Kuo: E.A.T. built an early teletype messaging network for NYC children
Michelle Kuo · Experiments in Art and Technology with Artforum Editor Michelle Kuo · Y Combinator · Oct 20, 2017 · at 50:54
Artforum editor Michelle Kuo discusses 1960s-70s Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) projects exploring proto-digital communication networks.
0:00 / 0:36exact quote · 36.9s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 stations around the city where different school children of different socioeconomic brackets, like in different places, could go and have access to teletype machines, basically primitive fax and telex machines, and so they could then There are sessions just like, go, and why don't you communicate with these other children?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Michelle Kuo
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: 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. 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: 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…”