Imbroglio on emerging technologies at the CCI

The ARTA question

Founded in 1975 within the computing department of the Établissement Public du Centre Beaubourg (EPCB), at the instigation of Christian Cavadia, ARTA was indeed seen as an IT-based studio for research and artistic creation, and its concerns were defined at the time as “Advanced Information and Communication Techniques.” While setting up graphic experiments that belonged to the world of the computer art research laboratory, it was also called on to provide IT support to all the departments of the EPCB. This made it a multifunctional organism, which may explain its logo, in which the As of its acronym seem to be pointing in every direction (Fig. 5). The many missions taken on by ARTA were no doubt too diverse for its small number of members (rarely more than fifteen, volunteers included). Indeed, in 1975, the body was given four objectives:

To make modern working tools available to artists, comparable to those offered to musicians at IRCAM. To pioneer new ways of promoting culture. To enable visitors (adults and children) to learn about, observe and directly participate in the process of artistic creation. To carry out research in order to improve the existing tools and develop others.⁴

These sweeping ambitions, which were quite out of proportion to the modesty of its allocated budget, made sense in this institute which considered itself a “pioneer of new ways of promoting culture, a School of Paris [a kind of model at the international level] in the field of aid to artistic creation.”⁵ By late 1978, however, they seemed awkwardly oriented. Conditions at the Centre had changed. The EPCB had given way to the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, which adopted a “more traditional conception of museography by abandoning – except at IRCAM – the creative laboratory idea.”⁶ Indeed, given the lack of resources, its most famous director, Pontus Hulten, preferred to abstain from providing genuine support to new art in the field of technological imagery, and this direction was followed by the Centre as a whole, even after his departure in 1981, which put ARTA in a difficult situation. As the CCI explained in 1982 in one of its reports:

Pontus Hulten prefers to abstain [from providing genuine support to new technological imagery]. But nor does he plan to leave it to others to take initiatives in this direction within the CNAC G. Pompidou. Pontus Hulten has pronounced himself in favour of getting rid of ARTA. Although he has now left the MNAM, the former director’s position is well-known, because widely disseminated.⁷

In 1979, though now without its own public venue, ARTA enjoyed a reprieve because of its connection with the CCI. For several years, however, Jacques Mullender, who directed the CCI from 1976 to 1982, did not issue any directives or exert any control over ARTA. The workshop continued with its own research, putting in place Création graphique et ordinateur in 1980 and Générations infographiques : images du futur in 1982. These two exhibitions demonstrated the graphic possibilities of the computer and of the creative software developed by ARTA. Jean-Claude Risset, a member of IRCAM, did however point out, in a note to Pierre Boulez, that “people” – the term was left deliberately vague and inclusive – were criticising ARTA and above all Christian Cavadia for presenting personal works that were deemed mediocre. This remark was a reproach directed at members of ARTA regarding a tendency towards self-promotion, which did not seem completely in line with the objectives of the CCI, namely, to“promote awareness among visitors to the Centre Georges-Pompidou […] of the‘industrial phenomenon’ [of computerisation] so that they can be ‘actively involved’ in this computerisation in order to understand it, be on top of it, and therefore to have a say in its application and use.”⁸ Indeed, the CCI wanted to put the emphasis on guiding the public, who should be encouraged to use the technologies on display and understand what was at stake in them. The concern was to empower and therefore emancipate visitors.

The incomprehension between the CCI and ARTA only grew, and the flow of finance from the former to the latter began to dry up, while many ARTA projects were rejected. In 1983 Paul Blanquart became director of the CCI and all the members of ARTA were sacked, with the exception of Christian Cavadia. Henceforth, his one and only mission was to develop software for the Centre Georges-Pompidou. With ARTA out of the way, the CCI was free to reappropriate new technologies for its own didactic ends. The putting in place of Ne coupez pas !, our case study here, was a statement of the way the institution wanted this theme to be treated, one that ARTA did not want or was unable to respond to.

