ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Since the 1980s, multimedia artist, composer, writer and educator Randall Packer has worked at the intersection of interactive media and live performance. He has received international acclaim for his socially and politically infused critique of media culture, and has performed and exhibited at museums, theaters, and festivals throughout the world. Packer is also a writer and scholar in new media, most notably the co-editor of Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality and the author of his long running blog: Reportage from the Aesthetic Edge. He holds an MFA and PhD in music composition and has taught multimedia at the University of California, Berkeley, Maryland Institute College of Art, American University, CalArts, and Johns Hopkins University. He is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he teaches the art of the networked practice. Most recently, he developed Open Source Studio (OSS), an international project exploring collaborative online research and teaching in the media arts. Packer is also an artist educator at the Museum of Modern Art: his online course received an award from Museums and the Web as the best educational site of 2014. Packer works and teaches remotely from his underground studio bunker in Washington, DC.
Announcing "10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation"
The Experimental Party National Committee
Washington, DC
http://www.experimentalparty.org
press@experimentalparty.org
For Immediate Release: January 21, 2003
Experimental Party Announces
"10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation"
Washington, DC - The Experimental Party, the recently activated
artist-based political party, is announcing a new campaign to sponsor
"10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation" across the nation in anticipation
of the 2004 electronic campaign - in what is being heralded as the
"Artist's Call to Service."
The Experimental Party will call on artists from all 50 states, as
well as nations and communities around the world, to join the Party
and help overcome society's anxieties and heightening insecurity by
participating in this ambitious campaign to stage "10,000 Acts of
Artistic Mediation."
An initiative of the US Department of Art & Technology, the
Experimental Party, whose motto is "representation through
virtualization," was first announced as a national party in Iowa City
at the Thaw Festival of Media less than one year ago by Secretary
Randall M. Packer.
The most comprehensive clearinghouse ever offered to help citizens
celebrate the universal sprit of collective expression, the
Experimental Party is a Total Artwork - united, whole, intensive. The
Experimental Party has embraced the power of culture, independent
thinking and artist-driven government in an effort to empower the
experimental and the disenfranchised.
According to Secretary Packer, "We believe that virtually every
problem in America and the world can be resolved through the
reflections, ideas, sensibilities and abilities of the artist. There
are already countless artistic initiatives working successfully to
subvert the status quo. However, these initiatives are too often
isolated and unknown to others. They must be replicated over and over
and over again by artists and art collectives until everyone is
connected to someone - many-to-many, peer-to-peer, soul-to-soul.
The new Experimental Party website (experimentalparty.org) unveils
the Party's ambitious platform, confronting political and social
conditions that threaten to engulf our nation today. According to Abe
Golam, one of the Party's principal artists, "only art is capable of
dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that
continues to totter along the deathline."
The website also invites artists to participate directly in the
transformational properties of the ceremonies of art, by joining the
USA Exquisite Corpse Volunteer Network. In spearheading the USA
Exquisite Corpse, National Chairwoman Roberta Breitmore, another
principal artist of the Experimental Party, has "vowed to provoke
presumptions and constrain the rational."
Explore the Experimental Party website as a resource for helping your
neighbor, your community and your nation. Activist artists are
encouraged to use the Experimental Party platform and website to
stimulate
interventionist change in their own communities, whether they be
local, regional, international, or virtual.
The website is an opportunity to become acquainted with the
Experimental Party - a stratum of reality that has become rarefied to
the extreme - anarchist entertainment we have long dreamed.
*******
10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation
http://www.experimentalparty.org/10,000acts.html
The Experimental Party believes in the readiness and ability of every
artist in America and throughout the world to carry out an act of
artistic mediation, particularly the young and disenfranchised.
Meaningful many-to-many engagement in the collective lives of artists
is now required to overcome our most serious national and world
problems. The growth and magnification of the "10,000 Acts of
Artistic Mediation" campaign has become the mission of the US
Department of Art & Technology and its newly formed Experimental
Party.
The Experimental Party
http://www.experimentalparty.org
The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an
artist-based political party that has been formed to activate
citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists'
message to center stage of the political process. This is a political
awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major
political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force.
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.
*****
Contact:
Experimental National Committee | Washington, DC
Fax: 202.342.1293 | E-mail: info@experimentalparty.org
Washington, DC
http://www.experimentalparty.org
press@experimentalparty.org
For Immediate Release: January 21, 2003
Experimental Party Announces
"10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation"
Washington, DC - The Experimental Party, the recently activated
artist-based political party, is announcing a new campaign to sponsor
"10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation" across the nation in anticipation
of the 2004 electronic campaign - in what is being heralded as the
"Artist's Call to Service."
The Experimental Party will call on artists from all 50 states, as
well as nations and communities around the world, to join the Party
and help overcome society's anxieties and heightening insecurity by
participating in this ambitious campaign to stage "10,000 Acts of
Artistic Mediation."
An initiative of the US Department of Art & Technology, the
Experimental Party, whose motto is "representation through
virtualization," was first announced as a national party in Iowa City
at the Thaw Festival of Media less than one year ago by Secretary
Randall M. Packer.
The most comprehensive clearinghouse ever offered to help citizens
celebrate the universal sprit of collective expression, the
Experimental Party is a Total Artwork - united, whole, intensive. The
Experimental Party has embraced the power of culture, independent
thinking and artist-driven government in an effort to empower the
experimental and the disenfranchised.
According to Secretary Packer, "We believe that virtually every
problem in America and the world can be resolved through the
reflections, ideas, sensibilities and abilities of the artist. There
are already countless artistic initiatives working successfully to
subvert the status quo. However, these initiatives are too often
isolated and unknown to others. They must be replicated over and over
and over again by artists and art collectives until everyone is
connected to someone - many-to-many, peer-to-peer, soul-to-soul.
The new Experimental Party website (experimentalparty.org) unveils
the Party's ambitious platform, confronting political and social
conditions that threaten to engulf our nation today. According to Abe
Golam, one of the Party's principal artists, "only art is capable of
dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that
continues to totter along the deathline."
The website also invites artists to participate directly in the
transformational properties of the ceremonies of art, by joining the
USA Exquisite Corpse Volunteer Network. In spearheading the USA
Exquisite Corpse, National Chairwoman Roberta Breitmore, another
principal artist of the Experimental Party, has "vowed to provoke
presumptions and constrain the rational."
