INTRODUCTION : Pioneer &
Visionary
?Courtesy Buckminster Fuller
Institute Thence evolved a mathematics based on the
proportion of reciprocal forces, complements, and functions of a
mobile, non-static TIME-world. Thus the
scientist-philosopher-artist, by the teleogical mechanism of
mathematics which contains in its infinite ramifications all the
secrets personally contacted by the Yogi, made possible continuity
of the expression of the truth beyond "the great wall" of the body
and of personal death. (Fuller, 1938, p. 105)
When searching for a prescient historical personality
prefiguring the bio-tech age to come, what better example than Buckminster
Fuller. Much ignored by the generation of artists who may profit most by
being acquainted with his vision, Fuller, with his carefully constructed
persona of Anticipatory Design Scientist, heralded the coming age of
artists who work in tandem with scientists and toward innovation and
discovery of the aesthetic of the invisible realm.
It is important to stress that Fuller was at once a
philosopher and a practitioner - a necessary mix for contemporary artists,
no matter what the media of choice. For anyone working with volatile
technology, being able to ground oneself historically and articulate the
work that evolves in the midst of chaos is simply mandatory for survival.
Definitions of Buckminster Fuller are as myriad as the fields he
traversed. On different occasions he was referred to as an architect,
inventor, scientist, engineer, mathematician, educator, philosopher, poet,
speaker, author, consultant, economist, futurist, transcendentalist, and
designer, and the list goes on. His visionary, magnetic personality had an
inspirational, and in some cases catalytic, effect on many influential
people in various disciplines. Each field had something to learn from his
comprehensive outlook, yet no one field completely embraced him, including
art or architecture.
Strongly influenced by his great aunt Margaret Fuller, a
leader in theosophical society, he considered the machine inseparable from
the spiritual principle operating in the universe. Margaret Fuller's
transcendentalism was an inspirational force through his lifetime, as was
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Henry Ford's introduction of
automation into the workplace. This triangle of spiritualism, science,
sculpture and mechanization is ever-present in his work, and it is
reappearing in the emerging field of the digital arts. Fuller influenced
and inspired many artists who went on to revolutionize and redefine the
idea of art and his complex relation of links to interests, activities and
people could easily be likened to one of his geodesic structures
consisting of a seemingly endless number links.
Buckminster Fuller was the ultimate net-
worker-physically moving from place to place, making connections igniting
inspiration everywhere he went. He expressed his ideas in disorganized
fragments and marathon lectures, he was magnetic, mesmerizing, and
inspiring to those he made contact with, even if they did not understand
what he was saying. Delivering more than 2,000 lectures at 500
universities and colleges and making 48 trips around the world, he was a
tireless performer. Famous for his non-stop "talkathons," he put his ideas
to the test in architectural forms, eighteen books, and, toward the end of
his career, in World Games which engage global problems through gaming.
Very early on, in his Nine Chains to the Moon treatise, he
qualifies genius and talent: "The function of genius is to provide new
instruments, and to process-means for the progressive growth of man;
talent's function is the precise and harmonious popularization of the
otherwise undetectable, and, therefore, otherwise non-useful products of
genius. What is often mistermed as plagiarism is more precisely 'talent.'
'Plagiarism' is an ethical off-shoot label of the false property illusion
described in our phantom captain chapter."
Although embraced and befriended by revolutionary artists
of his time, Fuller was never able to define himself as one of them. His
complexity, mobility, and use of various technologies alluded to and
attracted many fields, putting him in the position to be the predecessor
of a complex persona that was yet to emerge. Although he refrained from
calling himself an artist, perhaps because of the constraints of the time
he lived in, his definitions of artists are probably much closer to
describing himself than any of the definitions he readily acknowledged.
And although he used the word "artist," when he referred to painters,
sculptors and dancers, he proclaimed that one day Henry Ford and Albert
Einstein would be recognized as the greatest artists of our time. As a
practitioner, he was most inspired by those who were able to change
society with their work, and his life was a devoted effort to do the same.