Reorienting computing towards communication and society

Ne coupez pas ! (this was followed by the subtitle Nouveaux médias et communication: new media and communication) addressed new themes and made it possible to broaden the CCI’s audience by taking a different approach to new technologies. Despite vague efforts to speak to the uninitiated as well as to practitioners, the exhibitions Création graphique et ordinateur, Générations infographiques : images du futur, and also CAO, were about the graphic possibilities of the computer and their use in industrial contexts as well as for the creation of patterns on coatings. They therefore spoke to designers, computer engineers and anyone liable to use them, even if they also aimed to be accessible to the general public. By approaching the new media from the angle of communication, the CCI strove to speak to all, affirming that “the ‘new computing’ […] makes it potentially (and above all ‘economically’) possible to radically transform the environment, and therefore to conceptually modify the individual’s everyday habits.”⁹ This direction, in terms of both subject and audience, had already been submitted to ARTA as a proposed new orientation.¹⁰ At the time it was written that ARTA ought to plan “exhibitions directly centred on the ‘computerisation of society.’ There is no lack of subjects and a critical, constructive approach is perfectly in line with the collective assimilation being aimed for.”¹¹ This clearly prefigures the implementation of Ne coupez pas !, whose very title [Hold the line!], an everyday expression already associated with communication (and particularly with switchboard operators), was very different from those of earlier exhibitions, which were more technical, and even enigmatic for an uninformed audience.

By approaching the new media from this angle, the CCI was emphasising their position as telecommunications, a field that, as a result of inventions such as telephone and radio, was already part of French people’s everyday lives, more so than computers. The CCI, which was conscious of upheavals in this technological sector, stated in the same report that “the current decade will undeniably be that of the ‘all-out’ computerisation of society.”¹² If they were to speak to all comers, the choice of curators was extremely important and, instead of the handful of computer specialists at ARTA, the CCI entrusted the exhibition to Marc Girard who, according to the categories of the Centre Georges-Pompidou’s catalogue raisonné, specialised in “societal exhibitions.” He in turn assembled a group of experts in various fields: philosopher Claude Baltz, economist Jean-Marc Lepers, engineer Alain Lelu, and political scientist Marie Thonon joined him for several meetings and took part in the work of a multidisciplinary team that eventually oriented the exhibition’s outlook towards the social sciences.

In the words of Luc Maillet, a member of the Grafibus studio, who worked regularly with Girard and helped define the graphics and display for this exhibition, “with Marc the approach was always social, a little bit everyday life.” This orientation was manifest in the approach to visual presentation: instead of graphic images created on the computer, nearly all the photographs showed men and women using computers and their possibilities in surroundings evocative of everyday home life (Fig. 6). Likewise, the typography explicitly evoked familiar fields: monospace characters like Courier (Fig. 7), recalling the typewriter, and handwritten notes on bits of paper (Fig. 8), as if to insist on the importance of the human element in this technological environment. The softwares presented were not ongoing projects that, in addition to using them, might encourage the viewer to imagine future possibilities, but projects that had been set up and tested several years before, such as games, or videoconference networks. In the archives we find numerous propositions for the design of interactive terminals drawn by the Archigraphe studio, an agency in the Bordeaux region, whose products had a futuristic look (Fig. 9). Inside the exhibition, screens were set into the walls and computers stood on tables, as in offices (Fig. 10), recalling the already everyday aspect of these technologies. Finally, a sheet of honeycomb Makrolon® almost two metres by six divided the space in two. The mesh of this partition reproduced the striations of the computer screens at the time and, in a sense, visually filtered visitors entering the exhibition in the eyes of those already inside (Fig. 11). This partition seems to have been a way of showing that the French population was already at the heart of this computerised transformation. Above all, it affirmed that Ne coupez pas ! was an exhibition not only for the whole of society but one whose subject happened to be society itself, seen through the prism of the new media.

