Rare Earth at Timeshare Los Angeles
Notes on Gyre (Typhon) and Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum (“No Traces Behind”)
BUREAU OF INVERSE TECHNOLOGY
ERIN CALLA WATSON
IAN JAMES
LYNNE MARSH
SCOTT BENZEL
PRESS RELEASE
Network Effects
By Rachel Jackson and Brandon Bandy
“One of the fundamental dualisms inherent in the question of technology’s uses in a humanist context has to do with the conflict between the belief that, in a word, technology is the metaphysics of this century, and therefore has to be accommodated from within, and the view that technology is somehow self-perpetuating, implacable and essentially inhuman. Nearly all the positions taken by artists and by their scientific counterparts with respect to the art/technology relationship are conditioned by one or the other of these antithetical beliefs.”
Jane Livingston from “Art and Technology at LACMA, 1967-1971”
In 1952, during the search for domestic uranium, Mountain Pass Mine became the first and only rare earth element mine in the United States. Located just outside of Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert of California, its deposits of rare earth elements proved valuable, particularly Europium, which would be used to produce red phosphors, an essential component in color television technology. Throughout the next few decades the contents of the mine would be integral to the development of radar technologies, lasers, hard disk drives, batteries, and fiber-optic cables. Mountain Pass became the leading producer of rare earth elements from the 1960s until the 1980s.
In tandem, the invention and mass production of the transistor would propel California to the forefront of information technology, telecommunications, and aerospace, laying the foundation for Silicon Valley. A distinct site within the transition from industrial to post-industrial economies, the region functions as a unique case study within contemporary economics, urban planning, and culture, securing a foothold for the state as a pioneer in the burgeoning tech industry. For the Santa Clara Valley, this development also demarcated an environmental transition from a hub of agricultural production to a new landscape dominated by industrial parks and tract housing.
In 1975, “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” opened at George Eastman House, signaling a departure from the prior romanticism of landscape photography. Taking a documentary approach to the mundane sprawl that had begun to saturate the West, the exhibition reflected an evolving relationship between humans and the built environment, a pivot towards a potential reevaluation of the natural and artificial.
While “New Topographics” captured the physical transformation of the U.S. amid a widespread economic and political shift, New Age religious movements responded convergently, seeking to address these changes within the metaphysical realm. Fusing conceptions of spiritual autonomy, Eastern theology, and mysticism into a new esoteric milieu, the movement is defined by philosopher George D. Chryssides as the “expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential.” This notion parallels the development of information technology as a means of expanding human productivity and access to knowledge. The free-thinking ethos of these metaphysical communities, which arose in relation to 1960s counterculture, established a foundation for what would later be termed The Californian Ideology.
Written by media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron in 1995, The Californian Ideology purports that a “new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Promoted in magazines, books, TV programmes, web sites, newsgroups and net conferences, The Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.” The article purports that in the early years of computing technology, many individuals, often allied with counterculture and radical politics, were seduced by Marshall McLuhan’s conception of an electronic agora, and the potential to overthrow institutional gatekeepers through new, liberating technologies that empowered the individual. Despite this idealism, the utopian vision of the past would be supplanted by libertarian politics, which instead brought about the evolution of the electronic marketplace.
As Livingston stated 53 years ago, there appears to be little ground between opposing poles of pure animosity or enthusiasm within the conversations around “art and technology.” The artists in Rare Earth may or may not be directly addressing this history, however their work exists as the consequence of the situation, taking a refreshing approach of ambiguity–a rarified position, all within a lineage of practice that remains distinct within the region.
“Without the unique conditions of the California climate, efforts to recreate this phenomena elsewhere have failed.”