Explore the Experimental Party website as a resource for helping your
neighbor, your community and your nation. Activist artists are
encouraged to use the Experimental Party platform and website to
stimulate
interventionist change in their own communities, whether they be
local, regional, international, or virtual.
The website is an opportunity to become acquainted with the
Experimental Party - a stratum of reality that has become rarefied to
the extreme - anarchist entertainment we have long dreamed.
*******
10,000 Acts of Artistic Mediation
http://www.experimentalparty.org/10,000acts.html
The Experimental Party believes in the readiness and ability of every
artist in America and throughout the world to carry out an act of
artistic mediation, particularly the young and disenfranchised.
Meaningful many-to-many engagement in the collective lives of artists
is now required to overcome our most serious national and world
problems. The growth and magnification of the "10,000 Acts of
Artistic Mediation" campaign has become the mission of the US
Department of Art & Technology and its newly formed Experimental
Party.
The Experimental Party
http://www.experimentalparty.org
The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an
artist-based political party that has been formed to activate
citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists'
message to center stage of the political process. This is a political
awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major
political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force.
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.
*****
Contact:
Experimental National Committee | Washington, DC
Fax: 202.342.1293 | E-mail: info@experimentalparty.org
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Expanded Edition in Paperback
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson, coda by Laurie Anderson
published by W.W. Norton
"This book is one start toward a different sort of history.... I
recommend this book to you with an earnestness that I have seldom
felt for any collection of historic texts. This is, in large part,
where the bodies are buried. Assembled in this way, in such close
proximity, these visions give off strange sparks." - from the
foreword by William Gibson
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer
and Ken Jordan, is now available in an expanded paperback edition
with a foreword by William Gibson and a new coda by Laurie Anderson.
This collection of seminal essays by artists, scientists, and
critical theorists chronicles the history of multimedia, and has been
expanded to include texts by Richard Bolt, Char Davies, Kit Galloway
and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Janet Murray, and Jeffrey Shaw.
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality presents the history
behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take for
granted today. It traces a fertile and fascinating series of
collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the
years just after World War II - and even further, to composer Richard
Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater
foreshadowed our concept of virtual reality.
Among the essential articles gathered in the book are the Futurists'
1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would
unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic
Monthly essay that leads directly to the hyperlinks in today's
multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider's groundbreaking idea in 1960 that
people and computers could collaborate in creative work; Nam June
Paik's 1984 essay proposing that satellite technology would encourage
a global information art; Tim Berners-Lee's 1989 proposal for a
document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World Wide
Web; and William Gibson's discussion of how he came up with the word
"cyberspace." With an introduction to the volume and critical
commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
lead the reader through key concepts that frame the evolution of
multimedia.
The book is part of a unique hybrid publication project that joins
W.W. Norton, Intel Corporation, and ArtMuseum.net. Online,
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality is a dynamic, growing
resource featuring hyperlinked texts, a teacher's guide, and a wealth
of multimedia documentation.
Please visit the site at: http://www.artmuseum.net/
For more information: http://www.zakros.com/wvr/wvr.html
Quotes from the field:
"Many of the papers that had profound impact upon my development - to
say nothing of the entire industry - are all here." Donald A. Norman,
author of The Invisible Computer
"What a tremendous gift Packer and Jordan have given... Finally, the
words and ideas of the people responsible for conceiving and building
the hypermediated reality in which we've found ourselves have been
collected in one place. This book may be the Primary Source for years
to come." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Media Virus! and
Playing the Future
"It's a post-,post-, postmodern world, but those who forget the past
are still doomed to reboot it. Excavating the fossil record of our
wired culture, Jordan and Packer uncover the blueprints for the
future we how inhabit." - Mark Dery, author of The Pyrotechnic
Insanitarium: American Culture on the Bring
"This important book brings together key texts and contexts that
begin to delineate the meaningful arts of the future. Educators,
artists, and students involved in art and new media and
interdisciplinary programs will find this book invaluable." - Roger
Malina, editor, Leonardo Journal
Quotes from the press:
"'Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality' reads like a Western
civ of modern media." - Tony Reveaux, Film/Tape World
"The best guide yet on a subject of central importance to anyone
interested in the future of media, and the growing marriage between
art and science....The collection is historically significant, given
that nobody has ever woven together the different threads, thoughts
and impulses that become multimedia, a new form both of media and
culture.... The book flows skillfully from one idea to the next, each
section building on the one that preceded it." - Jon Katz, Slashdot
"In the Norton Anthology tradition, Packer and Jordan bring together
seminal contributions that artists and scientists have made to the
field of computer-human interaction... An evocative whirlwind tour
through 100 years of work... Excellent..." - S. Joy Mountford, Wired
"[MULTIMEDIA is] a key source book in the field of art, science and
technology. This book is excellent in all respects." - Annick
Bureaud, Leonardo Digital Reviews
"Readers interested in the history of multimedia should be enthralled
by this collection of hard-to-find essays.... A remarkable blending
of past and present, these essays remind us that today's wondrous
inventions didn't just spring into existence out of nothingness." -
Booklist
"An important book that brings together for the first time articles
from many different disciplines and viewpoints... It should be a
basic text for anyone who is learning to merge art with technology."
- Boston Globe
"A juicy compendium of historically significant, future-forward
essays." - Flaunt
"A compendium of classic writing about information technology and its
role in society [filled with] some inspired choices." - Lingua Franca
"The editors bring together the major writings by multimedia pioneers
in order to foster a greater understanding, and appreciation, of its
precedents, roots, and revolutionary potential." - Choice
MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Expanded Edition in Paperback
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson, coda by Laurie Anderson
published by W.W. Norton, $19.95
now available
ISBN 0-393-32375-7
Expanded Edition in Paperback
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson, coda by Laurie Anderson
published by W.W. Norton
"This book is one start toward a different sort of history.... I
recommend this book to you with an earnestness that I have seldom
felt for any collection of historic texts. This is, in large part,
where the bodies are buried. Assembled in this way, in such close
proximity, these visions give off strange sparks." - from the
foreword by William Gibson
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer
and Ken Jordan, is now available in an expanded paperback edition
with a foreword by William Gibson and a new coda by Laurie Anderson.
This collection of seminal essays by artists, scientists, and
critical theorists chronicles the history of multimedia, and has been
expanded to include texts by Richard Bolt, Char Davies, Kit Galloway
and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Janet Murray, and Jeffrey Shaw.
