1.6.1 Fuller, first and foremost a performance artist who constructed practical prototypes of many of his visions, was convinced that even the most fantastic scenarios were possible. He believed he could manifest utopia. Although he professed a disinterest in how his projects looked, he was convinced that if a project at completion was beautiful, it possessed integrity, which to him was the key to aesthetics. Integrity is a key word in redefining art according to Fuller‹integrity of individual communication independent of the medium of its articulation:

1.6.2 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 realisation 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. (1973 pg. 63)

1.6..3 It is this philosophy of integrity that made Fuller attractive to John Cage, who practised Zen and consequently brought much of his meditative qualities to his work. Cage had a deep admiration for Fuller that continued until the end of his life. [top]