SCULPTURE & TECHNOMORPHOLOGY

art studio 105 - winter 2003 - Graham Budgett

Technology is the general area of concern for this class, Morphology - strictly defined as 'the study of form and structure as opposed to function'1 - is the operational approach. The term Technomorphology is coined here to signify a focus on the spatial-temporal evolutions of technological form.

'Form follows Function' is a fundamental Design directive that has arguably both facilitated and constrained human vision in areas such as Architecture, Engineering, and Industrial Design.2 Sculpture has no such directives - this class takes function as a given factor (for better or worse) in the appearance of technologies, and favours instead the morphological view of 3+ Dimensional technologies across historic time as its research and source material. This produces an alternate view of the history of technological production in order to better visualize the near future of spectacular technoculture. This formal approach to Technology should not be understood as 'formalist' in the usual art sense - the aim is not art for art's sake' (or technology for technology's sake) - it is cultural research, criticism, & production in Sculpture's 'expanded field'3.

In 1970, the art critic Jack Burnham wrote with true prescience:

Information processing technology influences our notions about creativity, perception, and the limits of art ... (It) is probably not the province of computers and other telecommunication devices to produce works of art as we know it; but they will in fact be instrumental in redefining the entire area of aesthetic awareness.4

This process of redefinition is well underway in popular culture, and 'Information Art' is at last reaching far beyond the threatened Gallery system, just as the early 'Conceptualists' championed by Burnham predicted. But there is much 'number-crunching' still to be done in the expanded field of Sculpture & Multi-Dimensional Design - moribund Histories & still-born Futures alike must be reprocessed. As a class, we will be looking at formal evolutions of technologies over time, and reconceiving them for visualisation & fabrication utilising software & hardware that 'New Technology' itself has delivered. 3D modeling, rendering, animation, & display tools, as well as traditional fabrication methods, will be applied to manifest virtual structure in actual space and vice versa.

The production of New Space - of new spatial complexes that visualise and make possible desirable Futures - is the intent of this class, but as with all technological practice, Dystopia is as likely as Utopia.

Graham Budgett, December 2002

1 Chambers' Scientific & Technical Dictionary

2 [i.e. The original iMac was a brash acknowledgement of the underlying form of the Cathode-Ray Tube that for decades had simply been boxed-in with a beige plastic shell connected to other 'beige boxes'. Using transparency and curvacious form to reveal its infrastructure, the original iMac mischievously celebrated and simultaneously attempted to speed the obsolescence of the 'CRT'.]'

3 Rosalind Krauss, 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field',
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, MIT, 1985
4 Jack Burnham, 'Notes on Art and Information Processing', Software - Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art - pages 10-14; catalog of the "Software" exhibition curated by Burnham at the Jewish Museum in Brooklyn, NY, 1970.