The concept device art emerged in Japan a few years ago. However, this kind of art practice also has an international background, one that is related to drastic changes in the concept of art during the 20th century, and even earlier. In this article I will discuss a range of phenomena that go back all the way to the late 19th century and that I would like to call proto-device art − an early stage in the development of a phenomenon that is usually considered very recent. Many of the early experiments I will evoke were, in one way or another, unsuccessful. Still, it is important to understand why these projects did not succeed the way they were meant to. Finding out the reasons may send a useful message for those trying to envision the future of device art just now, in Japan and elsewhere.  

Traditionally there was something paradoxical in the notion of art, and its role(s) in Western society and thinking. Art has been considered at once material and immaterial. There has been a strong belief in the artist as a creative genius: an exceptional individual who creates things that are transcendental and even uncanny, beyond the capabilities of ‘normal people’. At the same time, artworks have been considered material objects created by tools and based on learned skills. Artworks also embody value as saleable goods. The 19th century was a period when the new middle classes came into power. This gave a strong push to the development of the commercial art market. Artworks − while still considered immaterial, works of a genius − became increasingly seen as something to be sold, collected, and stored. Art became an investment. The nouveau riche bourgeoisie inherited aesthetic values from the hereditary upper classes. As a consequence, art came to be seen as something serious and solemn, worthy of contemplation. Artworks also came to be seen as untouchable. In the literal sense, this means: you are not supposed to touch an artwork; art is for the eyes only. 

Important transitions occurred in Western society during the 19th century, preparing the ground for ideas like proto-device art. As a result of the industrial revolution, the machine began to dominate the cultural horizon, giving rise to an extensive debate. The impact of production machines affected society on all levels. One of the issues debated was whether machines would able to create something that could qualify as art. Some claimed that machines could only produce “useful ugliness” − things that were uniform, regular, and standardized. Such traits were seen as the opposite of art, which was associated with qualities like individuality, uniqueness, and capriciousness. 

The avant-garde art movements of the early 20th century questioned many of the givens of the bourgeois conception of art, opening the way for new ideas, including proto-device art. They developed a new kind of relationship to the machine, which manifested itself on three levels. First, artists began considering the machine worth representing as an emblem of contemporary technological society. This is exemplified by the Cubist paintings of machines of Fernand Léer, and in a more enigmatic way by those of the Dadaist Francis Picabia. Second, avant-gardists like Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, the leader of the Futurists, claimed that machines should be used to make art. The third and the most radical position was that machines themselves could become works of art. Here Constructivists like Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin, and László Moholy-Nagy played a key role, but there was also a tradition of bachelor machines, conceptual and often perverse devices imagined by artists and writers from Marcel Duchamp to Franz Kafka and Raymond Roussel. 

Avant-garde art got inspiration and energy from ‘low’ cultural forms, such as the circus and amusement parks. It was claimed that art could be fun, instead of pretending to be serious in the sense of 19th century aesthetics. There was a change in the role of the art object itself − the idea that artworks don’t have to be just ‘useless’ objects. The bourgeoisie had stood in front of an art object in contemplation and meditation. It began to dawn that an artwork could also be something useful and functional, and still show high aesthetic quality. This is related to the fact that the border between art and design − applied art − had started to break down. The relationship between art production and mass production began to change. In the 19th century, an art object was often seen as something unique, with a special aura as Walter Benjamin famously argued. With lithography, photography, and cinema things began to change. Creativity began embracing forms that were serially produced and marketed. 

All this is epitomized by a photograph, a self-portrait by the young Czechoslovak Constructivist artist Zdenek Pešánek taken in the 1920s. It shows the artist in the way he wanted to be remembered, in a uniform resembling an engineer’s or mechanic’s suit (it reminds me of Maywa Denki uniforms). Pešánek is talking on the telephone. He is surrounded by all his gadgets, including a neon sculpture placed just behind him. Here is an artist who tried to bridge the gap between the technologies of everyday life and artistic creation. Tatlin, the “Soviet Leonardo da Vinci”, also liked to pose in worker’s uniforms. His output bridged many different forms of creation: graphic arts, fashion design, mechanized sculptures and monuments, and even a personal flying machine, his famous Letatlin (no doubt an anticipation of Hachiya’s OpenSky project).

