Unesco Symposium on Technology and Artistic Creation in the Contemporary World

Leonardo,Vol. 1, pp. 441-444. PergamonPress 1968. printed in Great Britain UNESCO SYMPOSIUM ON TECHNOLOGY AND ARTISTIC CREATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD d’Arcy Hayman* An international symposium on the inter-relationships and inter-influences between the arts and sciencesin the context of contemporary civilization was convened by Unesco in Tbilisi, U.S.S.R., from 9 to 13 April 1968. Some of the world’s most renowned authorities in the fieldsof aesthetics, the visual arts, architecture, industrial design, theatre, cinema and music, as well as the physical sciences,participated in this meeting. In their general discussions they examined the following aspects of the meeting’s theme: an historical view of the relationships between the arts and sciences in such traditional art forms as crafts, architecture, music and theatre; existing potentialities for inter-relationships and future prospectives and directions in the arts and sciencefields resulting from such new technological phenomena as the computer, atomic energy, automation, television and synthetic materials; the scientificdiscovery and invention of new materials and processes which serve to alter and expand the arts and which affect changes upon the artist as well as the consumer or audience of art; the specificnature, role and function of the arts and sciencesand the new forms produced bytheir union ;thewaysin whichthe artsand sciences work naturally and necessarily together toward the enhancement and enrichment of man and his environment. Each of the experts brought a different view to the meeting from his own frame of reference. Giulio Argan, aesthetician and professor of the history of art at the University of Rome, spoke first about the importance of looking closely at the relationships between the arts and sciences: ‘Since art is the expression of the aesthetic needs of an age and since technology is the characteristic and conditioning feature of the culture of the age in which we live, the problem of the relationship between art and technology is, in our time, oneand the sameproblem as that of the relationship between art and society’. Argan continued by stating that in his opinion the relationship between art and technology has taken the place of the relationship now exhausted between art and ideology. He added that the traditional *Head, Art Education Section, Department of Culture, Unesco, Place de Fontenoy, Paris 7, France. (Received 4 June 1968.) 31 artistic techniques such as painting, sculpture, even architecture, etc., are being discarded and replaced by new forms of art which grow out of the union between the technological devices and processes of our time. Argan then asked the questions: ‘Can the technological apparatus take over the productive functions of the imagination, can it take the place of the imagination? There are already machines capable of reasoning; will there be machines capable ofimagining?’ Finally, Argan said:‘Massparticipation is essential in the development of a culture; culture can only arrive from such involvement. An artist can now develop techniques specifically for dissemination by mass media. The true collaboration between artist and those responsible both technically and socially for mass media could result in new art forms’. Pierre Schaeffer, one of the fathers of electronic music who was among the first to make use of the tape-recorder and other electronic devices in the production of his musical compositions, and who now directs allresearch and experimental production for French Radio and Television (O.R.T.F.), spoke in this way about the arts and sciences: ‘Art is invention ;there is little difference between art and technology. Both the wheel and the harp are functional. Man always engages in art and science simultaneously. The integration of science, technology and artistic creation in the contemporary world is already a fact.... All messages from the external world are normally perceived in two forms: the ‘signal’which is utilitarian and, stripped down, leads to a scientific fact, and the ‘sign’ which, elaborated, leads to an aesthetic fact. But the most rigorous scientificfact still has a form, and the most aesthetic form still has a scientificbasis. If there are structures, it is also very naturalto find in them, too, the fundamental dualism of all knowledge’. In particular reference to the effects on music of technological discoveries and inventions of our time, Schaeffer said: ‘To...