Ne coupez pas ! was the founding event for the body that succeeded ARTA. In its 1983 activity report, indeed, the CCI announced the creation of a research unit titled “New Technologies” directed by Marc Girard, which engaged in a general reflection on the impact of new technologies. This structure, whose subordination to the CCI was clear from the moment of its creation (Fig. 12), was no longer an exception, having the same status as two other units, one dedicated to design and the other to social innovation.

Expertise in new media

In effect, in order to justify its presence within the CCI, Cavadia was constantly sending press cuttings and international prize awards to his superiors to show them that “the work of ARTA is on the cutting edge” and “recognised more abroad than on the French territory,” even if its lack of financial backing prevented it from being competitive over the long term. This handful of artists and computer scientists who kept ARTA going, while not speaking to the general public, did do work involving expertise in the new technologies, and this explains the interest taken in the institution by public services such as the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Industry, but also private companies at the cutting edge of digital technologies at the time, such as Atari.

Now, as we have seen, there was no desire to have a research laboratory within the CCI, notably because the sizeable budget required for computer equipment went exclusively to the only laboratory then supported by the Centre Georges-Pompidou, IRCAM, under the tutelary figure of Pierre Boulez. Indeed, it was no doubt its director’s personality that enabled IRCAM to keep this particular status. A number of documents can be found comparing Cavadia to Boulez, talking up the latter and denigrating ARTA in general: “There can indeed be no question of trying to construct a literary and graphic IRCAM; we would lack the corresponding BOULEZ figures!”¹³ The difference in the quality of their personal artistic productions was used as an argument, and it was precisely this importance of art that was problematic for the CCI. If ARTA sought to speak to designers and to show the power of the computer in graphic design, its members also entered their works for artistic competitions and were published in visual arts magazines. And, as Jean-Claude Risset points out, “there seems to have been great reticence at the Centre, where they did not always take a very positive view of what might be the beginnings of a creative institute for the visual arts.” ARTA justified its activity as a producer of images with reference to graphic design, and explained that its research would be useful for the representation of information and knowledge. However, the works presented usually had more to do with art or technical stylistic exercises, and the CCI report on the Atelier recommended that it be properly grounded in the field of infographics in order to ensure its longevity.

ARTA was not just a place for designing images; it was also a laboratory for the development of software, notably creative software. These programmes were severely criticised by Victor-Marie Claes, a graphic designer and permanent member of the ARTA team in 1977 and 1978, as being impossible for beginners to use. Because they were constantly evolving, driven by the requirements of engineers and infographic designers, this software was never stable, making it impossible for the CCI to valorise the research. In 1984, when all the other members of ARTA were sacked, Cavadia kept his job for another year, during which time he was expected to concentrate exclusively on developing the software in order to make it autonomous, a mission undertaken in partnership with the Ministry of Culture. His attempts to intervene in various external events were castigated by the general secretary of the CCI, René Gourevitch, who described his solicitation of other bodies as “gross misconduct” and reminded him that all his working time in 1984 should be spent finalising the software. However, at the time when Ne coupez pas ! was organised, which admittedly was at the key moment when ARTA was being wound down, no software developed within the Centre Georges-Pompidou was presented, or even announced. True, it is highly likely that none of them corresponded to the exhibition theme, communication, since most of them seem to have been creative softwares, but it is important to note that the exhibition focused on projects from private and public sources (Fig. 13, Fig. 14 and Fig. 15), all originating from outside the Centre, and all already in use. As we have seen, the emphasis was not on future speculation but on showing that society was already immersed in these new technologies. The Centre Georges-Pompidou was not involved in their development but simply presented the phases, without judgement. Ne coupez pas ! reflected this, but did not orient or support any direction of research or expertise in digital technologies. That was the mission of ARTA.

Aiming for popularisation

By the objects it displayed and the panels explaining existing technologies, the exhibition took note and popularised. The discourse aimed to be universal, in terms both of what it said and how it said it.

