This article takes the editorship by Peter Townsend of Studio International, to which the author contributed regularly between 1969 and 1972, as a starting-point to recall decisive personal encounters with Roy Lichtenstein's paintings, Wen-Ying Tsai's sculptures, Jasia Reichardt's exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity and the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. It goes on to re-endorse the earlier argument that a long historical time-scale was required for the aesthetic implications of photography to become clear, and that, like photography, the computer and holography are technological media whose immediate interactions with aesthetics and the culture at large will take many decades to pan out. Earlier claims about the relationship between art and ecology are then reviewed. Finally the article suggests that though world politics have changed considerably since the 1960s and 1970s, artists have undiminished opportunities to grapple with the challenges of new technologies directly, rather than retreating into a closed system.
I have not given full page references to articles in Studio International, which would overload the reference section. The articles can easily be found in a library that stocks a run of the magazine.
2.
BattcockGregory, ed. 1973. Idea Art: A Critical Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton.
3.
BekensteinJacob D.2003. “Information in the Holographic Universe.” Scientific American, August 289 (2): 58–65. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0803-58
4.
BenthallJonathan. 1968a. “Art as Programming: Reflexions on Roy Lichtenstein.” The Cambridge QuarterlyIII (2): 107–114. doi: 10.1093/camqtly/III.2.107
5.
BenthallJonathan. 1968b. “Artists and Technicians.” Times Literary Supplement, October 31, 1229.
6.
BenthallJonathan. 1971. Introduction, Margaret Benyon Exhibition 1971 Catalogue. Nottingham: Nottingham University Art Gallery.
7.
BenthallJonathan. 1972. Science and Technology in Art Today. London: Thames and Hudson.
8.
BenthallJonathan. 1976. The Body Electric: Patterns of Western Industrial Culture. London: Thames and Hudson.
9.
Benthall, Jonathan. 2017. “Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai” and “Trembling into Thought: An Afterword.” in L.-Y. Tsai (ed.), Tsai 蔡文颖. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press.
HulténK. G. Pontus. 1968. The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
18.
HussainFarooq. 1970. Living Underwater. New York: Praeger.
19.
HydeGordon, BenthallJonathan, and MetzgerGustav. 1971. Zagreb Manifesto. bit international 7, Boris Kelemen and Radoslav Putar (eds). Zagreb: Galerije grada Zagreba, p. 3–4. Reprinted in Margit Rosen (ed.), 2011 A Little-Known Story About a Movement, a Magazine, and the Computer's Arrival in Art: New Tendencies and Bit International. Karlsruhe: ZKM Center for Art and Media and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 421.
