Alan Rath
American, 1959-
In Vitro, 1990
glass jar, acrylic, aluminum, electronics, cathode ray tube, and 16 frames of looped ultra sound imagery
SBMA, Museum purchase with funds provided by the 20th-Century Fund
1993.54
RESEARCH PAPER
The exploration of man’s relationship to technology is a topic, which artists have responded to throughout the twentieth century – both as a subject matter and more recently as a medium. As discussed in the book Art Speak, contemporary art made with sophisticated technology typically investigates themes related to technology, but the most effective work transcends its hardware.
Such is the case with sculptor Alan Rath’s In Vitro found in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection. This self-contained electronic sculpture “effectively weds technological ingenuity with philosophical inquiry” says Diana DuPont, Curator of 20th Century Art. For In Vitro, Rath places a television monitor called a CRT inside a large glass cylinder. The monitor measures approximately 5” x 7” and displays a slowly moving image of a human fetus in a womb. The CRT is programmed to show sixteen digital video frames in a repetitive sequence. The electronically produced frames of video are stored and released at time intervals by devices called frame buffers.
The wire leading from the cylinder to the electronic box creates a curvilinear element to the sculpture similar to a drawn line. This directs your eye to its deliberately exposed internal workings demystifying the power of how it works mechanically. According to Rath, he dislikes “the hype” related to computers. “Last year’s hype is tomorrow’s landfill or recyclable materials. It’s just a commodity item.” Even while unplugged, In Vitro does stand on its own as a structural form containing shapes, which relate balance. However, the digitally driven images placed in the sculptural context make the work of art complete as a successful conduit of ideas and emotion.
Once the sculpture is plugged into an electrical outlet, a title screen appears in script before the image rotations of the fetus begins. The movement of the fetus imagery is analogous to a pulse or a heartbeat. Rath likes to mix the feeling of machinery with something that is alive, creating empathy with the machine. He uses this human element to draw the viewer into his work reaching beyond the issues of technology toward the realm of human emotion. Viewing the imagery can be mesmerizing but it also creates a certain discomfort. Again, the question of man’s relationship to technology is posed.
In Vitro “reads like a landscape,” says Rath “by representing a moment in time.” Initially it may seem to be an indictment against invasive medical technology. But Rath says he avoids didactics and that his opinion doesn’t matter. “We don’t realize how much in the future we are living,” says Rath. And while the artists point of view is not revealed in the sculpture the fact that he chose the topic reveals importance. Besides the socio-political implications raised by a fetus (digitized or not) in a jar, the piece nevertheless is a reference to life by itself: “in vitro” means “outside the living body and in an artificial environment.” We are reminded that the practice of conceiving “test tube babies” is not uncommon in the modern hospital. Once again technology is under examination: this is not only the electronic/computer element, but also the medical/scientific sort, which provokes moral and ethical implications of its own. Rath sees electronics as an extension of our senses. In the industrial age, steel was an extension of our muscle. Now in the technological age we are tapping into our nervous system.
Rath knows the ins and outs of electronics and computers and revels in their complexities. While studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was exposed to its Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts. This experience provided the intersection between art and technology, which has been an unclaimed ambition since his adolescence.
Rath does almost all of the fabrication of his sculpture himself and enjoys the processes. All of his pieces “move in some way” says Rath, reflecting the self-professed influences of sculptors Alexander Calder and David Smith. Often inspired by information and issues in the news media, as was the case with In Vitro, perhaps Rath was drawn to this subject because the activity symbolizes his own practice of creating life with electronic devices.
In Vitro has no recorded sound. It leaves you alone with your thoughts, opinions, and questions with regard to the practical, ethical and philosophical issues that arise with man’s use of advanced technology. In Vitro is as much about ourselves as about the high technology our society has created: a technology capable of either saving or destroying our world.
Prepared for the docent council by Karen M. Yonally 8/96
Website preparer - - Barbara Carrington 3/04
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Art in Our Times: A Pictorial History 1890-1980
NY: Harcourt Brace by Peter Selz
Art Speak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords.
NY: Abbeville Press by Robert Atkins
Alan Rath Lecture: SBMA August 8, 1996
Exhibition Catalog. Gallery 210, University of Missouri. St. Louis, MO 1992
Plugged into Life: Alan Rath at Dorothy Goldeen. Review of exhibition by Sherri Schottlaender. Artweek 12/20/90