Thirty people with mobile phones, a radio station switchboard and the City of Leeds. It sounds cryptic, but the sounds generated from this performance promise to be stranger still.
The set-up will form a re-enactment of a 1960’s performance by one of art and technology’s leading pioneers during the Leeds International Film Festival.
Robert Whitman’s experiments with multi-media performances in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s contributed to an art form that became known as happenings in New York
‘This is a re-make of a 1960’s performance that Robert Whitman did using public telephones and is intended to build an aural picture of the city comprising of short 20 second soundbytes. In the tradition of ‘happenings’, we’re really not sure what’s going to happen,’ says William Rose, co-curator of Evolution 2002, the experimental time-based arts strand of the Leeds International Film Festival.
A video artist and part-time multi-media and digital technology tutor at Huddersfield University, Rose is conducting research into the origins of multi-media through Lumen, the producer of the Evolution festivals.
Rose is the man responsible for bringing together some of the world’s experts in art and technology for this year’s Evolution event, which explores the theme of ‘Process’.
‘We are interested in work which explores and comments upon the medium in which it was made, work in which the process is the piece of work,’ Rose explains.
Several films screening at this year’s festival illustrate this concept, for example Peter Tscherkassky’s ‘Outer Space’ where the film is physically dragged through the projector.
Douglas Gordan’s Feature Film divorces vision and sound from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo; the film shows a conductor leading his orchestra through Bernard Hermann’s eerie score to the original film.
‘The work we are presenting and the guests who are attending Evolution span over 40 years of practice. In a sense we feel committed to ensure that a younger generation of artists is made aware of work produced during the 60’s and 70’s; the political, cultural and technological changes which occurred
at this time caused a revolutionary shift in boundaries between mediums,’ Rose says.
A number of employees at The Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, USA in the 60’s were at the forefront of experiments in art and technology and their work will feature at Evolution 2002.
Seminal artist Robert Whitman, along with Robert Rauschenberg and engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer, founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) in 1966 to support collaborations between artists and engineers.
‘The aim of E.A.T was simple’, Rose explains.
‘Engineers were invited to collaborate with artists in the realisation of their ideas which demanded the use of technology.’
‘We were fortunate to meet up with Billy Klüver at his home in New Jersey in February and were very much influenced by his passionate viewpoints on art and technology,’ Rose enthuses.
Billy Klüver, widely regarded as the father of art and technology, will premiere his new film Art and Technology on the opening day of this year’s festival as part of a discussion on the same topic.
The film documents lectures Klüver gave to artists in the 60’s on technologies emerging from research laboratories.
A former Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer, Klüver is known for effectively creating the platform for innovation between artists and engineers.
He worked with various art word luminaries including Andy Warhol, John Cage, Oyvind Fahlstrom, and was famous for showing Marchel Duchamp around the Bell Labs in the 60s.
‘Art and Technology are highly independent concepts, like artists and engineers, they are different. Billy recognised that they should not exist in isolation’, Rose says.
According to Rose, Bell Telephone Laboratories was and still is to some extent, a pure research lab.
Engineers were allowed to work back in the lab after hours, because their highly innovative work was considered to be beneficial to the company.
It was there Lillian Schwartz pioneered some of the first computer generated animation that forms the basis for animation and special effects software today.
Although Schwartz is unable attend Evolution 2002, she has provided some of her early work on 16mm for screening at the festival.
It was also at Bell Laboratories that Max Mathews, often regarded as the father of techno, created some of the first computer generated electronic music.
‘He created the first singing computer used in Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey and Max/MSP was named after him, the software used by many current electronic musicians and sound artists,’ Rose recalls.
‘It was an interesting place. We have recently undertaken interviews with almost all of these people. Some of this information will be used during Evolution in print but will be compiled in a longer term publication,’ Rose says.
Evolution 2002:Process, 10-12 October 2002, Leeds, UK. For more information visit the Lumen website, www.lumen.net