In Technocrats of the Imagination John Beck and Ryan Bishop explore the collaborations between the American avant-garde art world and the military-industrial complex during the 1960s, in which artists worked with scientists and engineers in universities, private labs, and museums. For artists, designers, and educators working with the likes of Bell Labs, the RAND Corporation, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, experiments in art and technology presaged not only a new aesthetic but a new utopian social order based on collective experimentation. In examining these projects' promises and pitfalls and how they have inspired a new generation of collaborative labs populated by artists, engineers, and scientists, Beck and Bishop reveal the connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s.

John Beck is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Westminster and author of Dirty Wars: Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature.

Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics at the University of Southampton and author of Comedy and Cultural Critique in American Film.

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction  1
1. Science, Art, Democracy  17
2. A Laboratory of Form and Movement: Institutionalizing Emancipatory Technicity at MIT  46
3. The Hands-On Process: Engineering Collaboration at E.A.T.  77
4. Feedback: Expertise, LACMA, and the Think Tank  107
5. How to Make the World Work  133
6. Heritage of Our Times  164
Notes  193
References  201
Index  221