ABSTRACT
The idea that there is a mutual advantage to be gained through the marriage of art and technology is not new. It dates back at least to the Renaissance, where it was thought that science and art were two of the pillars that established the enlightened mind, if not to the ancient Greeks and the scientist-artist-philosopher model of humanity that developed there. In the twentieth century, however, these two modes of thought became mutually suspicious of each other; some educational theorists even went so far as to suggest that these two approaches resided in different sides of our brain. But with the emergence of the avant-garde in the 1960s, the idea that it might be advantageous to recombine science and the arts was given a significant boost by two American scientists: Max Mathews at Bell Labs in New Jersey, who gave many early computer music composers access to the emerging digital technology being developed there, and Billy Kluver in New York, who, along with fellow scientist, Fred Waldhauer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bob Whitman, founded E.A.T. in 1967.
