed as various kinds of
mutations handing out brochures that explain the technology and they undertook
research based supermarket interventions in which they marked the foods that
have been modified. Certainly this kind of work is important and sophistication
about the research is a resource in its execution.
But I get worried if artists see their
only possibility as opposition to the research and blanket denial of it as new
human possibility. This feels like many instances in history where the public
stood against research without the sophistication to understand the research.
For example, the texts opposing vaccination and inoculations when they were
first introduced read much like the texts against genetic engineering. These
scientific sins against nature were going to violate the body have unknown
detriment on future of life. While there are certainly research directions that
should be questioned, the line of inquiry is such a profound step for humanity
that it deserves a deeper response than superficial applause or dismissal. For
example, many artists proclaim the genetic engineering of plants with insect
resistance genes as an atrocity. They seem unaware of its origins in the
attempt to offer an alternative to the indiscriminate spraying of insecticides
into the air and ground.
Another response is for artists to get
actively involved in genetic engineering as art activity. Perhaps artists could
produce useful or interesting modified organisms for reasons other than
commercial profit. If genetic engineering is to become a major activity of our
culture then artists should be involved in setting research agendas and
conducting research just as other sectors of the culture.
The real lesson of the computer revolution:
Undoubtedly some of you are skeptically shaking your heads. How are artists
going to learn enough or get access to research settings so that they could
function as serious researchers in a field like genetic engineering? Is actual
genetic engineering a valid activity for the arts? The exact same attitudes
prevailed 20 years ago when some of us artists started working with computer technology.
Artist colleagues were skeptical. They did not see any relevance of computers
to the art world. Furthermore, the electronics and programming were seen as
highly specialized- certainly beyond the artist's mind. The machines themselves
were seen as expensive and complicated - inaccessibly locked away in university
and corporate research centers.
Some think that with the major meaning of
the computer arts revolution is the digital images and sounds now possible.
This a fundamental misunderstanding of history. The most important lesson of
the last 20 years is that significant technological innovation and science
could happen outside established institutions and that artists could
participate in the heart of the research process and help shape its research
agendas. Binary math and programming that were once thought masterable only by Phd’Äôs
are now mastered by pre-teen hobbyists. Esoteric research topics can have
profound cultural impact. These are the lessons we need to build on.
My students who have mastered digital
technology think they have a free ride into the future. I warn them that it is
not so easy. The future actually lies in many areas of research now considered
esoteric and irrelevant just like computers once were. Artists can best serve
their historical role of "keeping watch on the cultural frontier" by
proactively moving into these areas long before developers or the art world
declares them as available. Here are some areas I identify in my book which are
going to be culturally significant. There is some artistic activity in some of
them; many have no artistic activity yet.
Here are some samples
see Emerging
Technologies Links, Artists
and Technologies Links
-Biology (microbiology, genetics, animal and plant behavior, the body, brain & body processes, body imaging, and medicine)
-Physical
Sciences (particle physics, atomic energy, geology, physics, chemistry,
astronomy, space science, and GPS technology)
-Mathematics
and Algorithms (algorists, fractals, genetic art, artificial life); Kinetics
(conceptual electronics, sound installation, and robotics)
-Telecommunications
(telephone, radio, telepresence, web art)
-Digital
Systems (interactive media, VR, alternative sensors - touch, motion, gaze,
personal characteristics, haptics, activated objects, artificial intelligence, 3-D
sound, speech, scientific visualization, surveillance, information systems)
So how easy is it going to be for artists
and technologists/scientists to collaborate?
Many people are sloppy in their thinking
about these terms. Any art that uses new technology is often referred to art
and science. Many artists have started to work with new technologies but many
less are working with science. Science and technology are often conflated
together. Historically science was seen as being interested in why and
technology was interested in how. In the contemporary world, however, the
relationship has become more complex with new technologies opening up unprecedented
areas of scientific inquiry and science providing many ideas for new
technologies. Artists have been much more involved with technology than
science.
