Oct 20, 2017 · 1h 2m · y-combinator
Experiments in Art and Technology with Artforum Editor Michelle Kuo · Y Combinator
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Artforum editor Michelle Kuo examines the historical impact, artistic innovations, and sociopolitical conflicts of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a pioneering 1960s collaboration between avant-garde artists and Bell Labs engineers. She connects these mid-century experiments to contemporary issues in digital media, machine authorship, and the evolving relationship between art, labor, and technology.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 2.6 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 0.3 The partners pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 43:10 Subverting digital authenticity and valuation
Kuo firmly dismisses the tech-centric premise of using blockchain to establish provenance and market valuation, asserting that modern artists actively aim to subvert authorship and orthodox markets.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 55:27 Host pushes on Artforum paywallWhen Kuo presents an idealistic vision of open civic institutions and public spheres for knowledge, the host directly pushes back by calling out her publication's paywall.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 43:00 Kuo reframes technological art history against commodificationWhen the host asks if blockchain solves the valuation and authenticity dilemma of digital art, Kuo educates him that art movements specifically use automated and chance systems to eliminate individual authorship.
The partners hold their own ▶ 26:43 Host references Robert Irwin and Richard FeynmanThe host demonstrates deep background reading by identifying Robert Irwin's conversations book and his historical collaboration with physicist Richard Feynman and Richard Serra in an anechoic chamber.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundations of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Michelle Kuo introduces the history of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), detailing the collaboration between Bell Labs engineer Billy Kluver and Robert Rauschenberg. The hosts listen attentively with simple clarifying questions about pairing artists with engineers. | |
| The 9 Evenings Armory Performance Launch | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host asks about the logistical timeline leading up to the 9 Evenings performance at the Armory. Kuo explains the failed Stockholm proposal, the venue choice, and the chaotic high-society opening night. | |
| Infrared Technology and Scaling E.A.T. Membership | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Kuo explains how classified infrared military gear was obtained from Japan and how E.A.T. expanded to 5,000 members. The host asks how people networked before the internet, prompting Kuo to describe trade show outreach at IEEE conferences. | |
| Deconstructing Rauschenberg's Tennis Match Performance | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | The host asks for details on Rauschenberg's tennis match performance at the Armory. Kuo delivers an in-depth breakdown of wired rackets triggering light blackouts and infrared cameras capturing audience movement. | |
| Cold War Attitudes and Contemporary Reception of E.A.T. | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | The host asks how contemporary observers perceived the art-tech overlap during the 1960s. Kuo explains the bifurcation between futurist techno-optimism and counterculture backlash against the military-industrial complex during the Vietnam War. | |
| Automation House and Labor Economics in the 1970s | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | The host demonstrates prior research on Automation House and Theodore Keel's labor mediation. Kuo elaborates on JFK's automation concerns, job-training initiatives, and the first artist cable TV broadcast. | |
| The Pepsi Pavilion at Osaka Expo '70 and E.A.T.'s Dissolution | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Kuo describes the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka Expo, detailing the Mylar mirror dome, fog sculptures, budget disputes, and Pepsi ultimately replacing experimental audio with Disney music. The host listens to the account of the group's burnout. | |
| Cross-Disciplinary Networks and Museum Preservation Challenges | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | The host cites Robert Irwin's biographical book and his chamber experiments with Richard Feynman and Richard Serra. Kuo expands on Irwin's participation in LACMA's Art and Technology program and contrasts institutional exhibitions with E.A.T.'s unconfined model. | |
| Kinetic Art, Self-Destruction, and Evolutionary Artworks | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | The host brings up Jean Tinguely's self-destroying kinetic sculptures and the challenge museums face in operating them. Kuo details Kluver's collaboration with Tinguely at MoMA and Rauschenberg's evolving transistor radio sculpture at the Pompidou. | |
