SciArt Magazine - All Issues December 2015 | Page 31

REVIEW

Where are we now?

“New Experiments in Art and Technology” at The Contemporary
Jewish Museum in San Francisco

Micah Elizabeth Scott. Photo credit: Johnna Arnold.

By Joe Ferguson
Contributor

Art and technology have always proceeded hand in
hand. Impressionists abandoned the studio and headed
to the field with the invention of the paint tube. Cubists
reconstructed still life when they encountered motion
photography. Futurists denounced artistic traditions and
militantly embraced the speed and power of machines
and steam engines. All of these movements attempted to
interpret technology’s influence on our changing lives. It
wasn’t until the mid–20th century, however, that artists
started to feature technology itself as art.
A seminal event occurred in 1968 at the Brooklyn
Museum. “Some More Beginnings” was the first international art and technology exhibition of the non–profit
art organization Experiments in Art and Technology—
E.A.T.—founded in 1966 by engineers Billy Klüver and
Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and
Robert Whitman.
The founders of E.A.T. realized that the arts and
technol