The Experiments in Art and Technology Datascape
Résumé
The Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) organization was set up in 1966 by the artists
Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, in association with the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred
Waldhauer. Its purpose was to facilitate collaboration between artists, engineers, and scientists by
producing art systems and projects outside the art sphere in a strictly defined sense. Between 1966 and
1970, E.A.T. was thus at the root of more than 600 joint projects1
in the United States and abroad, most of
which, rightly or wrongly, are largely unknown.
Billy Klüver and Julie Martin, the organization’s last two directors, undertook the task of
archiving their activities in a particularly conscientious way, classifying and preserving a collection of
documents related to the production of projects that were the organization’s brainchildren. They also
worked toward developing these records, in particular through the making from the 1990s onward, of
documentary films using hitherto unpublished archival documents. This work was undoubtedly affected
by the emergence of a certain critical recognition by the art world, as gauged by the increase, in the
2000s, of works made and exhibitions held by exhibition curators, researchers, and art critics.2
Yet the partial use made of these archives makes it impossible to take the full measure of the
organization. In fact, it inadequately reflects both the diversity and the proliferation of the structure’s
activities, including its systems and methods, its exhibitions and shows, its lectures and, not least, its
publications—in other words, its complexity. The collaborative dimension of E.A.T.’s activities (often
reduced to technical assistance schemes), of which the creation of systems is just the tip of the iceberg,
adds to the problem. Elaborating a response to the seemingly simple question “What is E.A.T.?” therefore
calls for the availability and collective use of a great deal of information related to the organization’s
many activities. Examined in this way, E.A.T. emerges as an exemplary case study for the burgeoning
fields of digital humanities and design alike. Based on this case, it is actually possible to identify, within
areas of aesthetics, of art history and social art history, new, practical ways of making use of archives not
only by providing access to digitized resources, but also—especially—by focusing on the organization of
these resources so as to provide answers to issues raised by the scholars engaged in these different
disciplines and in the areas where they overlap.