| Retrospective Aesthetic Kitsch vs. Contemporary Intent | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | The host notes how vintage tech art can appear kitsch today and asks why the Venice Biennale seemed devoid of technology. Kuo reframes the observation, arguing technology is now ubiquitous and the Biennale chose to spotlight indigenous craft and slow perception. | |
| Contemporary Artists at the Tech Frontier: Trevor Paglen | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | When the co-host asks about contemporary artists continuing E.A.T.'s legacy, Kuo highlights Trevor Paglen's long-range drone photography and examinations of non-optical automated surveillance. | |
| Blockchain, Authenticity, and Subverting Art Valuation | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | The host asks if blockchain will be adopted to authenticate and secure scarcity for digital art. Kuo challenges this market-centric framing, educating the host on how modern art history uses technology to subvert notions of individual authorship and orthodox valuation. | |
| Machine Authorship, Artificial Intelligence, and Glitch Aesthetics | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | The host cites previous guest Doug Eck and Brian Eno's concept of style emerging from glitch aesthetics. Kuo discusses how machine automation and composers like Steve Reich investigate the tension between systemic rules and authorial control. | |
| Radical Experiments: Children and Global Communication | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | The host inquires about unbuilt or forgotten Automation House initiatives. Kuo recounts Robert Whitman's Children and Communication project where teletype and telex machines were deployed across NYC schools, humorously prefiguring instant messaging. | |
| Public Spheres for Art and Technology & Re-evaluating History | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Kuo advocates for building accessible public spheres for technology akin to civic art museums. The host pushes back on accessibility by jokingly demanding she take down Artforum's paywall, leading into book and critic recommendations. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Kuo: E.A.T. was founded in 1966 by Rauschenberg and Klüver
“Experiments in Art and Technology was a group that was founded in 1966 by the artist Robert Rauschenberg, by an engineer named Billy Kluver, who was a research scientist at Bell Labs.”
Kuo: E.A.T.'s first Armory project paired over 40 artists and engineers
“It involved over 40 engineers and artists, and it was this performance series that took place in New York in at the Armory, which was a huge cavernous space, and basically to get, to make the performance, what became the performance pieces, they paired artists…”
Kuo: Non-tech people assume technology can already do everything
“Like any tech person knows, non-tech people think technology can do everything all at once already.”
Kuo: A Stockholm festival rejected E.A.T. for giving engineers too much agency
“EAT claimed later that it was because, ah, the performance festival didn't want to give, they didn't like the idea that the artist would give so much agency to the engineers and that they would kind of be this freewheeling thing.”
Kuo: E.A.T. chose NYC Armory for five-second acoustic echo times
“The Armory was suggested as a venue because they wanted to test out literally physical scale, and in the Armory there are echo times of up to five seconds.”
Kuo: Rauschenberg used classified military infrared cameras in a 1966 performance
“For example, in Rauschenberg's performance piece, to make a long story short, one of the technologies they got and used was infrared, and at the time, infrared was a classified military technology. They ended up getting infrared cameras from a Japanese supplie…”
Kuo: E.A.T. reached nearly 5,000 members at peak around 1970
“And so at their peak by around 1970, they had nearly 5000 members.”
Kuo: Hans Haacke manned a booth at IEEE to recruit engineers
“To artists, but then to go to IEEE, which was the, you know, engineering society, they had a, Hans Hacke had a booth, was manning a booth there and handing out flyers.”
Kuo: Rauschenberg's 1966 performance featured wired tennis rackets that extinguished lights
“Rauschenberg's piece basically set up, in this huge cavernous expanse of the armory, a tennis match. But it wasn't a regular tennis match. He set up a tennis court. He had the artist Frank Stella, who at the time was actually taking tennis lessons from a tenni…”
Kuo: Rauschenberg's light trigger failed on opening night, requiring manual shutoff
“Of course, the first night, the rackets didn't work, so they were, or the lights, the trigger for the lights didn't work, so they were actually manually turning off the lights. You know, sort of jerry-rigging or, you know, retroactively, you know, making the p…”
Kuo: 1960s critics accused E.A.T. of complicity with the military
“So they actually came under a lot of flack. I mean, there are articles actually written in Artforum as well as elsewhere that essentially accused EAT of being complicit with you know, the military and taking that as far as you might even go.”
