Collaboration
Billy Klüver again,
The “expertise” that artists bring to the collaboration comes directly from their experience in making art. The artist deals with materials and physical situations in a straightforward manner without the limits of generally accepted functions of an object or situation, and without assigning a value hierarchy to any material. The audacity of Picasso’s collages in his time, Meret Oppenheim’s surrealist objects, and Rauschenberg’s combines and cardboard pieces all illustrate this quality. The artist makes the most efficient use of materials, and achieves the maximum effect with minimum means. Surplus of material leads to decorative work. The artist is sensitive to scale and how it affects the human being. From cave drawings to Persian miniatures, cathedral frescoes, or Christo’s Running Fence, scale has been a consistent concern of the artist. The artist is sensitive to generally unexpressed aesthetic assupltions, which are based on subjective preference masquerading as “objective,” practical, economic, or social factors. The artist assumes total responsibility for the artwork. The artist knows that a work is the result of personal choices: this sense of commitment and responsibility gives the artist and the work a unique quality.
Artists, Engineers, and Collaboration (published in Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, A Manifesto for Cyborgs. Bender, G. and Druckrey, T. (Eds) Dia Center for the Arts, Discussions in Contemporary Culture Number 9. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994).
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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