The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)

Dear Colleagues,

The machine, over the course of the 20th century, progressively integrated itself into all fields of human activity, including artistic creation; and indeed, with the first decades of that century having established a surprisingly vital and wide-ranging series of perspectives on the relationship between art and the machine, certain artists in the wake of the second world war no longer felt compelled to treat the machine as a mere theme or source of inspiration: the machine itself becomes art—unless it is art which seeks to become mechanical?

The artist mutates into artist-engineer; and this transition, resonating within a specific historical context, leads not only to a questioning of the nature of the work itself, but also to a broader questioning which places us within the realm of anthropology: what is this art telling us about the actual conditions of contemporary human society and what is it telling us about the future to which we aspire?

It is the goal of this special issue of Arts to stimulate an historically conscious, protean, and global (re)thinking of the cultural relationship between man and machine; and to this end, we welcome contributions falling anywhere within the nearly infinite spectrum represented by the prismatic period during the middle of the last century in which the machine became a legitimate artistic medium.

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La machine, au cours du XX^e siècle, s’est progressivement constituée en élément majeur de notre civilisation jusqu’à véritablement s’intégrer à tous les domaines de l’activité humaine, création artistique comprise. Après que les premières décennies de ce siècle ont ouvert un large et stimulant champ de réflexion sur le rapport entre l’art et la machine, dans l’après seconde guerre mondiale, certains artistes ne considèrent plus cette machine comme un simple thème ou une source d’inspiration: ils font art de la technologie—à moins que ce ne soient les œuvres d’art qui deviennent, en elles-mêmes, machines?

L’artiste se mue en «artiste-ingénieur» et ce tournant fondamental, mis en résonance avec son contexte historique spécifique, entraîne une interrogation sur la nature-même de l’œuvre d’art. Elle débouche également sur un questionnement plus large, d’ordre anthropologique: que les œuvres d’art nous apprennent-elles sur la condition humaine qui nous est contemporaine, et sur celle à laquelle nous aspirons?

A travers ce numéro spécial d’Arts, nous souhaitons stimuler une réflexion rétrospective, protéiforme et libre permettant de (re)penser, de manière globale, la relation culturelle de l’homme à la machine. Pour ce faire, nous accueillons toute contribution explorant les différentes facettes du prisme infini reflétant les rapports établis entre la création artistique et la machine (en tant que médium) au cours de la période charnière du milieu du siècle dernier.

Ms. Juliette Bessette
Guest Editor

Note: This Special Issue is a companion to The Machine as Artist (for the 21st Century), Dr. Frederic Fol Leymarie, Guest Editor; and in addition, the reader is directed a summary article covering both Special Issues, Trends and Anti-Trends in Techno-Art Scholarship: The Legacy of the Arts "Machine" Special Issues.

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