The Light-Space-Modulator had two aspects. First, it was a mechanic ballet of forms in carefully choreographed motions. Second, this device could produce a light show in a darkened space. The physical motion of the mechanism was translated into the virtual motion of the light show. Another work from Moholy-Nagy’s large production that has relevance for device art is his Telephone Picture, a ceramic work in the constructivist style made in the early 1920s. What is interesting about this work is the story behind it. Moholy-Nagy kept on saying it was a work he basically ordered by telephone by calling the factory and just giving the instructions over the telephone. This may not actually be a true story, but it could have been. It shows how Moholy-Nagy wanted to destroy the idea of the original, and to produce artworks that could be created as an unlimited series, and even be ordered by technological systems of communication. 

My third example is a less well known key figure: Thomas Wilfred. Originally from Denmark, he moved to the United States as a young man in the early 1920s, and stayed there for the rest of his life (until the late 60s). Like Moholy-Nagy, he saw light as the new medium of the 20th century. All his works revolved around an idea of the art of Lumia − the art of light. An important aspect of his early work consisted of huge colored pianos, which he called Clavilux. They were performance instruments for creating light shows without music in large auditoriums. What is very interesting is that already in the early stages of his work (in the late 1920s and early 30s), Wilfred took leaps toward device art. He kept building huge machines, but he also went on to a totally different direction: producing devices for the home. He wanted to change not just the way art is displayed, but also the nature of art itself. His artwork would be machines that anybody could buy. People would be able to enjoy beautiful avant-garde light art in the privacy of their own home. 

Wilfred created a gorgeous device which is called the Clavilux Junior, which he started manufacturing in 1930. At the time nobody had a television set at home. The Clavilux Junior looked much like a television set enclosed in a wooden cabinet, but it was meant to do something totally different. It produced abstract light shows that could be modi∫ed and controlled by a wired remote controller. One could adjust different kinds of colored lights and also the speed of the rotation of this mechanism. The lower part of the cabinet had a storage space for interchangeable picture disks, and on the upper level, a kind of turntable for rotating them rotating and also a system of mirrors and colored lights. The transparent colored disks were all hand-painted. It was like a record player with a system of light and mirrors. Wilfred even provided discs with labels, and they were about the same size as ordinary audio records of the time. Lumia was always without a musical background. Wilfred, who was originally a musician, played with the idea of parallels between music and the new music of pure abstract images. 

What is really interesting about this device is not just the mechanics and the inventiveness, but also the whole idea behind it. Wilfred wanted to use this new technology to open up new possibilities of meditation, silence and beauty in the home: something that had never existed in culture in this form. The idea failed, in a sense that Clavilux Jr. never became commonly used. It disappeared quickly − and eventually television sets came to occupy the position in the living room which Thomas Wilfred had reserved for a more abstract and dreamy art experience. Unfortunately, Wilfred only managed to manufacture and sell sixteen Clavilux Juniors even though he had dreamed of distributing them much more widely. 

Another interesting artist whose work has been rediscovered recently is Nicolas Schoeffer. He was originally from Hungary, but worked most of his life in France. In many ways his work − mostly made from the 1950s to the early 1980s − was the continuation of the ideas that Tatlin, Moholy-Nagy, and Wilfred had experimented with earlier. He had a total vision: the idea of cybernetic technology turned into an all-embracing art form. His art ranged from very large-scale public installations and monuments to little things produced for the home. His famous cybernetic towers were responsive to sound or light or some other input. He also created responsive cybernetic sculptures that were often used in ballet performances from the 60s to the 70s. Maurice Béjart performed with the Spatiodynamique, and Carolyn Carson with two huge Kyldex machines. These were interesting and strange ways of combining human movements with the motions of the machine. Schoeffer also made a piece called Sculpture Automobile in the early 70s. It was a moving sculpture where he built a special car with a light display system, and it was seen while it was driving through cities. This brings to mind Kazuhiko Hachiya’s ThanksTail, which is also an artwork created to enhance and change an automobile. 

Just like Wilfred, Schoeffer also had the idea of changing the home. Together with the Philips Corporation, he realized and produced a series of moving, technological artworks for the home. The first one of these was called Lumino, a very small light box for the home. Another work was called Le Mini Effet, and in the 70s these were followed by the Varetra. One could combine individual Varetra boxes into different configurations, and customize the installation for the home. Once again, this was an attempt to re-invent the idea of art in relation to all the electronics and technology that was then entering the home. It should be noted that Philips was one of the leading electronics companies in Europe at that time, making devices such as cassette recorders and record players, among others. It is a very interesting idea to re-invent that kind of product category. However, it is important to keep in mind that Thomas Wilfred already had the same idea in 1930 − a visionary intuition.