Can the fruits
of engineers’ labors be considered art? What
of those of electrical engineers in
particular?
No one doubts
that the Brooklyn Bridge is an historic
engineering feat. But it is also a work of
art. Reproductions of its original drawings
have become collectors’ items, and countless
major artists have drawn, painted and
photographed images of the bridge. Other
engineering projects are also unequivocally
seen as art, including ships, steam
locomotives, and classic automobiles. Many
of these appeal to both the art community
and to the general public, not only for
their overall design but for the aesthetic
qualities of certain intricate parts.
The artistic
appeal of a piece of equipment may relate
not simply to its static form, but also to
its motion in use, or to its historic
context. A 19th-century steam engine
displayed at the Smithsonian is
appropriately described by curators as
follows: “When wheels, belts, and governor
weights turn all at once, this big steam
engine makes a wonderful sound . . . like
farmers honing scythes in unison. Sight and
sound carry the knowledge that many old
internal combustion engines whispered while
they worked.”
Two
locomotives, the Central Pacific’s
Jupiter and the Union Pacific’s #119,
faced one another at the Golden Spike
Ceremony at Promontory Summit in 1869. The
image has become an icon for the joining of
the East and West Coast.
Original prints
of Cassandre’s famous poster created to
publicize the maiden voyage of the liner
Normandie are highly sought after, and
reproductions abound.
In the mid-19th
century, the skills of technical
illustration and drafting reached a zenith.
The drawings of the steamship Great
Eastern, from which hand-tinted
lithographs were produced, have never been
excelled. Such drawings were used, among
other purposes, as progress reports to
company directors and for submission to the
patent office, and their originals today are
priceless.
Famed architect
Philip Johnson helped advance the notion
that manufactured products or their
components can themselves be aesthetically
pleasing. In a 1934 exhibition at New York
City’s Museum of Modern Art, Johnson
included springs, ball bearings, cable,
insulators, a cash register, compass,
microscope, and scientific flasks. In part,
his rationale for selecting items had been
that they demonstrated aesthetic appeal but
had been created without artistic intention.
More than three
decades later, when the museum revisited the
theme in an exhibit called “The Machine,”
the emphasis had shifted largely to original
work created by artists, many of them
suggesting commentary on the use or misuse
of technology. Many of the objects were
constructed from unrelated miscellaneous
parts, and some were kinetic. The “Friendly
Grey Computer” by Edward Kienholz was
constructed of a rocking chair, dolls legs,
metal cabinet, lights, switches, panels, and
a telephone receiver. It had little if any
computing capability, but a visitor could
select a question from a stack of index
cards, speak it into the telephone handset,
and the “computer” would respond with a yes
(flashing red light) or no (flashing blue
light).
In the late
1960s, engineers and artists were encouraged
by an organization called Experiments in Art
and Technology to create innovative works of
art by working in collaborative teams. It
sought works that were neither the
preconception of the engineer nor of the
artist. Several projects created through
such teams were part of the 1968 exhibition
at the Modern Museum. They were generally
responsive to the visitor in some
interactive way and used hidden electrical,
electronic, and computer components.
Forays by
famous artists into the realm of technology
had occurred even earlier. In 1913, Marcel
Duchamp found the bicycle wheel to be the
first “ready made” art work, and famously
incorporated it, inverted, atop a kitchen
stool. In 1919, as part of the American Dada
movement, a modernistic, mechanistic work
called “Child Carburetor” appeared.
Following his service in World War I,
Fernand Leger embarked on his “mechanical
period,” during which robot-like creatures
appeared in many of his paintings. Man Ray
exploited chemical techniques to produce his
famous pseudo-X-ray art (“Rayographs”),
beginning in the 1920s. Alexander Calder,
who earned an engineering degree from the
Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919,
began his art career after studying at the
Art Students League, produced his well-known
metal sculptures, and, finally, beginning in
1932, his popular mobiles.
Possibly
because of the elusive nature of the
electron, plus the mundane appearance of the
components through which it travels, albeit
with great majesty, the works of electrical
and computer engineers, unlike those of
architects, machine designers, and
automotive and aeronautical engineers, have
not been enthusiastically embraced by the
artistic community, except as the subject of
criticism or satire or as tools to create
art.
When the radio
was first introduced, early adopters were
pleased to show off nicely crafted wood
cabinets and “breadboards” having vacuum
tubes and other components externally
mounted. But manufacturers were soon
encasing the works inside a variety of plain
boxes, seemingly directed at having radios
heard but not seen. As one observer
remarked, “The actual functional unit of the
radio has no real character of its own
except as a device for receiving
broadcasts.”
By the early
1930s as radio entered its “golden age,”
some thoughtfully designed and well crafted
“furniture grade” consoles began to house
the ugly radio. The development of the
catalin plastic molding process spawned the
introduction of Art-Deco-inspired table-top
ac/dc sets, many of them highly valued by
collectors today.
Thinking
Outside the Box
The package had
become the focal point of the radio set.
Only rarely were the components themselves
show-cased. In a 1938 movie, “Paradise for
Three,” a Scott receiver was prominently
seen, its chassis and components
chrome-plated and polished and mounted, sans
enclosure, on a tubular Art Deco stand. It
was reported that “rich and fashionable”
customers found the chassis so beautiful
that they ordered similarly “naked” sets
from Scott.
In 1946 a
British manufacturer offered a chrome-plated
chassis in a wood cabinet with a glass back,
so the owner could admire the works from the
rear.
As radios
shrank and television sets grew in size,
package designers were hard pressed to
improve the aesthetic appeal of either.
Today’s consumers seem to crave large-screen
TVs but want them to disappear when not in
use. They want cell phones and iPods that
are tiny but still visible to the naked eye,
easy to use and hard to lose, specifications
that don’t intrigue the curators of most art
museums.
The 1981 IBM PC
and its successors gave artists a tool that
has been widely used in the creation of art,
but the computer itself never caught on as
the subject of art. Perhaps one way to
convince artists of the aesthetic qualities
of our electronic and computer products
would be through microphotography of the
innards of their innards.
Resources
Palfreman, J.,
and D. Swade, The Dream Machine:
Exploring the Computer Age, BBC Books,
1991.
Settel, I.,
A Pictorial History of Radio, Grosset
and Dunlap, 1967.
Baynes, K., and
F. Pugh, The Art of the Engineer, The
Overlook Press, 1981.
Hawes, R.,
Radio Art, Green Wood Publishing, 1991.
Hulten, K.G.P.,
The Machine, The Museum of Modern
Art, 1968.
Jewell, E.A.,
“The Realm of Art: The Machine and Abstract
Beauty,” The New York Times, March
11, 1934.
“The Talk of
the Town: Machine Art,” The New Yorker,
March 17, 1934.
Lane, D.R., and
R.A. Lane, Transistor Radios: A
Collector’s Encyclopedia,
Wallace-Homestead, 1994.
Boettinger, H.M.,
The Telephone Book: Bell, Watson, Vail
and American Life 1876-1976, Riverwood,
1977.
The
Smithsonian Experience: Science, History,
the Arts—The Treasures of the Nation,
The Smithsonian Institution, 1977.
Stern, E., and
E. Gwathmey, Once Upon a Telephone: An
Illustrated Social History, Harcourt and
Brace, 1994.
Museum of
Modern Art, Machine Art: March 6 to April
30, 1934, 60th Anniversary Edition,
Abrams, 1994.
Evans, M.
(ed.), Defining Moments in Art,
Cassell, 2008.
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