Response

I completely agree with Therese Tierney that "rigid boundaries do little to deepen understanding of the art movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s." That is precisely the premise from which "Art in the Information Age" attempts to reveal previously obscured parallels between art-and-technology and conceptual art, while at the same time shed light on some reasons why they became historicized as categorically distinct practices. The essay also carefully explains that, "by respecting the differences between these artistic tendencies, while at the same time understanding some of the common theoretical threads that they have shared, a more comprehensive account of art since the mid-20th century can be formulated."

Consistent with this position, I interpret the relationship between the "machine age" and the "information age" in terms of both continuities and differences. Unfortunately, the intricately interwound components of technology, modes of production, economy and culture articulated in the essay are taken by Tierney to portray a binary opposition between "the 19th-century 'machine age' and today's 'information age,'" and she argues that "in actuality there has been no succession." In her example of the automobile, she notes that electronic circuitry now pervades all aspects of design and fabrication of industrial production and the vehicles themselves. But if one pushes this logic further, it becomes clear that the iron-age technology of smelting also is involved in automobile production, as are a wide range of technologies developed over thousands of years, including the wheel. Would Tierney support the claim that there has been no succession from the wheel to the automobile?

Tierney's statement "Divisions can be meaningless because of their inherent duality" expresses skepticism towards binary oppositions and the violence they can wreak by creating artificial oppositions (male-female, black-white, good-evil) that occlude more subtle understandings of relationship. I am very sympathetic to this form of critique; however, I am also wary of how the failure to make distinctions and posit boundaries can wreak violence on historical understanding by collapsing phenomena into an undifferentiated field, as I hope the wheel-automobile example illustrates. At some point in the future, the differences between the wheel and the automobile, or even the Stanley Steamer and the Apollo 11 (and the cultures that created them) may appear inconsequential. For now, at least, they seem fairly significant.

Needless to say, I am delighted that Tierney's research corroborates the parallels I have drawn between art-and-technology and conceptual art, and that these artistic tendencies have strongly influenced architecture since the late 1970s. I applaud her for grounding her work in the material conditions of the period (recession, lack of commissions) that led architects to pursue alternative media and venues. Tierney's own method suggests that she would agree that one may distinguish the particular material conditions of technology, economics and culture of a historical moment from other periods without establishing a binary opposition between them. Indeed, it is in those very distinctions where one often finds evidence of commonalities and instances of cross-fertilization that were obscured at the time by what James Beniger has described as the "chronic inability to grasp even the most essential dynamics of an age."

I welcome an ongoing exchange of ideas with Tierney and others who create art and architecture and/or write about them. Such exchange promotes the refinement of distinctions and enables a more reasoned understanding of the complex and competing visions, perspectives and happenstances that characterize the unfolding of events and their histories.