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-: Text recovered from an original PageMaker
One file recently unearthed. Unfortunately the original illustrations
could not be reclaimed. This essay was written by Lesley Kerman, in
May 1988 to accompany the EAT show at Spacex Gallery, Exeter and
Plymouth Art Centre.
Did Robin ever pay you for it? :-
The Initials E.A.T. stand for " Experiments in Art and Technology".
The Five artists whose work makes up this exhibition are: Doug Hedges
who is absorbed in the problems of animating a mechanomorph...making
a friend. Mike Lawson Smith who sets out to 'tell a good story' an
intention that leads him to build constructions involving machines,
film, performers and phenomena. Mike Phillips who works with
computers, oscillators, lie detectors, light... tracing patterns and
codes, a constellation in the shuttle explosion. Tim Jordan builds
large scale machines which are inspired by the history of science and
technology. David Sandbach makes things that he finds interesting or
amusing on the basis that if they are interesting to him they may be
of interest to someone else. He works with mixed media regarding some
materials as a challenge waiting to be mixed. He has recently
involved the collaboration of bees.
They earn a living through the application of various technical
skills developed through Fine Art education... T.V. Advert stylist
(putting the steam on frozen peas), Lecturer in computers in Art and
Design, Scientific exhibition constructor, Foundry worker, Automata
Designer/maker. Thus they are free to make art as interesting or as
amusing as they wish.
Their work is divergent, yet they share certain attitudes and
intentions which make their collaboration in this exhibition
indicative of a new direction. They were once contemporaries on the
Fine Art Course at Exeter and since then have continued a close
working relationship.
They are happy to swap and share ideas and can often help each other
out with information. They agree that they each begin a piece of work
with an "idea" or a "feeling about something" and it is this idea
that dictates the form that the work will take. Each piece demands
its own particular materials, system of construction and technology.
As a result they work in mixed media employing 'a system of
inclusion' as Rauschenberg called it, a system which allows them to
set out to find the medium, the phenomena and the mechanism that each
piece of work requires and which enables them to respond with
immediacy to realisations and events without being hampered by
preconceptions about what art should look like or what it is supposed
to be concerned with. David says that while you are making something
as soon as you think of it as 'art' you've had it.
Billy Kluver a research engineer with the Bell Laboratories, set up
the original E.A.T. in America in 1967, with the intention of
introducing individual artists to particular engineers and
technologists who could help them to realise their ideas. Kluver
began working with artists by helping Tinguely to construct "Hommage
to New York" the great white painted mechanism of the 100 pram and
bicycle wheels and the many electric motors, which destroyed itself
with the help of the New York fire brigade on the night of the 17th
March 1960 in front of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He went
on to arrange collaborations between artists and engineers, most
successfully his own with Rauschenberg on their "Oracle" at the" 9
evenings Theatre and Engineering" in the Armoury Building. Kluver
predicted that E.A.T. would continue to be developed by interested
parties throughout the world in ways which could not be foreseen.
"the use of the engineer by the artist will stimulate new ways of
looking at technology and of dealing with life."
This E.A.T. group has not had to face the schism between art and
technology that the original pairing of artist and scientist was
designed to overcome. This is a result of the amazing proliferation
of technology in the last twenty five years. We live in a culture
controlled, repaired, pampered and diverted by technology. Science is
enmeshed in all our lives and transforms our thinking.
As Francis Bacon said, "In the youth of a state, arms do flourish; in
the middle age of a state, learning; and then both of them together
for a time; in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and
merchandise."
Where once the impetus of war generated the pace of innovation, now
the consumer culture through market forces, races to put new
technology on the breakfast table, in the work place, even inside the
body. Paradoxically the more complex science and technology have
become, the
more accessible is that complexity. These five artists find it
inevitable to be working with technology as part of the fabric of
their culture. They read trade magazines and catalogues. If they need
advice, they have found individual scientists particularly helpful.
Mike Phillips has had help from the computer scientists at U.C.L. and
M.I.T. They mentioned the Daily Telegraph information service as an
invaluable source of facts and contacts. David Sandbach explains that
if you use quite easily accessible scientific information, he
recommends the Ladybird books, you can soon gain a reputation for
being amazingly clever in art circles, and indeed I have heard him
referred to as"the man with a brain the size of a planet."
