
“God Help American Science”: Engineering Theatre and Spectacle (2016) - Hooke
http://www.patrickmccray.com/2016/09/07/god-help-american-science-engineering-theatre-and-spectacle/
======
wigiv
In 2016 Seattle hosted a recreation (or maybe it was a memorial?) of 9
Evenings called 9e2. Organized by John Boylan, whose "Conversations" series is
worth checking out, 9e2 was fun and intermittently thought-provoking but from
what I understand not much more than an echo of the original NYC event which,
as outlined in the McCray piece here, was itself an experimental shout into
the dark that received many negative critical reverberations, but also some
resonance that lasted.

There's a fine line where technical art - "new media" and beyond - and
artworks made purposefully to reflect upon or expose specific topics, issues,
or tools in science and engineering stop holding their own artistically and
becomes either "gadget show-and-tell" (symptom: when it takes more time to put
on the VR headset and wait for the creator to reboot the computer and scene
than to view and interpret the 5-minutes-of-Unity-tutorials art within), the
kitschy sculptural, musical, or whatever media equivalent of Popular Mechanics
cover art, or interactive science museum displays.

That line is fine, and I wonder where each of the works and performances in
the 9 Evenings program sat on the spectrum, but there are many artists
currently and in the past who have adapted or interpreted science and
engineering material successfully and to great effect (Refik Anadol comes to
mind at the moment).

