1.5.1 Joseph Albers, who directed Black Mountain College until 1949, believed that the true role of art was the teaching of consciousness, a process that involved artists changing their relationships to the materials with which they worked. This theme made Fuller an attractive personality, and Albers invited him to the College to teach in the summer of 1948.

1.5.2 Fuller was embraced and befriended by revolutionary artists of his time such as Albers, Cage, Cunningham, and Martha Graham and spent several summers at Black Mountain College working with them. Black Mountain College was under strong influence of the Bauhaus school, which focused on the cube. According to Kenneth Snelson, a prominent student at the College, Fuller "provided an astonishing insight that the only structurally firm polygon is a triangle and argued for a kind of structural space completely different from the usual cubical considerations." [5] Fuller not only offered triangular structures as directly opposed to the cube, which he considered a closed system, but by his own presence challenged the very notion of what an artist is.

1.5.3 Fuller's quirky persona was welcomed and fit in well in the art world, but he was never considered an "artist." Those with whom he worked and formed relationships were still able to refer to themselves simply as artists, no matter how much they broke the frame at the time, but Fuller was not. His complexity, mobility and use of technologies attracted and alluded many fields, thus positioning him similarly to artists working with digital technologies today. Although he refrained from calling himself an artist, perhaps because of the constraints of the time he lived in, his definitions of art and artists are probably much closer to describing himself than any of the callings he carried. His carefully constructed calling of an "Anticipatory Design Scientist" truly anticipates the coming age of artists who work in tandem with technologists and scientists in innovation and in the discovery of the invisible realm.

1.5.4 Soon after his arrival, Fuller was cast as the lead in a Black Mountain College play production of Erik Satie's The Ruse of Medusa. He was the Baron Medusa and was described by painter Elaine de Kooning, who played his daughter, as "a kind of W.C. Fields aristocrat who talked constantly in non-sequiturs." William de Kooning designed the set, Cage played the Satie score, and Merce Cunningham created and performed dances in the guise of a mechanical monkey. Arthur Penn, who directed the play, helped free the performance artist in Fuller. Ironically, while he was later known for his exuberant personality and the performing quality of his marathon lectures, Fuller was initially stiff and uncomfortable as an actor, afraid to make a fool of himself on stage. Penn worked with Fuller on releasing this fear by skipping, rolling around, and acting foolish during breaks. Duberman identifies this time as the moment Fuller "begins to blossom." (Duberman, 1972, pg. 290)

1.5.5 Fuller himself said later that he owed much of his subsequent success as a lecturer to Penn, who taught him to be natural on stage. Years later, when he was nervous about receiving one of his many honorary doctorates, this time from Harvard (the institution that expelled him as an undergraduate), he summoned Penn to help prepare him for the important occasion by reviewing lessons of the Satie play. The Ruse of Medusa was a collaborative play of many extraordinarily influential personalities who subsequently left their marks in history, but the result was a single performance, and more, a performance that itself transformed many lives and bonded the players for life. [top]