This discourse was discussed by the multidisciplinary team at several meetings. The aim was at once to speak to the broadest possible audience, present the hopes and fears linked to new technologies, and be didactic without at the same time frightening the public with the risks linked to the new technologies or evacuating the problems that exercised public opinion. After several drafts, these pessimistic and optimistic visions of technologies were boiled down to two texts brought together under the title “Mythologies,” which was a way of relativising these projections into the future and inscribing them within the continuum of beliefs that structure the history of humanity. The two images (Fig. 16 and Fig. 17) that represent these opposing ways of thinking are hybridized into a single one, balancing out their perspectives and cancelling out the potential imaginative resonance they might have attained (Fig. 18). Marc Girard noted that the exhibition must avoid adopting a “negative overall tone.”¹⁴

The texts relating to the exhibition involve a real effort at popularisation. The title, first of all, draws in the visitor; the expression Ne coupez pas ! is less austere and didactic than the original idea, which was Communication et socialité. Girard, who chaired the meetings to discuss the texts, insisted on clarity of content. For the graphics and display he called in the Grafibus studio, which he had got to know on the occasion of an exhibition at the Centre de Culture Scientifique, Technique et Industrielle in Grenoble. For one thing, its members had already been working on the popularisation of science for several years, as Luc Millet, a member of the studio, has pointed out. When preparing the exhibition, Grafibus spoke directly with scientists and even asked them to contribute to the panels. All the exhibition text was written by specialists. This effort at popularisation used panels to allow for direct contact between scientists and visitors using short notes on various paper supports (canteen tablecloths, postcards, etc.) (Fig. 19 and Fig. 20). This scientific content thus placed researchers in a relation of equal-to-equal with regard to visitors.

None of these panels was created using digital technologies. Grafibus did not start using computers until 1987.¹⁵ The panels they created were light, rigid and strong, making them ideal for touring. Similarly, the exhibition’s graphic tools also used codes from outside the new technologies. The frieze in the form of a spiralling phone cord (Fig. 21) was executed in a pictorial aesthetic, close to certain graphic codes of the 1980s, and the references to paper throughout the exhibition were complemented by typography evoking either typewriters or handwriting. This produced a visual link to visitors with regard to contents that could be complex, as can be seen from the handwritten diagrams added above technical notes (Fig. 22).

There was also an attempt to foster exchange in the exhibition. Visitors were encouraged to use terminals presenting games and means of communication, and thus to understand their possibilities. In a note Girard observed that teenagers often played the role of initiators, showing other visitors how to use the terminals, and would keep coming back to improve their scores in the games or to resume a conversation on the computer. However, he also regretted that this attraction to the terminals was often to the detriment of the reflexive elements on the panels, adding that the permanent presence of a presenter would have enabled a dialogue with visitors so that they could learn more about the possibilities of these new tools other than just the technical ones. One can sense a real desire to speak to visitors, to make them aware of the social and economic issues, a desire partially hampered by the difficulty of articulating the hands-on exhibits and the textual content.

In this sense, Ne coupez pas ! was about passing on expertise. Instead of concentrating on new technologies in order to project into their future uses, this exhibition used the popularisation of complex contents, the new technologies, in order to map out the current situation for the benefit of society as a whole. The new technologies unit that replaced ARTA seems to have practised the same approach to expertise. Up until the CCI’s merger with the MNAM (Musée National d’Art Moderne), its role was essentially to assist exhibition curators on matters relating to new technologies and to organise symposiums. It seemed, therefore, to play a supporting, mediating role, not with regard to niche subjects such as infographics, but in the cross-disciplinary analysis of new technologies, at the intersection of so-called “hard” sciences and social sciences.