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality presents the history
behind the interfaces, links, and interactivity we all take for
granted today. It traces a fertile and fascinating series of
collaborations between the arts and the sciences, going back to the
years just after World War II - and even further, to composer Richard
Wagner, whose ideas about the immersive nature of music theater
foreshadowed our concept of virtual reality.
Among the essential articles gathered in the book are the Futurists'
1916 manifesto on cinema, which declared that the new medium would
unite all media and replace the book; Vannevar Bush's 1945 Atlantic
Monthly essay that leads directly to the hyperlinks in today's
multimedia; J.C.R. Licklider's groundbreaking idea in 1960 that
people and computers could collaborate in creative work; Nam June
Paik's 1984 essay proposing that satellite technology would encourage
a global information art; Tim Berners-Lee's 1989 proposal for a
document-sharing network, which became the basis of the World Wide
Web; and William Gibson's discussion of how he came up with the word
"cyberspace." With an introduction to the volume and critical
commentaries on each article, editors Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
lead the reader through key concepts that frame the evolution of
multimedia.
The book is part of a unique hybrid publication project that joins
W.W. Norton, Intel Corporation, and ArtMuseum.net. Online,
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality is a dynamic, growing
resource featuring hyperlinked texts, a teacher's guide, and a wealth
of multimedia documentation.
Please visit the site at: http://www.artmuseum.net/
For more information: http://www.zakros.com/wvr/wvr.html
Quotes from the field:
"Many of the papers that had profound impact upon my development - to
say nothing of the entire industry - are all here." Donald A. Norman,
author of The Invisible Computer
"What a tremendous gift Packer and Jordan have given... Finally, the
words and ideas of the people responsible for conceiving and building
the hypermediated reality in which we've found ourselves have been
collected in one place. This book may be the Primary Source for years
to come." - Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Media Virus! and
Playing the Future
"It's a post-,post-, postmodern world, but those who forget the past
are still doomed to reboot it. Excavating the fossil record of our
wired culture, Jordan and Packer uncover the blueprints for the
future we how inhabit." - Mark Dery, author of The Pyrotechnic
Insanitarium: American Culture on the Bring
"This important book brings together key texts and contexts that
begin to delineate the meaningful arts of the future. Educators,
artists, and students involved in art and new media and
interdisciplinary programs will find this book invaluable." - Roger
Malina, editor, Leonardo Journal
Quotes from the press:
"'Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality' reads like a Western
civ of modern media." - Tony Reveaux, Film/Tape World
"The best guide yet on a subject of central importance to anyone
interested in the future of media, and the growing marriage between
art and science....The collection is historically significant, given
that nobody has ever woven together the different threads, thoughts
and impulses that become multimedia, a new form both of media and
culture.... The book flows skillfully from one idea to the next, each
section building on the one that preceded it." - Jon Katz, Slashdot
"In the Norton Anthology tradition, Packer and Jordan bring together
seminal contributions that artists and scientists have made to the
field of computer-human interaction... An evocative whirlwind tour
through 100 years of work... Excellent..." - S. Joy Mountford, Wired
"[MULTIMEDIA is] a key source book in the field of art, science and
technology. This book is excellent in all respects." - Annick
Bureaud, Leonardo Digital Reviews
"Readers interested in the history of multimedia should be enthralled
by this collection of hard-to-find essays.... A remarkable blending
of past and present, these essays remind us that today's wondrous
inventions didn't just spring into existence out of nothingness." -
Booklist
"An important book that brings together for the first time articles
from many different disciplines and viewpoints... It should be a
basic text for anyone who is learning to merge art with technology."
- Boston Globe
"A juicy compendium of historically significant, future-forward
essays." - Flaunt
"A compendium of classic writing about information technology and its
role in society [filled with] some inspired choices." - Lingua Franca
"The editors bring together the major writings by multimedia pioneers
in order to foster a greater understanding, and appreciation, of its
precedents, roots, and revolutionary potential." - Choice
MULTIMEDIA: FROM WAGNER TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Expanded Edition in Paperback
edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
foreword by William Gibson, coda by Laurie Anderson
published by W.W. Norton, $19.95
now available
ISBN 0-393-32375-7
Joint Resolution Passes Unanimously
US Department of Art & Technology
Washington, DC
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
press@usdept-arttech.net
Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: November 15, 2002
Joint Resolution Passes Unanimously
To Authorize Acts of Artistic Mediation
The US Department of Art & Technology, along with the Global
Virtualization Council, unanimously passed a Joint Resolution "To
Authorize the Use of Acts of Artistic Mediation" (US DAT J. RES. 1).
Joined by the President and First Lady, along with staff of the
Department, Secretary Randall M. Packer announced the Joint
Resolution in a speech today at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
Secretary Packer hailed the Resolution as a "final test" of the Bush
Regime's willingness "to submit to any and all methodologies to
verify his compliance. His cooperation must be prompt and
unconditional, or he will face the severest consequences."
Visit the Department Website for the full text and video transcript
of the Secretary's speech. The official document of the Joint
Resolution has been published in the current edition of Intelligent
Agent (Vol. 2 No. 4, Fall '02).
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the principal conduit for
facilitating the artist's need to extend aesthetic inquiry into the
broader culture where ideas become real action.
Global Virtualization Council
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/gvc/
The Global Virtualization Council's intent is to mobilize and
coordinate artistic forces of virtualization internationally.
Intelligent Agent
http://intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol2_No4.shtml
Intelligent Agent is a service organization and information provider
dedicated to interpreting and promoting art that uses digital
technologies for production and presentation. The Editor-in-Chief is
Patrick Lichty and the Director is Christiane Paul.
Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology
press@usdept-arttech.net
# 01-115
Washington, DC
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
press@usdept-arttech.net
Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: November 15, 2002
Joint Resolution Passes Unanimously
To Authorize Acts of Artistic Mediation
The US Department of Art & Technology, along with the Global
Virtualization Council, unanimously passed a Joint Resolution "To
Authorize the Use of Acts of Artistic Mediation" (US DAT J. RES. 1).
Joined by the President and First Lady, along with staff of the
Department, Secretary Randall M. Packer announced the Joint
Resolution in a speech today at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
Secretary Packer hailed the Resolution as a "final test" of the Bush
Regime's willingness "to submit to any and all methodologies to
verify his compliance. His cooperation must be prompt and
unconditional, or he will face the severest consequences."
