Art has changed. It is no longer just the way we have expected it to be – provocative, beautiful or both. Art has been bestowed with high tech engineering over the last half century and suddenly this technology has changed fundamentally what art could be and of course the way we see it.
The fused concept of art and engineering is not only in galleries or in collectors’ homes but now is roaming the streets, filling up the department stores and creeping around the beach. If you’re traveling you will now start noticing…
From Alessi kitchen gadgets to the latest Aston Martin the idea of art and beauty is married to high tech performance. Art, with engineering as its companion, allows for innovation to not lose its sense of beauty. It was the German school of thought, the Bauhaus, that combined art and technology in the 1920s, which set this course for modernist ways of creating – and a century later the movement has no downtempo.
Berlin's Bauhaus-Archiv designed by Walter Gropius
Debra Hockemeyer, engineer and owner of Western Ridge Consulting in Los Angeles, described the place where art and engineering come together to “engage both sides of the brain” and thus create a result that “enlightens and entertains.” She cites some examples of art and engineering in the form of architecture – “from the Roman aqueducts to the Beijing Bird’s Nest stadium with architects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.” Hockemeyer also described the new generation of art and engineering to intersect in the digital realm of “engineering design and graphical user interfaces” from the film “Avatar” all the way to the ever familiar and growing to Apple series of products.
Kotaro Watanabe, Director of Takram Design Engineering in Tokyo, said, “Art is a way of posing questions, design on the other hand is there to offer a solution.” He believes that with engineering there is always a specific purpose but with art things are different – art doesn’t necessarily require a purpose. “Art, usually, is just meant to evoke feeling, however design and engineering is all about purpose. When you throw art in combination with design and engineering it starts to open up the very idea of thought,” he said.
Watanabe, who published a book on design engineering, explains art meeting engineering in simple terms: “We now accentuate the abstract meaning of a specific function or the purpose that it's meant for by combining the art and engineering. With engineering purpose is first and method second but art switches these around and now the method becomes the ultimate purpose – seen in the way it is ultimately presented.”
In 1967 the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman launched “Experiments in Art and Technology” (E.A.T.) in New York. Established as a non-profit and tax-exempt organization E.A.T.’s ambition was to advance the colluding of artists and engineers. One of their most applauded activities was the Pepsi Pavilion of 1970 in Osaka where E.A.T. artists and engineers came together to design and program an immersive dome that featured a fog sculpture by the Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya. Her structure consisted of a “Buckminster Fuller-style geodesic dome covered by a water vapor cloud sculpture” and the architect John Pearce fitted a Mylar mirror inside it for a hologram optical effect. Viewers, due to the spherical mirror, were able to walk around the structure and see from all angles – a perfect marriage of beauty through art and technical know-how through engineering.
The Pepsi Pavilion at Osaka World's Fair, 1970
On another terrace near the Pavilion, the American experimental filmmaker and artist, Robert Breer created six-foot high kinetic sculptures moving around and emitting noises. When one of these “Floats” hit an obstacle it would reverse direction – art and engineering in practice. The Pavilion is still to this day considered to be “one of the most monumental immersive art and technology projects of the 20th Century”, according to Christiane Paul’s “Digital Art (World of Art series)” published by Thames & Hudson. According to Paul E.A.T. experimentations led to “media-art explorations” in the 1990s and eventually the “ArtScience movement” of the 2000s that expands across the “ontological impact” science has on society today.
Robert Breer
Work that combines both art and engineering are usually pieces with a concept or aesthetic that somehow transcends its function. This idea is one of the founding principles of a US based design-business, R & Company. Zesty Meyers, a co-founding partner, in a recent interview talked about the artists they work with that transcend art and engineering: “We have worked with people like Swedish born designer and architect Greta Magnusson Grossman with her minimal aesthetic and lamps that are bullet shaped, with directional shades and flexible arms.”
R & Company also works with contemporary designers “whose work teeters between the aesthetic and functional realms”, as with Jeff Zimmerman’s illuminated sculpture. Meyers called the “Hex stool" by the American artists, the Haas Brothers, a good example of where art/design and engineering meet and said, “The artists’ vision is driven by form and function. The work is crafted using tiles made from engineered rods that are then manipulated by hand to create something that is intriguing, sensual and luxurious”.
Hex Stools
The Haas Brothers, using nimble craftsmanship and clever use of materials, have become studio art innovators. In their current works, the Texas duo explore “aesthetic and formal themes related to nature, science fiction, sexuality, psychedelia and color theory”; the mastery is in the high tech engineering involved with the manipulating the materials - brass, bronze, porcelain and fur to highly technical resins and polyurethane. I’ll take three, thanks.
Artist Abigail Harper believes that as the world becomes increasingly mechanized and more technologically advanced, it is only natural the effect on art will be democratization. “True creativity is a rare gift and therefore the blurred lines between design, engineering and art will not alter that unique quality; it continues to be recognized and valued across disciplines,” she said. Harper cited the Dutch artist Theo Jansen as an example of kinetic sculpture and engineering; “occupying a realm somewhere between the two genres and successfully bridge the gap between technical skills and raw beauty.”
Jansen, known for his “Strandbeest” work that was used in a BMW advertisement and widely viewed TED talk, has pursued engineering so much and pushed it so far that it can be seen or viewed as art. The PVC mechanisms that react to their environment (in particular wind) and look as if they are walking on their own as “creatures” project exactly what Jansen sees as “the walls between art and engineering existing only in our minds.”
If Jansen is correct, the evolution, or call it revolution if you will, is only the beginning. Once the walls - in our minds – are broken down the possibilities are seemingly fathomless and infinite.
Saddle up.
So what is good design then?
Roman Alonso, Creative Director and Owner at LA design collection, Commune:
“Well, generally speaking I feel that good design has to follow function and that art should not follow the restraints or parameters of function...that it should be free and emotional and subjective. However, I do believe that there are artists that are good designers, and that there are designers who are also good artists. I believe in the decorative arts and "functional art" and there is a wave of designers and artists right now, that don't see themselves restricted by formal definitions of art...some might argue it's also happening with food.” Just ask Li Edelkoort…
Reiko Tsubaki, Associate Curator at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo:
“Design, engineering and art all originally come from the same root as Leonard de Vinci - only modernity obliges us to separate them. Today is more difficult than ever to separate these three – perhaps motivation to make the world a better place is where it is most interesting.”