Technocrats of the Imagination

Art, Technology, and the Military-Industrial Avant-Garde

John Beck, Ryan Bishop

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781478006602
  9781478005957
• eBook ISBN:
  9781478007326
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthetic but a new utopian social order based on collective experimentation. In examining these projects' promises and pitfalls and how they have inspired a new generation of collaborative labs populated by artists, engineers, and scientists, Beck and Bishop reveal the connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Science, Art, Democracy
• Chapter 2. A Laboratory of Form and Movement: Institutionalizing Emancipatory Technicity at MIT
• Chapter 3. The Hands-On Process: Engineering Collaboration at E.A.T.
• Chapter 4. Feedback: Expertise, LACMA, and the Think Tank
• Chapter 5. How to Make the World Work
• Chapter 6. Heritage of Our Times
• Notes
• References
• Index