Visit the Department Website for the full text and video transcript
of the Secretary's speech. The official document of the Joint
Resolution has been published in the current edition of Intelligent
Agent (Vol. 2 No. 4, Fall '02).
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the principal conduit for
facilitating the artist's need to extend aesthetic inquiry into the
broader culture where ideas become real action.
Global Virtualization Council
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/gvc/
The Global Virtualization Council's intent is to mobilize and
coordinate artistic forces of virtualization internationally.
Intelligent Agent
http://intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol2_No4.shtml
Intelligent Agent is a service organization and information provider
dedicated to interpreting and promoting art that uses digital
technologies for production and presentation. The Editor-in-Chief is
Patrick Lichty and the Director is Christiane Paul.
Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology
press@usdept-arttech.net
# 01-115
75th Birthday Tribute to Billy Kluver
On the occasion of Billy Kluver's 75th Birthday (November 13th), I am
posting the following tribute that I gave at Postmaster's Gallery in
New York City on March 15th, 2000, organized by the Kitchen. The
tribute was originally written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of
the opening of the Pepsi Pavilion, created by E.A.T (Experiments in
Art & Technology).
- Randall Packer
Thirty years ago today, the Pepsi Pavilion opened at Expo 1970 in
Osaka, Japan. This extraordinary work, the most ambitious undertaking
of Billy Kluver and E.A.T., involved the collaboration of over 75
artists and engineers from the US and Japan. More than an artwork, it
was, like the Pyramids, a cultural force in the sheer scope and
audacity of its conception. Bob Whitman, one of the collaborating
artists, claimed it was the largest art project of the second half of
the 20th Century.
At a conference I attended recently, an art historian remarked that
the Pepsi Pavilion hovers like a "ghost" over the contemporary art
world. This is a work that in one form or another has "touched" every
artist working today with technology, yet few ever experienced it
first hand. Hardly anyone who has read about the Pavilion, referenced
in numerous books on art and technology, has witnessed its fog
sculpture designed by Fujiko Nakaya, carved from fine mist sprayed
high above its geodesic structure; or the 800 pound kinetic
sculptures by Robert Whitman that he affectionately called "Floats",
slowly and mischievously roaming the terrace; or Lowell Cross and
David Tudor's laser projections that engulfed viewers as they entered
the lower level of the Pavilion, in a multi-colored electronic
baptism; or the surround-sound system designed by Tudor and Gordon
Mumma that immersed the listener in the Pavilion's dome, trajectories
of electronic sounds and cries of whales moving across the space; or
the giant spherical mirror conceived by Robert Whitman, larger than
any other in the world - not even NASA has attempted this - which
projected upside down, three dimensional holographic-like "real"
images into the performance space for the mostly Japanese visitors
who were mesmerized, delighted, terrified, intrigued, baffled,
entranced and bewildered by this other-worldly creation.
The Pepsi Pavilion was the culmination of ten, incredible years of
creative work by Billy Kluver and his collaborators during the decade
of the 1960s, that forever altered the course of art history. It was
the birth of a movement that united the sister disciplines of art and
science, once and for all, into a unified medium - more decisively,
perhaps, than any period in history since Aristotle and the ancient
Greeks.
It all began in the spring of 1960 when Jean Tinguely asked Billy if
he would assist him with the construction of an outdoor sculpture
commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for the Museum's sculpture
garden. Billy, who was working on laser systems at Bell Laboratories
in Murray Hill, New Jersey, couldn't resist the offer. Hardly
satisfied by purely scientific pursuits, he was eager to become a
part of the artistic milieu that was then giving birth to pop art,
minimalism, and Happenings a short drive away in New York City. He
was, as you can imagine, probably the only engineer on the planet
even aware of this activity.
Jean Tinguely's infamous self-destructing kinetic sculpture was
appropriately titled "Homage to New York." Kluver's participation in
this work, with its paint bombs, chemical stinks, noisemakers, and
fragments of scrap metal, inspired a generation of artists to imagine
the possibilities of technology, as the machine destroyed itself, in
Kluver's words, "in one glorious act of mechanical suicide." As
Calvin Tomkins colorfully narrates in his book "Off the Wall:" "The
great white machine rattles and shivers in all its members. Smoke
pours from its interior, temporarily blanketing the audience. The
piano catches fire and burns, accompanying its own demise with three
mournful notes repeated over and over. Parts of the structure break
loose and scuttle off to die elsewhere. Crossbeams sag as electric
charges melt the previously weakened joints. A Rauschenberg
"money-thrower" goes off with a blinding flash, scattering silver
dollars... a fireman, summoned by Tinguely, comes out to extinguish
the blaze in the piano; he is angrily booed by the spectators. After
about twenty minutes it becomes clear that the machine will not
perish unaided; firemen's axes finish the job, and 'Homage to New
York' returns to the junk piles from which it was born. The nineteen
sixties have begun."
After this blazing entrance into the New York art scene, Billy
enthusiastically joined in the revelry that continued through the
1960s, participating in the myriad of performances, Happenings and
uncategorizable events staged in lofts and storefronts by the likes
of Claus Oldenburg, Bob Whitman, Jim Dine, and others. Clearly the
performance art of the early 1960s made a strong impression on Billy,
heightening his interest in exploring open forms, unconventional
materials, and the process of interdisciplinary collaboration that
was his trademark.
Chief among his many collaborators was Robert Rauschenberg.
Rauschenberg had been in the audience the fateful day the "Homage to
New York" self-destructed, and asked Billy if he would work with him.
This was the beginning of a close relationship - today they are still
like brothers - a collaboration that produced some of the most
groundbreaking art and technology works of the 20th Century. Such
works as "Dry Cell" (1963), "Oracle" (1962-65), "Soundings" (1968)
and "Solstice" (1968) were among the first artworks ever to explore
the cybernetic exchange between the viewer and the machine.
Rauschenberg was interested in using technology to engage the
audience in an interactive relationship to the world around them,
bringing about an intimacy with the technological interactions that
have become ubiquitous in everyday life. This notion also underscored
Billy's objective, which was to bring the artist closer to the
concerns of the engineer and the materials of technology, and
reciprocally, for the artist to engage the engineer, typically
beholden to the corporate establishment, in meaningful cultural
dialogue.