Kuo: E.A.T. Produced the First Artists' Cable Television Broadcast in 1970–1971
“One of the projects they did was actually convert A bunch of really experimental film pieces, two video, and then do the first cable broadcast of artists, television programming pretty much of all time, and this was in 1970, 71.”
Kuo: E.A.T. built a 1970 pavilion using telecommunication satellite Mylar technology
“They tested it in LA but they created a 180 degree hemispherical mirror dome that was inflated, made out of inflated mylar essentially, which was the same technology that was being used for the first telecommunication satellites.”
Kuo: Pepsi replaced E.A.T.'s experimental 1970 soundtrack with 'It's a Small World'
“Pepsi replaced all of these experimental sort of John Cage slash David Tudor composed soundtracks with It's a Small World.”
Kuo: Physicist Richard Feynman was a member of E.A.T.
“Richard Feynman was a member of EAT, so was Robert Irwin so were a lot of physicists”
Kuo: E.A.T. left a voluminous paper trail but few traditional art objects
“Often what they created does not conform to traditional genres of sculpture or painting or drawings, and so a lot of what they made was either lost or some of it sitting in disrepair in, like, an engineer's garage somewhere or an artist's studio and so the pap…”
Kuo: A self-destructing MoMA kinetic sculpture simply short-circuited and fizzled out
“Tang Lee actually was really one of the first works that Kluver, the EAT engineer, they collaborated on a piece that was basically a kinetic sculpture That destroyed itself in the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden in of course, it didn't really, it sort of…”
Kuo: The Centre Pompidou's architecture acts like a Faraday cage
“Centre Pompidou is a very funny building. Again, to make a long story short it's a very weird piece of architecture, but it acts like a Faraday cage. So it was blocking all signal.”
Kuo: Rauschenberg proved readymades can adapt to technological obsolescence
“And in a way, he's taking this idea of the ready-made, which is this revolutionary twentieth-century idea, and he's saying the ready-made itself can be updated. It can sort of change and adapt to technological obsolescence. And that is really You know, fascina…”
Kuo: Artists are countering tech acceleration by exploring traditional craft and perception
“I would say that people are interested right now in exploring The flip side of the acceleration of technology and its omnipresence , they're interested in also slowing things down in other kinds of perception or in even countering some of the kinds of media sa…”
Kuo: Artists using blockchain actively seek to subvert orthodox valuation and authenticity
“They actively want to subvert authenticity. And that's been something that, again, actually you could say almost the entire history of modern art is about challenging authenticity and authorship.”
Kuo: Dismissive skepticism toward new artistic mediums will remain a constant
“Yes, I'll probably never live to see the day when someone doesn't say my kid could do that.”
Kuo: E.A.T. built an early teletype messaging network for NYC children
“So the artist Robert Whitman kind of spearheaded this project, and again, part of this is about with these new tools of communication, How can we explore democratizing communication and networks of communication? So they had this idea to set up, ah, multiple s…”
Kuo: E.A.T. Linked Global Cities via Telex to Discuss Future
“They explored telex communication with, they set up telex stations for adults on the occasion of another project In, ah, Ahmedabad, India, in Stockholm, in Tokyo, in New York, in LA, and they were Having people ask questions about what they thought the future …”
Kuo: The internet created atomized nodes rather than a democratizing utopia
“Everyone thought the internet was going to be that, you know, democratizing final utopia, and instead we've seen the flip side of that, which is the development of ever specialized, ever atomized, ever more esoteric and inward looking conversations, or even I …”
Kuo: Studying historical failures reveals future possibilities
“In our culture, we're often taught If it wasn't successful, then you shouldn't pay attention to it, but actually, I think the opposite is true, because then you'll never know what still might be possible in the future, and so you have to explore all of these, …”