"The great scientists and great artists are not only
subjective and pure but also objective and responsible inventors", Fuller
said. He felt that artists had a unique position because of their
comprehensive training which frequently gave the artists a broader
viewpoint: "I feel that it is the artists who keep the integrity of
childhood alive until we reach the bridge between the arts and sciences".
He felt that the broad outlook artists are privy to is their strength:
"Artists haven't painted themselves into the special corner. Because of a
comprehensive outlook, their art reflects the many disciplines, especially
science", he wrote "The only ones who don't get trained for specialization
are artists, they want to be whole".
Fuller often stressed the importance of blurring the
artist's and scientist's roles. He felt that the artist often created
patterns through her imagination that the scientist later saw in nature.
But at the core, Fuller's vision was that these two opposite sides of the
cultural pendulum's swing would eventually come together. He was perfectly
aware that this was not an entirely new thought, as he himself quoted
Leonardo da Vinci, who he called a "painter, sculptor, architect, engineer
and inventor of the wheelbarrow, and other useful instruments from the
speaking tube to the mechanically gyp-proof whore-house," and who wrote:
"the further art advances the closer it approaches science, the further
science advances the closer it approaches art."
In many ways Fuller was rooted in centrality,
universality and Cartesian principles that seemed to contradict his
visions. Because he is impossible to classify, it is all too easy to focus
on one aspect of his character and dismiss the entire complex persona.
This is unfortunate, as it is precisely the contradictions that makes his
work so important today. The problem of how one may navigate contradiction
and complexity is central for those working in art and technology. Fuller
provides a model that points to integrity as being key in the work one
builds while on this Spaceship Earth. Although he professed a lack
of interest in how his projects looked, he believed that a project at
completion was beautiful if it possessed integrity, which to him was the
key to aesthetics. Integrity is a crucial word in redefining art according
to Fuller - integrity of individual communication independent of the
medium of its articulation.
"The great aesthetic which will inaugurate the
twenty-first century will be the utterly invisible quality of intellectual
integrity; the integrity of the individual dealing with his scientific
discoveries; the integrity of the individual in dealing with conceptual
realization of comprehensive interrelatedness of all events; the integrity
of the individual dealing with the only experimentally arrived at
information regarding invisible phenomena; and finally integrity of all
those who formulate invisibly within their respective minds and invisibly
with the only mathematically dimensionable, advanced technologies, on the
behalf of their fellow men". Fuller, 1973
Fuller very early on recognized the computer as a human
extension, never losing the organic quality in his interpretation of the
human/machine relationship. He describes man as a machine driven by the
"Phantom Captain," without whose guidance the "human" mechanisms are
reduced to imbecile contraptions. The Phantom Captain is likened to a
variant of a polarity dominance in our bipolar electric world, which,
"when balanced as a unit, vanishes as abstract unity I or O". With the
Phantom Captain's departure, the mechanism becomes inoperative and very
quickly disintegrates into basic chemical elements.
Fuller spent his lifetime constructing practical
prototypes of some of his visions and was convinced that even the most
fantastic scenarios were possible. He thought he could manifest utopia. He
left behind a wealth of information for us to look through, leaving it up
to each individual or group to decide how to categorize it. A year after
he passed away, Harry Kroto and Richard Smalley, the experimental chemists
discovered the C60 molecule and named it
buckminsterfullerene. H.W. Kroto said that the newly discovered
carbon cage molecule was named buckminsterfullerene "because the geodesic
ideas associated with the constructs of Buckminster Fuller had been
instrumental in arriving at a plausible structure". (Applewhite, 1995)
There is a certain poetic justice that Buckminster Fuller was immortalized
via a molecular structure that is holding the key to the emerging field of
nanotechnology, the field that promises to usher in an age of true
ephemeralization he prophesied throughout his lifetime.
References
Author's notes: |
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