Billy not only introduced new ways of incorporating technology to
Jean Tinguely and Robert Rauschenberg, but countless other artists
and performers including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Merce
Cunningham, David Tudor, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Robert
Whitman. The list goes on. In 1966, Kluver and Rauschenberg organized
one of the defining events of the decade. It was the "9 Evenings:
Theater and Engineering" held at the cavernous 69th Regiment Armory
in New York, in which ten artists created new performance works, each
working with one or more engineers recruited by Billy Kluver from
Bell Laboratories. It is important to note for the record books, that
these projects were not funded by Bell Labs, and that the engineers
who worked on them did so under their own initiative and on more or
less their own time.
Although "9 Evenings" was never an overwhelming "critical" success,
criticism has never slowed Billy down. These performances proved
above all that the artist imagination and his understanding of the
social condition, united with the engineer's practical instincts and
knowledge of technology, would yield works of "art and technology"
that opened up new opportunities for artistic expression.
Furthermore, the embrace of technology promised a new central role
for the artist in an increasingly technological society.
And so, following "9 Evenings," Billy Kluver, together with Robert
Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman and engineer Fred Waldhauer, formalized
the idea of uniting artists and engineers by founding the now
legendary E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) - designed in
their words, "to catalyze the inevitable active involvement of
industry, technology and the arts." At their first meeting, held at
the Central Plaza Hotel in the fall of 1966, over 300 artists showed
up, eighty of whom made requests for engineers and technical support.
E.A.T. recruited engineers, published a newsletter, and held open
house wherever artists and engineers could meet informally. The
momentum that resulted from this effort led to the formation of
chapters all over the country with thousands of members. E.A.T. has
since become a model for countless organizations and institutions
worldwide, including museums, universities, research laboratories,
non-profit groups, even such corporate think tanks as Xerox PARC in
Palo Alto, California, where the personal computer was born.
In the first edition of their newsletter Techne, E.A.T's mission
statement was published. The visionary nature of this "call to
action" addressed critical issues foreshadowing current efforts to
galvanize collaboration between artists and engineers, promote the
importance of technology in the contemporary arts and society at
large, and to funnel corporate support into new media efforts. It
reads: "Maintain a constructive climate for the recognition of the
new technology and the arts by a civilized collaboration between
groups unrealistically developing in isolation. Eliminate the
separation of the individual from technological change and expand and
enrich technology to give the individual variety, pleasure, and
avenues for exploration and involvement in contemporary life.
Encourage industrial initiative in generating original forethought,
instead of a compromise in aftermath, and precipitate a mutual
agreement in order to avoid the waste of a cultural revolution."
But it was not until 1968 that E.A.T. and the emerging art and
technology movement was embraced and legitimized by the mainstream
art world. That was when curator Pontus Hulten organized the "Machine
as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age" exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. Hulten boldly articulated the importance of
new forms of technology-based art by staging a sweeping historical
overview that began with Leonardo da Vinci and continued into the
20th Century. Hulten asked his old friend Billy Kluver to organize an
exhibition of contemporary art and technology works in order to bring
the exhibition up to the present. Kluver put out a call for
participation under the auspices of E.A.T., and presented the show
"Some More Beginnings" at the Brooklyn Museum. The judges were,
appropriately, all engineers.
The impact of Billy Kluver's work, born from his desire to engage
with the artist, to be a resource for artists, has resulted in a
lifelong dedication to artists and their art, including their
relentless need to break new ground. This effort has been a primary
catalyst leading to the widespread assimilation of technology into
the mainstream contemporary arts, not just in New York, but around
the world. Billy's role has always been to give, and despite this
total, uncompromising dedication, his approach as an engineer was
never to be servile, but rather to "serve" the artist as an active
and equal partner in the creation of the artwork. This simple, but
powerful idea is, I believe, his most important contribution, and its
effect can be felt as more than a ghostly presence in our
increasingly interdisciplinary times. For as Marshall McLuhan said,
"the artist tends now to move from the ivory to the control tower of
society." And Nam June Paik added, "cybernated art is very important,
but art for cybernated life is more important." Or in Billy's own
words, "...the artist is a visionary about life. Only he can create
disorder and still get away with it. Only he can use technology to
its fullest capacity... the artists have to use technology because
technology is becoming inseparable from our lives."
Billy Kluver has revealed to us how the artist might be a force of
renewal in a cybernated society, not by withdrawing from the
terrifying speed of social and technological change, but by closing
the gap between art and life, joining forces with the scientist to
re-engineer the cultural condition.
I would like to close with these words of Billy Kluver describing the
Pepsi Pavilion, words that were written thirty years ago but still
resonate today, words that should be remembered as computers, the
Internet, and the variety of interactive media permeate and begin to
dominate our contemporary life:
"The initial concern of the artists who designed the Pavilion was
that the quality of the experience of the visitor should involve
choice, responsibility, freedom, and participation. The Pavilion
would not tell a story or guide the visitor through a didactic,
authoritarian experience. The visitor would be encouraged as an
individual to explore the environment and compose his own experience."
Thank you, Billy.
posting the following tribute that I gave at Postmaster's Gallery in
New York City on March 15th, 2000, organized by the Kitchen. The
tribute was originally written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of
the opening of the Pepsi Pavilion, created by E.A.T (Experiments in
Art & Technology).
- Randall Packer
Thirty years ago today, the Pepsi Pavilion opened at Expo 1970 in
Osaka, Japan. This extraordinary work, the most ambitious undertaking
of Billy Kluver and E.A.T., involved the collaboration of over 75
artists and engineers from the US and Japan. More than an artwork, it
was, like the Pyramids, a cultural force in the sheer scope and
audacity of its conception. Bob Whitman, one of the collaborating
artists, claimed it was the largest art project of the second half of
the 20th Century.
