Experiments in Art and Technology: What could be more beautiful than a laser? (Bonus)

Download the PDF

Zoe Goldman: Hi, I’m Zoe, the producer of Recording Artists, back again with more clips from the archive.

You can learn a lot listening through the archival audio. That’s basically the premise of this show. Sometimes, the tapes hold poignant lessons for us now—whether it’s lessons for how to live a creative life or how we can understand our place in history. Other times, the lessons are very specific and less broadly applicable—like learning that Billy Klüver, the laser physicist, was really, really into lasers. He brought them up, like, a lot.

So this week, I’m sharing one of my favorite Klüver tributes to the laser.

Billy Klüver: This question always comes up about that technology itself is of course beautiful. You don't have to do anything to it to make it more beautiful. In other words, uh, what could be more beautiful than a laser? A laser light with refractions and fractions and so on. The question is not one about beauty or challenging the beauty of technology by bringing artists and engineers together. And if you move the technology into the gallery, it's not going to become art, unless somebody says so.

Goldman: Alright—maybe this is a little deeper than just a tribute to the laser. In fact, in a few of his lectures, Klüver begins to address the line between art and non-art, between his work as an engineer and the work as his artist collaborators.

Here he is again addressing the blurriness that comes in partnering artists and engineers:

Klüver: There is always the question of what is an aesthetic decision and what is a technical decision. This is a tricky point, and sometimes one which is very amusing. Where should the knob sit? What about the color of the batteries? Does it matter?

Goldman: This kind of discussion—how do we define art—becomes heady quickly, which is one reason we couldn’t fit these clips into the season. These are really BIG questions. And the answer varies a lot from artist to artist, person to person, and project to project.

Klüver doesn’t really answer this question, either, at least not directly. But he alludes to how, in practice, he has wondered whether a decision is his to make, but he has to make it to move ahead with a project. On the other side, he talks about how artists may have an idea without the knowledge necessary to make it a reality. So the practicalities of working collaboratively require a kind of give and take, a process of negotiation and compromise that blur and shift any line the artists or engineers might have imagined dividing art from science or technology before they got down to work. Or, as Klüver said, it’s one thing to do science in your laboratory, and another to do it in an artist’s loft. I’m paraphrasing—Klüver’s version involved something about miniskirts that did make it into the season.

Anyway, while my main takeaway here is that we should remain open to possibilities when working collaboratively and not worry too much about forming strict boundaries between disciplines, on an emotional level, I really admire Klüver’s passion for his day job—his lasers. I’m trying to channel his ability to find beauty and metaphor in his daily grind!

That’s it for this episode. More in a few months.

This episode was produced by me, Zoe Goldman, with mixing and sound design by Jaime Roque. Christopher Sprinkle is executive producer.

Learn more about this podcast, and all our Getty podcasts, at getty dot edu slash podcasts.