In my research there were many more
instances of mutual influence between art & technology than art &
science. Technology has a long history of respect for free lance innovators and
people who break out of established paradigms. It respects processes of trial
and error, hunches, inspiration, discovery through craft, play, and invention
in addition to careful theory based experimentation and respect for paradigms.
Edison is a good example. Artists and technological innovators share much
ground in these approaches. Labs interested in technological innovation have
invited artists to be part of research efforts and some artists have been eager
to learn about technological research. The influences between science and art
are more problematical. It gets more interesting when artists take the time to
learn the scientific context of the innovation rather than just playing with
the gizmos. (&&)
The influence has not been symmetrical.
While there are some notable exceptions of artists influencing technological
research, there is much more influence going the other way. Artists have been
eager to adopt the fruits of technological research and others have been much
influenced by the concepts and contexts of science. Scientists and even
technologists to some extent do not believe that artists have much to tell them
about their business. Scientists tend to invest respect in a researcher's
disciplinary credentials and in membership in established networks. Many are
quite engaged by the classical worlds of art, theatre, and music but do not see
art as relevant to their professional work as researchers. In part this is
because they do not understand contemporary arts reach beyond objects and
performances. They might respect artists' ability to reflect on the social
implications of research (like a politician or philosopher) but they do not
believe artists (or anyone else) have any special expertise or perspective that
actually might be relevant to the framing of research agendas, the conduct of
research or the interpretations of results.
Let me offer some brief examples from my own
work. Over the years I have been a developer for new technology companies,
consultant to NSF research projects, and artist-in-residence at research
centers. My own art works have often focused on emerging technologies still in
their formative stages. The involvements have been judged valuable by me and my
collaborators; yet it is often difficult to trace concrete results.
- I was a consultant to an NSF Project to
develop artificially intelligent tutors for teaching science. The project was
testing a variety of strategies for software tutors: the soundness of the
theories would be judged by how student learning was affected. I noted that
students reacted to the tutors similarly to how they reacted to humans. Did the
tutor seem sympathetic? Did it manifest any kind of personal knowledge of the
student? Did it have an interesting "personality"? My artistic
intervention was to suggest that one could not address the question of AI tutoring
without paying attention to the dramatic aspects of the interactions. I didn't
have much influence on it. Since that time I have created a variety of art
installations that examine dialogs with machines including "Is Anyone
There" which had a computer call 5 pay telephones every hour on the hour
for a week and try to talk to whoever answered.
-
I was an artist in residence at Xerox PARC, the research center that is
credited with innovations such as the visual interface, laser printers, and
ethernet. There are chapters about several of the collaborations reported in
the Leonardo book Art and Innovation. The mutual influence is subtle in many
cases. I worked with researchers Jock MacKinley and Polle Zelleweger who worked
in the Information Visualization group. We decided to work together on the
World Wide Web when it was known primarily to researchers. We had a productive
time creating the shadow server. It lived in the background as you surfed the
web. Every time you made a choice it, put images and texts from pages you could
have chosen in the background. We called it the "road not chosen". I
did it because I was interested in the experience of wondering "what
if" as we make choices in life. They liked it because it offered checks on
researchers process as they moved through material. More details are available
in my chapter of the book Art & Innovation.
Science/Technology literacy will need to
become much more widespread. They will cease to be ghettoized as only for tech
heads. Arts will need to be much more integrated. Several efforts around the
world are under way now to integrate art and technology development. For
example, the interactive Institute in Sweden has five national art and theatre
schools linked with research institutes. Similarly the I3 in the European
Community have tried to forge links. The US is behind in all this. The
motivation is economic - Europe feels like they are behind the US and Japan in
technological innovation and are desperate to catch up - even to the extent of
including artists. My book describes several of these efforts. The most
interesting developments, however, will come when science and technology begin
to be seen as the cultural activities that really are and when doing research
becomes part of doing art.
More papers and documentation available
at Stephen Wilson Website
copyright Stephen Wilson, 2000