At a conference I attended recently, an art historian remarked that
the Pepsi Pavilion hovers like a "ghost" over the contemporary art
world. This is a work that in one form or another has "touched" every
artist working today with technology, yet few ever experienced it
first hand. Hardly anyone who has read about the Pavilion, referenced
in numerous books on art and technology, has witnessed its fog
sculpture designed by Fujiko Nakaya, carved from fine mist sprayed
high above its geodesic structure; or the 800 pound kinetic
sculptures by Robert Whitman that he affectionately called "Floats",
slowly and mischievously roaming the terrace; or Lowell Cross and
David Tudor's laser projections that engulfed viewers as they entered
the lower level of the Pavilion, in a multi-colored electronic
baptism; or the surround-sound system designed by Tudor and Gordon
Mumma that immersed the listener in the Pavilion's dome, trajectories
of electronic sounds and cries of whales moving across the space; or
the giant spherical mirror conceived by Robert Whitman, larger than
any other in the world - not even NASA has attempted this - which
projected upside down, three dimensional holographic-like "real"
images into the performance space for the mostly Japanese visitors
who were mesmerized, delighted, terrified, intrigued, baffled,
entranced and bewildered by this other-worldly creation.
The Pepsi Pavilion was the culmination of ten, incredible years of
creative work by Billy Kluver and his collaborators during the decade
of the 1960s, that forever altered the course of art history. It was
the birth of a movement that united the sister disciplines of art and
science, once and for all, into a unified medium - more decisively,
perhaps, than any period in history since Aristotle and the ancient
Greeks.
It all began in the spring of 1960 when Jean Tinguely asked Billy if
he would assist him with the construction of an outdoor sculpture
commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for the Museum's sculpture
garden. Billy, who was working on laser systems at Bell Laboratories
in Murray Hill, New Jersey, couldn't resist the offer. Hardly
satisfied by purely scientific pursuits, he was eager to become a
part of the artistic milieu that was then giving birth to pop art,
minimalism, and Happenings a short drive away in New York City. He
was, as you can imagine, probably the only engineer on the planet
even aware of this activity.
Jean Tinguely's infamous self-destructing kinetic sculpture was
appropriately titled "Homage to New York." Kluver's participation in
this work, with its paint bombs, chemical stinks, noisemakers, and
fragments of scrap metal, inspired a generation of artists to imagine
the possibilities of technology, as the machine destroyed itself, in
Kluver's words, "in one glorious act of mechanical suicide." As
Calvin Tomkins colorfully narrates in his book "Off the Wall:" "The
great white machine rattles and shivers in all its members. Smoke
pours from its interior, temporarily blanketing the audience. The
piano catches fire and burns, accompanying its own demise with three
mournful notes repeated over and over. Parts of the structure break
loose and scuttle off to die elsewhere. Crossbeams sag as electric
charges melt the previously weakened joints. A Rauschenberg
"money-thrower" goes off with a blinding flash, scattering silver
dollars... a fireman, summoned by Tinguely, comes out to extinguish
the blaze in the piano; he is angrily booed by the spectators. After
about twenty minutes it becomes clear that the machine will not
perish unaided; firemen's axes finish the job, and 'Homage to New
York' returns to the junk piles from which it was born. The nineteen
sixties have begun."
After this blazing entrance into the New York art scene, Billy
enthusiastically joined in the revelry that continued through the
1960s, participating in the myriad of performances, Happenings and
uncategorizable events staged in lofts and storefronts by the likes
of Claus Oldenburg, Bob Whitman, Jim Dine, and others. Clearly the
performance art of the early 1960s made a strong impression on Billy,
heightening his interest in exploring open forms, unconventional
materials, and the process of interdisciplinary collaboration that
was his trademark.
Chief among his many collaborators was Robert Rauschenberg.
Rauschenberg had been in the audience the fateful day the "Homage to
New York" self-destructed, and asked Billy if he would work with him.
This was the beginning of a close relationship - today they are still
like brothers - a collaboration that produced some of the most
groundbreaking art and technology works of the 20th Century. Such
works as "Dry Cell" (1963), "Oracle" (1962-65), "Soundings" (1968)
and "Solstice" (1968) were among the first artworks ever to explore
the cybernetic exchange between the viewer and the machine.
Rauschenberg was interested in using technology to engage the
audience in an interactive relationship to the world around them,
bringing about an intimacy with the technological interactions that
have become ubiquitous in everyday life. This notion also underscored
Billy's objective, which was to bring the artist closer to the
concerns of the engineer and the materials of technology, and
reciprocally, for the artist to engage the engineer, typically
beholden to the corporate establishment, in meaningful cultural
dialogue.
Billy not only introduced new ways of incorporating technology to
Jean Tinguely and Robert Rauschenberg, but countless other artists
and performers including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Merce
Cunningham, David Tudor, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Robert
Whitman. The list goes on. In 1966, Kluver and Rauschenberg organized
one of the defining events of the decade. It was the "9 Evenings:
Theater and Engineering" held at the cavernous 69th Regiment Armory
in New York, in which ten artists created new performance works, each
working with one or more engineers recruited by Billy Kluver from
Bell Laboratories. It is important to note for the record books, that
these projects were not funded by Bell Labs, and that the engineers
who worked on them did so under their own initiative and on more or
less their own time.
Although "9 Evenings" was never an overwhelming "critical" success,
criticism has never slowed Billy down. These performances proved
above all that the artist imagination and his understanding of the
social condition, united with the engineer's practical instincts and
knowledge of technology, would yield works of "art and technology"
that opened up new opportunities for artistic expression.
Furthermore, the embrace of technology promised a new central role
for the artist in an increasingly technological society.
And so, following "9 Evenings," Billy Kluver, together with Robert
Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman and engineer Fred Waldhauer, formalized
the idea of uniting artists and engineers by founding the now
legendary E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) - designed in
their words, "to catalyze the inevitable active involvement of
industry, technology and the arts." At their first meeting, held at
the Central Plaza Hotel in the fall of 1966, over 300 artists showed
up, eighty of whom made requests for engineers and technical support.
E.A.T. recruited engineers, published a newsletter, and held open
house wherever artists and engineers could meet informally. The
momentum that resulted from this effort led to the formation of
chapters all over the country with thousands of members. E.A.T. has
since become a model for countless organizations and institutions
worldwide, including museums, universities, research laboratories,
non-profit groups, even such corporate think tanks as Xerox PARC in
Palo Alto, California, where the personal computer was born.
In the first edition of their newsletter Techne, E.A.T's mission
statement was published. The visionary nature of this "call to
action" addressed critical issues foreshadowing current efforts to
galvanize collaboration between artists and engineers, promote the
importance of technology in the contemporary arts and society at
large, and to funnel corporate support into new media efforts. It
reads: "Maintain a constructive climate for the recognition of the
new technology and the arts by a civilized collaboration between
groups unrealistically developing in isolation. Eliminate the
separation of the individual from technological change and expand and
enrich technology to give the individual variety, pleasure, and
avenues for exploration and involvement in contemporary life.
