“Gemini Rising, Moon in Apollo” by Ed Shanken

  In his essay entitled “Gemini Rising, Moon in Apollo”, Ed Shanken presents the relationship of art and technology and what results from the collaboration of the two. He referred to John Cage and his platform of removing the seperation particularly between the artist and the engineer. If the artist became knowledgeable about technology and the engineer understood that the show must go on, then we can expect interesting art and even a change in social order. I agree with Shanken that Cage oversimplified what artists and engineers represent when he referred to the engineer as “an employee of economy”, while glorifying the artist as being a “repository of revolutionary thought”. Cage doesn’t mention the artist and his connection to economy in any way. Cage did understand that revolution was eminent during the 1960’s with the cold war, space race, and the Vietnam war. I just don’t believe that it is realistic at all to completely remove the seperation between an artist and an engineer. Maybe Cage knew it was unrealistic too. I think Shanken was probably correct in saying that Cage was a bit utopian in his thinking. Cage and artists like himself were trying to make up for the negative effects of technology by absorbing it into the art world and making it aesthetic. This would involved engineering collaborated with art, which he believed would transform the industry. I can see where Cage is coming from, but I think Dr. Kluver had a more realistic approach to his theories. He doesn’t believe in art and technology as a unified concept. He thinks that if it were, the world would be boring. I agree with Kluver that it is the fact that they are so different that makes their result of interaction worthwhile. I think he sums it up well by saying, “The idea of unifying them is a prescription for boredom.”. Dr. Kluver left his electrical engineering career to lead the EAT, which was all about eliminating the seperation of the individual from technological advancement. Part of the premace of the EAT was that it was unrealistic for art and technology to develop seperately. But as Shanken pointed out, that seems to contradict with Kluver’s importance in their distinctness??