Mike had paid his dues to art, for while studying at Cal Tech he had worked on the Skyshield Project, a systems approach to electronic defense against low energy particles to use on the space stations. After graduation he had gone to work at the Bell lab in their brain-wave complex on Long Island. He quit when he got a Guggenheim grant for his art.
From his “Pleasurewoman” cube General Electric picked up some of Mike’s modifications for their new multilayer image projectors and beta wave generators. For the artists that use models or three-dimensional objects to record the basic image cycle—such as breathing, running water, or repeating events—Nakamura, Ltd. brought out a new camera design in circular pattern distribution that contained many of Mike’s suggestions. For the artist working in original abstractions, Mike built his own ultra-fine electron brush and an image generator linked with a graphics computer that produced an almost infinite number of variables. Mike Cilento was proving himself as an innovator and engineer as well as artist, an unusual combination. I met Mike again at the opening of his “Solar System” series in the Grand Museum in Athens. The ten cubes hung from the ceiling, each with its nonliteral interpretation of the sun and planets, from the powerball of Sol to the hard, shiny ballbearing of Pluto.
Mike seemed caged, a tiger in a trap, but very happy to see me. He was a volunteer kidnapee as I spirited him away to my apartment in the old part of town.
He sighed as we entered, tossed his jacket into a Lifestyle chair and strolled out onto the balcony. I picked up two glasses and a bottle of Cretan wine and joined him.
He sighed again, sank into the chair, and sipped the wine. I chuckled and said, “Fame getting too much for you?”
He grunted at me. “Why do they always want the artist at openings? The art speaks for itself.”
“Public relations. To touch the hem of creativity. Maybe some of it will rub off on them.” He grunted again, and we lapsed into comfortable silence, looking out at the Parthenon, high up and night-lit. At last he spoke. “Being an artist is all I ever wanted to be, like kids growing up to be astronauts or ball players. It’s an honor to be able to do it, whatever
“Because of the extreme realism?”
“That’s part of it. Abstraction, realism, expressionism—they’re just labels. What matters is what
“You are as much an engineer as you are an artist,” I said. He smiled and sipped his wine. “Every medium, every technique has those who find that area their particular feast. Look at actors. Once there was only the play, from start to finish, no retakes and live. Then came film and tape and events shot out of sequence. No emotional line to follow from start to finish. It takes a particular kind of actor who can discipline himself to those flashbacks and flashforwards. In the days of mime there were probably superb actors lost because their art was in their voice.”
“And today?” I prompted.
“Today the artist who cannot master electronics has a difficult time in many of the arts. Leonardo da Vinci could have, but probably not Michelangelo. There are many fine artists born out of their time, in both directions.”
I asked a question I had often asked artists working in nontraditional media. “Why is the sensatron such a good medium for you?”
“It is immensely versatile. A penline can only do a certain number of things and hint at others. An oil painting is static. It attempts to be real but is a frozen moment. But sometimes frozen moments are better than motion. A motion picture, a tape, a play all convey a variety of meanings and emotions, even changes of location and perspective. As such they are very good tools. The more you can communicate the better. With the power of the sensatron you can transmit to the viewer such emotions, such feelings, that he becomes a participant, not just a viewer. Involvement. Commitment. I wouldn’t do a sensatron to communicate some things, just because it’s so much work and the communication minor. But the sensatron units can do almost anything any other art form can do. That’s why I like it. Not because it’s the fashionable art form right now.”
“You’ve had no trouble getting your first license?” I asked.
“No, the Guggenheim people fixed it.” He shook his head. “The idea of having to have a license to do a piece of art seems bizarre.” He lifted his hand before I spoke. “Yeah, I know. If they didn’t watch who had control of alpha and omega projectors we’d be trooping to the polls to vote for a dictator and not even know we didn’t want to. Or so they think.”
“It’s a powerful force, difficult to fight. Your own brain is telling you to buy, buy, buy, use, use, use, and that’s pretty hard to fight. Think of it like prescription drugs.”
He nodded his head. “Can’t you just see it? ‘I’m sorry, Michelangelo, but this piece of Carrara marble needs a priority IX