To evoke once again the CCI’s objectives, Ne coupez pas ! genuinely tried to “stimulate awareness […] of the ‘industrial phenomenon’ [of computerisation].” However, we may wonder whether the fact of abandoning a certain research-based dynamic did not really prevent visitors to the Centre Georges-Pompidou, precisely, from being “‘actively involved’ in this computerisation in order to understand it, to be on top of it, and therefore to have a say in its application and use.”¹⁶ Indeed, the lack of knowledge about digital technologies at the Centre meant that there was no mastery of the softwares presented. Hence the difficulties maintaining some of the devices due to this externalisation of IT know-how away from the teams at the CCI. In one of his notes Girard also explains that one of the interactive devices on display disappointed visitors because its content was limited and did not allow them to grasp its true potential or use, even if its technological excellence cannot be called into question. By way of comparison, we may think of a project by ARTA, which had collaborated on the exhibition Le vêtement épinglé, where it developed software that enabled visitors to create and print a pattern to fit their measurements. This contextualised work, linked to the application of computers within a field that was both industrial and everyday – sewing was a much more popular amateur activity in those days – seemed to come closer to an effort to accompany visitors in their use of digital technologies.

This transition from expertise to popularisation could have defined a distinct position for the CCI with regard to new technologies and given digital technology a specific place in this institution. However, over the decades that followed there is little sign of a regular rhythm or cohesion linking the different events relating to the new technologies. Does the exhibition Ne coupez pas ! show signs of this relative abandonment?

A lack of powerful images?

Ne coupez pas ! may already show a few signs of that withdrawal. In addition to the rejection of a research-based approach by the CCI, the exhibition’s emphasis on the situation of the new technologies in the present or the immediate future may be a sign of the CCI’s lack of investment in this theme over the longer term.

With its concern to offer an objective survey of current realities, Ne coupez pas ! contained few powerful images. Most of the visuals were close to the world of popular magazines (Fig. 23) or scientific journals (Fig. 24) and were acquired from mainstream photography agencies such as Sygma and Magnum. Some were engravings (Fig. 25), others were more fantastical (Fig. 26), but all of them kept to the strict pattern established by Grafibus, occupying only the top half of their panels. The fact that these panels were placed edge to edge made it impossible to establish any hierarchy between them (Fig. 21). A third of the panel texts ended with a question mark, and this determination to give visitors angles of reflection rather than directed answers made it harder to project into the future. Two images, however, were given particular emphasis; the ones accompanying the “mythologies” mentioned above. The first, which was pessimistic, came from Claire Monteillier’s science fiction graphic novel Wonder City (Fig. 16), which addressed the theme of a society of surveillance in which, it just so happened, the technology has the name of iPhone; the second was optimistic and showed a man happily at work, surrounded by computers (Fig. 17). These two images could have served to map out two independent directions, two powerful imaginary worlds: hybridised as they were here, they seemed to cancel each other out (Fig. 18).¹⁹ Girard also noted a few regrets, such as the contents of the interactive terminal, but also the absence of human mediators, whose presence would have made sense in an exhibition that was all about popularisation.

A problem of positioning for the CCI

It is clear that at the time the CCI was concerned to position itself on the question of digital technologies. The Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie would be opening in the years ahead and the aim of the CCI was not to “take the place of the future museum of sciences and technology, which means that we must position ourselves in a precise niche.”

Although ARTA had recommended an emphasis on infographics in 1982, Ne coupez pas ! said nothing about computer-related design. The texts did not deal with the question of designing objects or graphics, but only with technological constructions and their social impact. And yet, approaching new technologies in terms of design, and graphic design in particular, could have been an opportunity for the CCI to define a position with regard to IT and thus to become a reference in the field while extending certain directions pursued by ARTA. Moreover, as a member of the CCI pointed out in 1982, “graphic arts (with the images that are its corollary) clearly correspond to what the Centre Georges-Pompidou represents in the collective unconscious.” A coherent specialisation could have interested professionals as well as the general public, since “the results are visual and therefore ‘speak’ easily to the public” and “the call for creativity (or its simulation) can easily be exercised there.”²⁰ This expertise could also have been facilitated by the creation of a “Design” unit in the same year as the “New Technologies” unit.²¹

