Critical Writing Index

CONTEMPORARY ART AND TECHNOLOGY: The New Ecological Era

by Nancy Paterson

Art is Communications, Nov. 25, 1985, pp. 14-18

Toronto: Aspace, 1985

Nancy Paterson, A Space's President during the time of writing, maps the fluctuating interest in "the union between art and technology" (Paterson 15) from 1960s to 1980s through a communications history lens. Referring to McLuhan's analogy of technological affect on society as asymptomatic disease, Paterson illustrates how technological advancement (i.e. micro-processors, micro-chips...etc.) have changed modes of artistic production and distribution. Hypothesizing that culture is technologically determined, she emphasizes that these hybrid arenas of scientific technological objectivity and subjective artistic expression must be contextualized in history and self-reflexivity in an epoch of change. Paterson believes the pre-existing status quo and dominant reading of the futurist present over the anachronistic past can be upturned; technology and art may breed a new form of ecological humanism.

ITEM 1985.081 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Drawing MachinesJean Tingely