Encourage industrial initiative in generating original forethought,
instead of a compromise in aftermath, and precipitate a mutual
agreement in order to avoid the waste of a cultural revolution."
But it was not until 1968 that E.A.T. and the emerging art and
technology movement was embraced and legitimized by the mainstream
art world. That was when curator Pontus Hulten organized the "Machine
as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age" exhibition at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. Hulten boldly articulated the importance of
new forms of technology-based art by staging a sweeping historical
overview that began with Leonardo da Vinci and continued into the
20th Century. Hulten asked his old friend Billy Kluver to organize an
exhibition of contemporary art and technology works in order to bring
the exhibition up to the present. Kluver put out a call for
participation under the auspices of E.A.T., and presented the show
"Some More Beginnings" at the Brooklyn Museum. The judges were,
appropriately, all engineers.
The impact of Billy Kluver's work, born from his desire to engage
with the artist, to be a resource for artists, has resulted in a
lifelong dedication to artists and their art, including their
relentless need to break new ground. This effort has been a primary
catalyst leading to the widespread assimilation of technology into
the mainstream contemporary arts, not just in New York, but around
the world. Billy's role has always been to give, and despite this
total, uncompromising dedication, his approach as an engineer was
never to be servile, but rather to "serve" the artist as an active
and equal partner in the creation of the artwork. This simple, but
powerful idea is, I believe, his most important contribution, and its
effect can be felt as more than a ghostly presence in our
increasingly interdisciplinary times. For as Marshall McLuhan said,
"the artist tends now to move from the ivory to the control tower of
society." And Nam June Paik added, "cybernated art is very important,
but art for cybernated life is more important." Or in Billy's own
words, "...the artist is a visionary about life. Only he can create
disorder and still get away with it. Only he can use technology to
its fullest capacity... the artists have to use technology because
technology is becoming inseparable from our lives."
Billy Kluver has revealed to us how the artist might be a force of
renewal in a cybernated society, not by withdrawing from the
terrifying speed of social and technological change, but by closing
the gap between art and life, joining forces with the scientist to
re-engineer the cultural condition.
I would like to close with these words of Billy Kluver describing the
Pepsi Pavilion, words that were written thirty years ago but still
resonate today, words that should be remembered as computers, the
Internet, and the variety of interactive media permeate and begin to
dominate our contemporary life:
"The initial concern of the artists who designed the Pavilion was
that the quality of the experience of the visitor should involve
choice, responsibility, freedom, and participation. The Pavilion
would not tell a story or guide the visitor through a didactic,
authoritarian experience. The visitor would be encouraged as an
individual to explore the environment and compose his own experience."
Thank you, Billy.
Secretary Predicts Adoption of Artist Resolution
US Department of Art & Technology
Washington, DC
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
press@usdept-arttech.net
Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: November 8, 2002
Secretary Predicts Adoption of Resolution
To Authorize Artistic Acts of Mediation
Washington, DC - Following intensive discussions in the US Department
of Art & Technology, Global Virtualization Council, and their Joint
Committee on Cultural Transformation and Paradigmatic Shifts,
Secretary Randall M. Packer is predicting the adoption in the coming
days of a new, powerful resolution "To Authorize the Use of Artistic
Acts of Mediation," aimed at applying artistic forces of mediation in
light of recent actions of the Bush Regime and the United Nations
that threaten international insecurity.
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door meeting, Secretary Packer
said he had received critical input and support from
Secretary-General of the Global Virtualization Council, Luc
Courchesne of Canada, Artist-Ambassador Chris Bowman of Scotland,
Artist-Ambassador Peter Frucht of Hungary, and US DAT Staff members:
Jeff Gates, Deputy Secretary; Jack Rasmussen, Minister of Culture;
William Gilcher, Envoy Plenipotentiary to the European Union and
Latin America; Laura Coyle, Under Secretary for the Preservation of
the Avant-Garde; Abe Golam, Director of the Office of Political and
Economic Insecurity; Mark Amerika, Director of the Office of Freedom
of Speech; and Lowell Darling, recently appointed Under Secretary of
the Bureau of Alchemy for the Appropriation, Transformation, and
Liberation of Anachronistic Political Systems.
Underscoring the gravity of the issue, Secretary Packer said, "It is
a question of the Bush Regime's demonstrated capability and
willingness to irrevocably engulf us all in hopeless despair, through
a system extolling exploitation, consumption, corruption, and greed,
and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result from such
atrocities, combine to justify action by the US Department of Art &
Technology and the Global Virtualization Council to defend humanity.
The Resolution sends a strong message to the Bush Regime that failure
to comply will have serious consequences, that they hold in their own
hands the fate of their administration."
"We intend to have consultations as long as it takes to get to the
bottom of the text," he added, predicting that "in the days to come
the Council and Staff will be able to adopt a firm resolution giving
artists the means to extend aesthetic inquiry into the outer world
where ideas become real action. Through Collective Agency, our
demands will be fused into a common resolution, which demands that
the Bush Regime abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and
noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant
resolutions. We will no longer tolerate this defiance."
In his remarks to the press, Secretary Packer predicted passage of
the joint resolution by late next week, at which time he will deliver
a speech at the US Capitol, to be broadcast over Tel-SPAN. He
predicted that there would be unanimous passage of the Resolution,
adding, "we look forward to that; we want to stop the Bush Regime,
which the Resolution declares to be in "material and unacceptable
breach of its international obligations." He urged the nation's and
the world's artists "to take appropriate action, in accordance with
their compassion for critical insight, the spectacle, and their
distaste for the status quo, to change ineffective paradigms, to
change the worldS to prove that artists are not irrelevant!"
Secretary Packer also announced that the Joint Resolution, with
"unified Staff and Council support behind us," would be published by
Intelligent Agent (intelligentagent.com), the Web-based media arts
journal, Christiane Paul, editor-in-chief, and guest edited by US DAT
staff member Patrick Lichty, Director of the Bureau for the
Dissemination of Metastructures and Media Metaphors.
Asked about the new Resolution's potential to strengthen the artists'
hand, Secretary Packer said, "We accept our responsibilities. It is
desirable that the Bush Regime understands that any lack of
cooperation or violation of the provisions of the Resolution will
call for broad action of the artistic Avant-Garde - that artistic
action will be unavoidable - to better enable those concerned with
the fate of our world to invent explosive material to toss into the
political-economic bunkers."