By following the recommendations made to ARTA to position itself in relation to infographics and the creation of accessible softwares, the CCI could have played a leading role in the development of computer-assisted design and – why not? – developed a range of French softwares financed by the State. The “New Technologies” unit that took over from ARTA continued its research but in muted fashion, as a support to exhibitions by the CCI but no longer generating its own direction. Its knowledge and a not inconsiderable involvement did not seem enough to ensure the CCI an avant-garde position in new technologies, as it had hoped in 1982. Its budget was cut drastically in 1987 when, four years after its creation, Girard left. In the 1992 activity report, IRCAM is therefore the only player mentioned in relation to research into new technologies. Design does not feature.

The exhibition Ne coupez pas !, focusing on technologies and mediation, offered a popularisation of science. There is no avoiding the fact that this positioning seems to have been taken up by the museum in La Villette, which opened in 1986 as a venue for disseminating scientific and technological culture to a broad public in order to stimulate citizens’ interest in social issues related to the sciences, research and industry. Ne coupez pas ! so neatly matches these issues that we can postulate that the CCI’s fear of not being able to position itself effectively with regard to this new institution should finally and effectively have come true. This was indeed Girard’s last exhibition at Beaubourg as curator. He directed the “New Technologies” unit until 1983 and then joined the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, where he became director of exhibitions from 1998 to 2015 and collaborated frequently with Grafibus, whose approach to scientific popularisation was a perfect fit there.

Ne coupez pas ! thus constitutes a turning point in the CCI’s relation to new technologies. It was an exhibition founded on a real desire for scientific popularisation but also marked the abandonment of a research laboratory dedicated to the possibilities of computers and, finally, the CCI’s failure to adopt a particular position in relation to these issues.

Further, the relation to research at the Centre Georges-Pompidou seems to have remained strained ever since Pontus Hulten’s directorship. While as it developed IRCAM worked to remain as autonomous as possible, the Institut de la Recherche et de l’Innovation (IRI) created at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in 2006 at the instigation of philosopher Bernard Stiegler and Vincent Puig, with the aim of anticipating changes in cultural practices allowed by digital technologies, acquired two years later the status of an autonomous research association, admittedly founded by the Centre but surreptitiously breaking away from it.

The title Ne coupez pas ! therefore seems rather strangely apt: whereas it should or could have confirmed the transmission and establishment within the CCI of a capacity to generate and mediate ideas in relation to the new media, for us this exhibition has become a symbol of rupture: the sound we hear when the person at the other end of the line hangs up.

Writings

AURAY, Nicolas and Samira OUARDI. “Numérique et émancipation, de la politique du code au renouvellement des élites.” Mouvements, no. 79, 2014.

BOULLIER, Dominique. Sociologie du numérique. Malakoff: Armand Colin, “Collection U,” 2016.

s.n. CAO (Conception Assistée par Ordinateur). Paris: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou, 1978.

s.n. Écrans pour tous ? Démocratie locale et nouvelles technologies de communication. Paris: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou /CCI, 1983.

s.n. Générations infographiques : images du futur. Paris: Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou /CCI, 1982.

MANOVICH, Lev. The Language of New Media, Boston: MIT Press, 2001.

Archived documents

Archives du Centre Georges-Pompidou, archives of the exhibition Ne coupez pas !, Paris: Centre Georges-Pompidou, 1983, CCI 94033/649, 94033/440, 95016/001, 94040/031.

Archives du Centre Georges-Pompidou, archives of ARTA, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris, CCI 77001/072, 77001/025, 77001/026, RAP 9300080.

Rapport d’activité du Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris: Centre Georges-Pompidou, from 1983 to 1992.

Reproductions of works and preparatory document. Audiovisual service, 1983, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, CCI 125 DOC.