2.2.3.1.1. Artist as inventors of new technolog
In the field of art and technology, there is a great deal of technological inventions by artists. Most electronic art inventions are rooted in problem solving or material research for the renewal of their artistic oeuvre. Artists working with software and hardware often have the need for other types of software than the standard, ‘out of the box’ software that is manufactured for standard office use or business purposes. New genres in the arts bring along specific needs, like works that deal with interactive features. This leads to new applications or re- combinations of existing software.
Michael Century[95] refers to radical innovation as a similar phenomenon in the footsteps of Kuhn and Feyerabend. However, in contrast to Kuhn and Feyerabend, he refers more towards the artistic practice:
‘Radical innovations are discontinuous events, going beyond variational creativity. In the oft-told explanation, no combination of horse-driven coaches could have produced the railway; so, for many artists interested in working with information technologies, the aim is often to explore or invent new media forms, as the ‘unit’ of innovative work, as opposed to working within established techno-cultural genres.’ (M.Century)[96]
Century promotes the idea of artists as inventors of new software and hardware applications. This was one of his arguments to encourage artistic entrepreneurship during the Internet hype in the 1990s and the available resources for research and development. Century[97] refers to several artists who have migrated (part of) their practice to solve technical problems in the field of applied innovation. These electronic artists work on technology innovation in order to design tools for artistic purposes. This sketches the context where artistic inventions often start as a reaction to industrial or office-oriented applications that do not meet the desires and needs of artists. The problems these artistic inventors try to solve are often very pragmatic. Sara Diamond, former director of the Banff New Media Institute, a well-known interdisciplinary art and media centre in Canada, affirms this approach:
‘Artists often invent because they are hungry. Something they are making cannot or will not work. There is no one else around to solve the problem.’ (S. Diamond) [98]
Diamond refers to two issues here; she positions artistic inventions in the problem solving context, and she briefly refers to the artistic motives for technical innovation as a reaction to the limitations of available hard- and software.
In artistic circles, a well-known example of this type of invention is the ‘Very Nervous System’[99] (VNS) (1986-90) by artist, engineer and inventor David Rokeby. VNS was a video camera-based motion tracking system to create interactive audiovisual spaces. In the 1990s Rokeby developed the ‘softVNS’[100], the widely used software version of the system. Diamond states in her essay ‘Holistic Bodies’ about the artist inventor David Rokeby;
‘Not only an artist, David Rokeby invents technologies that underlie his artworks and enable forms of experience that corporate digital media do not allow.’ (S.Diamond) [101]
This affirms that electronic art inventions can lead to new types of software approaches, hardware devices or concepts. Besides his inventive artworks, Rokeby also develops innovative tools for other artists and multimedia producers. His inventions are based on his own practice and come from the lack of certain tools he experienced, to express his artistic concepts. Rokeby has a talent for generalising the problems he solves in his own artworks so that these inventions turn out to be of interest to a larger community or set in motion other developments. Another example is ‘Tx-transform’.[102] In 1998 the Austrian artist, engineer, film director and technician Martin Reinhart patented this experimental film technique that transposes the time and space axes onto each other, a technique which was used by numerous video artists over the last years. Here the artists’ involvement in the field of creative technological development provides other insights and new ideas for functionality that could, as innovation, enter the artistic and technological field. Later in this research, other groups of artist-innovators are studied. For several artists in the C&CRS program (Candy and Edmonds) the limitations and awkwardness of pre-fabricated software works as an invitation to design their own software. Other artists in the same program refer to the role of artists as pushers of the medium’s limits.
‘Artists … may ask the kind of questions (software) specialists wouldn’t raise’ and ‘open up new lines of enquiry’.
(L. Candy, E. Edmonds)[103]
The growing number electronic artists-inventors is illustrated by the increasing number of patent holders among artists, among whom are Golan Levin (artist, inventor of ‘Dialtones: A Telesymphony’, and co-designer of ‘Processing’, an open source programming language and environment)[104], Graham Smith (robotics inventor and videoconference interface designer), Joachim Sauter (Method and Device for pictorial representation of space-related data)[105] and Netochka Nezvanova (‘NATO.0+55’+3d software, externals for Max)[106].
