Big Business Artist-in-residence Programs

Cutting-edge artists aren't supposed to work for the military-industrial complex, right? ... Wrong.

Since the sixties, artists like John Whitney Sr., Stan Vanderbeek, and Robert Rauschenberg have collaborated with engineers from the likes of IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and Kohler. In fact, some of these companies have even sponsored artist-in residence programs.

A.R.T.C.O.M.

Boston CyberArts is a non-profit organization that runs a program called Artists in Residence at Technology Companies of Massachusetts (A.R.T.C.O.M.). Many of these programs are co-funded by private corporations and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For example, Cambridge-based installation artist Carrie J. Bodle, one of A.R.T.C.O.M's most recent artists-in-residence, has been paired with IBM's Collaborative User Experience group (CUE). Her installations are unique in that they're created-environments emphasizing the senses of touch, sight, and sound. One such environment was created inside an abandoned bolt factory in Maine.

E.A.T.

"Experiments in Art and Technology" (E.A.T.) is a non-profit organization founded in 1966 by Bell Labs scientist Billy Kluver, artist Robert Rauschenberg, and others. The object of this organization is to match artists, who have specific technical problems in executing works, with engineers who might be able to solve these problems.

For example, one such artist was Andy Warhol, who went to Billy Kluver with a problem with a project that involved "floating lightbulbs." While Kluver couldn't help him, he did introduce Warhol to a new material that Bell Labs had developed: Mylar.

E.A.T. engineers had also helped artist Jasper Johns insert a neon letter "R" into a painting.

In its 1966 founding year, E.A.T. also hosted its seminal event, "9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering" at New York City's famous Armory. This event showcased collaborations between 40 engineers and artists.

Stan Vanderbeek and Bell Labs

Stan Vanderbeek was one of the great experimental film makers of the fifties and sixties. In his installation "Poem Fields", Vanderbeek collaborated with Bell Labs computer scientist Ken Knowlton, one of the pioneers of computer graphics software. These art installations were a series of cathode ray tubes that formed mosaics, all driven by a program written by Knowlton.

John Whitney Sr. and IBM

In 1966, music composer and film title designer/animator John Whitney Sr became IBM's first artist-in-residence. His specialty was blending abstract animations with his own musical compositions. At IBM, Whitney created "Arabesque", a seven-minute computer animation synchronized with an original musical composition. Some critics have called this his "masterpiece."

PAIR

In 1993, Xerox PARC labs introduced their artist-in-residence program, PAIR. Established by Xerox PARC leader John Seely Brown and run by Rich Gold, a former Mattel toy designer, the PAIR program paired new media artists with Xerox engineers.

For more information about other corporate-sponsored artist-in-residence programs, see Kevin Kelly's comprehensive list.

SOURCES:

"Artists-in-Residence Programs", George Fifield, Boston Cyberarts,

Bell Labs

http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lesson4.html

Carrie Bodle

"E.A.T.", John McGee, Metropolis Japan

"SIGGRAPH - past and present", Animation World Magazine

"John Seely Brown interview", Linda Naiman, Creativity at Work