They are not daunted by their lack of a scientific education,
believing that, because they begin from an intuitive starting point
they are not constrained by disciplines whose boundaries are after
all continually being redefined. They feel free to operate across the
gaps between disciplines and find some scientist friends like
H.G.Wells moon people, specialised bits of whom were grown to vast
proportions in glass jars for performing specialised functions,
leaving the rest of them withered and stunted. They are intrigued by
the esoteric nature of some research projects that they have come
across. One of them described how someone had fed the blood of
schizoid patients to spiders, whereupon the spiders spun a webb of a
different pattern. They are bemused as to why such an investigation
should be regarded as legitimate and funded accordingly whereas their
own work is not so valued and applauded. The post - Kantian
conception of science as not simply the pursuit of a set of objective
truths, but as "an interaction between what we contribute and what we
discover" is a definition that could include their work. As Hilary
Putnam confirms "science is now simply a term for the successful
pursuit of knowledge" art is presumably a term for an unsuccessful
pursuit of the same.
They are all anxious that their work should be accessible. They are
attentive to the context within which the work is placed and for this
reason they are keen to site some works around the town believing
that coming across a piece of work in a shop window, or under a
bridge provides an invitation to see the work without the
interference of the idea of what 'art' should be like which is
immediately present in a gallery.
The accessibility is present in several ways. The invitation to turn
the handle and propel the giant machine into action is irresistible
in Tim Jordan"s work. Tim describes the movement in kinetic art as
its decorative quality, the lure that entices the audience towards
the work and puts it at its ease. David Sandbach makes sure that
there is an explanation alongside the work if anything is confusing
"When zinc and copper are immersed in an acid a voltage is generated.
When zinc and copper are immersed in a lemon, and fourteen such
lemons are connected in series, the voltage produced can be used to
power a weak light for up to ten minutes. This is insufficient light
to grow a lemon tree."
Mike Phillips reckons that everything should be exposed, there should
be no mystery as to how something was put together and how it
operates. They all endorse this view. They are anxious to demystify
technology, but the transparence of the mechanism cannot reveal all.
There is ultimately a mystery about a replicated device launched from
four continents which moves through the water recording wind and
waves as do Mike's 'Water Monitors'. Douglas points out that
everything in the science museum has a purpose. The purpose of these
works is far more difficult to define.
Tim's Machines like the machines in Roland Barthes' " Encyclopaedia
"are "like big toys" a "technological organ all of whose gears and
wheels are exposed...absence of secrecy in it there is no hidden
place (spring or housing) which would magically conceal energy as is
the case with our modern machines..the energy here is essentially,
transmission amplification of a simple human movement; " Tim has been
struck by the way that these mechanisms and engines were invented and
first built in an agricultural rather than a laboratory environment.
At the base of
'Whirley - pig ', there is a pigsty.
There is a tremendous sense of play about these artists' work. What
if? is a continually thrilling question to them all. David Sandbach
can make a fish fly. It takes several huge magnets to achieve the
effect. He can even enable a bee to write a slogan large enough to
answer the post office tower. In a week the bee came up with one word
comprehensible to humans. It said " Tub". A word which may yet be as
significant as Coca Cola.
The fascination of automata provide Doug Hedges with a cloak of
accessibility. Since Vaucanson's world famous duck of 1738 which
could both quack and excrete, machines that can imitate nature have
been a popular delight. Douglas describes an argument at work between
two grown men about the best way to animate the spines on a hedgehog.
It is Douglas who points out that the question "How is it done?" must
never cross the mind. The idea must be paramount and the technology
be made to follow. Mike Lawson Smith is surprised at how often an
idea is quickly followed by a recognition of a phenomenon or
mechanism that may enable its materialisation. David Sandbach reckons
that each piece of work is gradually being assembled in the
subconscious.
When they talk about inviting audience participation and interaction
they really mean a great deal more than grasping the lie detector or
turning a handle. They construct work that aims to engage the
participation of the imagination. David Sandbach may use sensors and
circuitry but he will also catch you out with the golden section.
Mike Lawson Smith is working on a device which actually invades the
retina. In his piece "The inhabitant of the mind's eye." he
constructs for his audience through a device the same physical
sensation as the film records. Mike Phillips' Bio feedback system's
uses a lie detector to measure the changes in a subjects emotional
state and to respond to those changes through a computer with sound
and images constructing a dialogue within the subject's own
imagination.
All five artists are attracted by the way in which technology can
amplify or articulate unrecognised aspects of the senses "The poet ",
says Rilke, "is compelled to use the sense sectors to their full
extent, as it must also be his aim to extend each of them as far as
possible, so that his lively delight, girt for the attempt, may be
able to pass through the five gardens in one leap."
Lesley Kerman. May 1988.