*******
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.
Tel-SPAN
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/tel-span
Tel-SPAN is the telematic broadcasting channel of the US Department
of Art & Technology. Its mission is to provide global access to the
artistic process in an increasingly cybernated society. Tel-SPAN will
provide its audience access to live, real-time distribution of broad
forms of cultural content, and to other forums where critical
artistic issues are discussed, debated and decided - all without
editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of
all radical points of view.
Covenant for the Articles of Artistic Mediation
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/covenant.html
The Covenant for the Articles of Artistic Mediation, collectively
co-authored by artists and critics from around the world, was
officially transmitted on June 19th to the US Department of State at
the World Mediation Summit in Washington, DC. The World Mediation
Summit was convened under the theme "Artist as Mediator on the World
Stage," held at the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes, the German
Cultural Center in Washington, DC, as a signal of the cultural
community's determination to tackle head-on the extraordinary
challenges faced by the world after the attacks of September 11th.
Intelligent Agent
http://www.intelligentagent.com
An on-line magazine on the contemporary media arts published by
Christiane Paul, guest edited by Patrick Lichty.
*****
Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology
press@usdept-arttech.net
# 01-112
Washington, DC
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
press@usdept-arttech.net
Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: November 8, 2002
Secretary Predicts Adoption of Resolution
To Authorize Artistic Acts of Mediation
Washington, DC - Following intensive discussions in the US Department
of Art & Technology, Global Virtualization Council, and their Joint
Committee on Cultural Transformation and Paradigmatic Shifts,
Secretary Randall M. Packer is predicting the adoption in the coming
days of a new, powerful resolution "To Authorize the Use of Artistic
Acts of Mediation," aimed at applying artistic forces of mediation in
light of recent actions of the Bush Regime and the United Nations
that threaten international insecurity.
Speaking to reporters after a closed-door meeting, Secretary Packer
said he had received critical input and support from
Secretary-General of the Global Virtualization Council, Luc
Courchesne of Canada, Artist-Ambassador Chris Bowman of Scotland,
Artist-Ambassador Peter Frucht of Hungary, and US DAT Staff members:
Jeff Gates, Deputy Secretary; Jack Rasmussen, Minister of Culture;
William Gilcher, Envoy Plenipotentiary to the European Union and
Latin America; Laura Coyle, Under Secretary for the Preservation of
the Avant-Garde; Abe Golam, Director of the Office of Political and
Economic Insecurity; Mark Amerika, Director of the Office of Freedom
of Speech; and Lowell Darling, recently appointed Under Secretary of
the Bureau of Alchemy for the Appropriation, Transformation, and
Liberation of Anachronistic Political Systems.
Underscoring the gravity of the issue, Secretary Packer said, "It is
a question of the Bush Regime's demonstrated capability and
willingness to irrevocably engulf us all in hopeless despair, through
a system extolling exploitation, consumption, corruption, and greed,
and the extreme magnitude of harm that would result from such
atrocities, combine to justify action by the US Department of Art &
Technology and the Global Virtualization Council to defend humanity.
The Resolution sends a strong message to the Bush Regime that failure
to comply will have serious consequences, that they hold in their own
hands the fate of their administration."
"We intend to have consultations as long as it takes to get to the
bottom of the text," he added, predicting that "in the days to come
the Council and Staff will be able to adopt a firm resolution giving
artists the means to extend aesthetic inquiry into the outer world
where ideas become real action. Through Collective Agency, our
demands will be fused into a common resolution, which demands that
the Bush Regime abandons its strategy of delay, evasion and
noncompliance and promptly and strictly complies with all relevant
resolutions. We will no longer tolerate this defiance."
In his remarks to the press, Secretary Packer predicted passage of
the joint resolution by late next week, at which time he will deliver
a speech at the US Capitol, to be broadcast over Tel-SPAN. He
predicted that there would be unanimous passage of the Resolution,
adding, "we look forward to that; we want to stop the Bush Regime,
which the Resolution declares to be in "material and unacceptable
breach of its international obligations." He urged the nation's and
the world's artists "to take appropriate action, in accordance with
their compassion for critical insight, the spectacle, and their
distaste for the status quo, to change ineffective paradigms, to
change the worldS to prove that artists are not irrelevant!"
Secretary Packer also announced that the Joint Resolution, with
"unified Staff and Council support behind us," would be published by
Intelligent Agent (intelligentagent.com), the Web-based media arts
journal, Christiane Paul, editor-in-chief, and guest edited by US DAT
staff member Patrick Lichty, Director of the Bureau for the
Dissemination of Metastructures and Media Metaphors.
Asked about the new Resolution's potential to strengthen the artists'
hand, Secretary Packer said, "We accept our responsibilities. It is
desirable that the Bush Regime understands that any lack of
cooperation or violation of the provisions of the Resolution will
call for broad action of the artistic Avant-Garde - that artistic
action will be unavoidable - to better enable those concerned with
the fate of our world to invent explosive material to toss into the
political-economic bunkers."
*******
The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.
Tel-SPAN
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/tel-span
Tel-SPAN is the telematic broadcasting channel of the US Department
of Art & Technology. Its mission is to provide global access to the
artistic process in an increasingly cybernated society. Tel-SPAN will
provide its audience access to live, real-time distribution of broad
forms of cultural content, and to other forums where critical
artistic issues are discussed, debated and decided - all without
editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of
all radical points of view.
Covenant for the Articles of Artistic Mediation
http://www.usdept-arttech.net/covenant.html
The Covenant for the Articles of Artistic Mediation, collectively
co-authored by artists and critics from around the world, was
officially transmitted on June 19th to the US Department of State at
the World Mediation Summit in Washington, DC. The World Mediation
Summit was convened under the theme "Artist as Mediator on the World
Stage," held at the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes, the German
Cultural Center in Washington, DC, as a signal of the cultural
community's determination to tackle head-on the extraordinary
challenges faced by the world after the attacks of September 11th.
Intelligent Agent
http://www.intelligentagent.com
An on-line magazine on the contemporary media arts published by
Christiane Paul, guest edited by Patrick Lichty.
*****
Contact: Press Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology
press@usdept-arttech.net
# 01-112