Gyorgy Kepes, Billy Klüver, and American Art of the 1960s: Defining Attitudes Toward Science and Technology

Abstract

Argument

This essay aims to broaden our understanding of relationships between art, science, and technology during the 1960s by juxtaposing two of the most important, and under-examined, figures of this period, the artist Gyorgy Kepes and the engineer Billy Klüver. While these two are generally linked due to their similarities, a closer examination demonstrates significant differences in their outlook. Comparing the organizations they nurtured, Kepes, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Klüver, Experiments in Art and Technology, provides unique insight into the distinct origins of such organized collaborations between art, science, and technology. It reveals both how the cultural conditions of the 1960s contributed to the perceived need for such agencies and how interactions between art, science, and technology reflected, at once, the culmination of aspirations reaching back to the opening decades of the twentieth century, and a perceived break with the past.