Art Machines

The history of artmaking and the history of tools and technology are inextricably linked because technology makes possible what can be artistically expressed. If there is one idea that the visitor should take away from Art Machines, it is that technology is not an impediment to the making of art but a condition of its possibility. Indeed, the history of modern art is the history of the collaboration between artists and engineers. The proliferation of new technologies, above all the computer, has afforded an ever-widening repertoire of material and symbolic forms from which art can be created. What makes something a work of art is not that it is handmade or machine-made, but the maker’s intentions that inform its creation. An artwork’s value lies in the success and coherence with which these intentions are communicated through the materials, bestowing upon the work its unique value.