"When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art launched its first Art & Technology program back in 1967, the idea of artists and technologists collaborating was radical—and the art world wasn’t quite ready."

GUESTS

Patrick McCray, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
John Craig Freeman, Public Artist, Professor of New Media Art, Emerson College
Brian Mullins, Founder, CEO, DAQRI, Los Angeles, California

From the Archives: Art and Technology at LACMA, 1967–1971 on view March 2015 - October 25, 2015.

The Miami Line Water Reflections / Rockne Krebs 
Public Art Light Sculpture

Video by Rockne Krebs, 1987

“Rockne Krebs’ iconic The Miami Line…lets you know, lest you forget, that you are in The Magic City.” Aventura Magazine, 2012. 

“…The Miami Line, a magnificent public art work by Rockne Krebs …to create a brilliant, soaring line of colored light pulsing through the city’s heart, casting a magical shimmer of ever-changing color on the river.” Art Circuits, Miami Line Spans City with Art, 2012.

Crystal Willow slideshow presentation click here.

Photo: Crystal Willow, Rest in light Rockne Krebs, December 2011  © Lars Hasselblad Torres

"After physicists first demonstrated the optical laser in May 1960, scientists and engineers started thinking of what they could do with it. So did artists."   (For complete article by Patrick McCray click here.)

"Another notable effort was by Rockne Krebs, an American artist who made laser-based sculptures for several years starting in the late 1960's." 

"Over time, Krebs expanded his focus from small-scale efforts using lasers in rooms and galleries to ambitious outdoor installations that incorporated building and landscapes into the work. Harking back – unconsciously, most likely – to Garmire’s experiments, his piece The Green Hypotenuse (1983) used a 7 mile-long laser beam that stretched from the observatory on Mt. Wilson down to Caltech."

"A key difference between Garmire’s “lasergrams” and installations made by artists like Krebs is the latter’s ephemeral nature. When the laser was turned off, the art disappeared. All that’s left are the sketches that went into its planning – “drawings for sculpture you can walk through” according to the title for one Krebs’ exhibit...." 

 - Patrick McCray

Christmas Lights Kansas City, Missouri, 1956, by Rockne Krebs. 

“I find CITY LIGHTS painted in 1956 by Krebs as a teenager of the Christmas lights in the Plaza in Kansas City, prophetic of the homages to the urban landscape that he would create a decade and a half later and would describe in a 1972 essay titled Light Is The City At Night.  In the interim Krebs would pursue the rather typical course of the serious student artist, majoring in sculpture at the University of Kansas with the sculptors Elden Tefft, Bernard Frazier, Jim Bass and James Sterrit.  The fact of his long artistic apprenticeship has been over looked because he appeared to most art world observers to have been born with lasers in the sixties….”   Jay Belloli, 1990

I first met Rockne in 1982.  Sam Gilliam asked him to come downstairs from his studio to beat me in ping pong.

I won.

Rockne won the second game by one point.

We never played again.

I followed the anonymous “artist” upstairs to his studio to photograph the stormy aftermath of the games.  To my surprise, I discovered that I had just played Rockne Krebs!  My disbelief did not amuse him. 
-  Carol Harrison, 2011

Photograph © Carol Harrison

Rockne, Sam and I agreed to meet at their studios on 14th & U.  
I would photograph the 2 of them “for the art history books.”  
It unfolded differently than I imagined.  – Carol Harrison

“I Had a Friend in High School” We would play tennis until we were both on the verge of heat exhaustion.  Then we would hop in Rockne’s Mercury coupe and head to the drive-in for cold sodas….  At first our tennis matches were one sided.  I would always win primarily because Rockne’s backhand was terrible.  But, Rockne had a singleness of purpose which was to beat me, so he took lessons and developed a really strong forehand shot.   Rockne would not fall for any fake moves I would make.  - Charles (Charlie) Thomas Payne

High School yearbook photo of Rockne.

Photograph © Carol Harrison

“My serve is so good,  even you would be surprised.   I am fond of this waiting expecting photo- I feel comfortable with chair legs to see/ in order to see trees…”  Sam Gilliam  (a note to Carol Harrison)

“I am in your debt, and all I did was stand briefly in front of your camera.  Sincerely, Rockne Krebs, Sept. 2008  P.S. And beat you in ping pong.  Ho, Ho, Ho! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Thank you!” (This note relates to Carol Harrison’s photo of Rockne Krebs in “A Kansas City Tribute to Rockne Krebs.”  A historical correction:  Ms. Harrison won the first fierce game of ping pong.  Mr. Krebs won the even fiercer second game, after the score was tied at 21 points.  Sam Gilliam arranged the championship match in his studio.)

Photograph © Carol Harrison

Rockne saved me by agreeing to do a commercial job
(I believe his only one)
for a GE marketing campaign with me.

When I picked him  up at the airport he looked like  John Wayne, big cowboy hat, big lined sheepskin coat. When he saw me he  grinned, big, I knew there was  light at the end of the tunnel as he was walking towards me. Rockne Krebs - was my  –  is my hero.

Photograph © Carol Harrison

Photograph © Carol Harrison

He fired a gun into the ceiling at C.A.V.S. while Otto Piene was talking. I would say it was 1978. I asked him twice about this years later… …and he walked away mumbling something about it was just a  pop gun. 1*

- Marc Palumbo
October 15, 2011

Thank you library & archives staff at LACMA’s Library!  
Balch Art Research Library

LACMA Unframed / Balch Library: Before and After

“…the renovated library is now also home to the new 
Art + Technology Lab…
Library displays feature special selections from the archives, hand-picked by the library and archives staff.  Currently, you’ll find fascinating documentation from the original Art and Technology program that ran from 1967 to 1971, including a drawing by artist Rockne Krebs for his laser-beam installation, produced in collaboration with the Hewlett-Packard Corporation.  
Displayed alongside is a letter of recommendation by curator 
Sam Wagstaff on behalf of artist James Lee Byars, playfully hand scrawled in crayon….” April 21, 2014

‘Rockne Krebs is recognized as one of Washington’s finest artists.  Krebs “Of the 38 major pieces I’ve made in the last 10 years, two still exist.  Perhaps I ought to start making still-lifes of flowers.”’  *1

Art International, 1974. Rite de Passage, by Rockne Krebs, 1971.

Rite de Passage, in honor of Mrs. Edgar B. Stern, a gift by the Stern family to the New Orleans Museum of Art. Art International, May 1974 XVIII/5.  Cover photograph: Passage 5 from Rite de Passage, an argon laser work by Rockne Krebs, installed in the portico of the New Orleans Museum in 1971.

“I think of these as pieces which you experience in total but see only in sequence or passages.  The experience is a remembered experience, almost as a piece of music of which you hear the progression.  In this case you see the progression of the piece and your final total experience is one of memory.”  
Rockne Krebs, 1970 *2

 “’Crazy, man!’ is the way young people describe it as the beam dances merrily as it bounces off trees, the waters of the lagoon…” *3

Drawing by Rockne Krebs, Rite de Passage, New Orleans Museum of Art.

The Art Gallery Magazine, November 1971.   Magazine cover, drawing by Rockne Krebs of his piece Rite de Passage at the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA.   "One of the more spectacular accomplishments to this month’s re-opening of New Orleans’ old Isaac Delgado Museum promises to be a laser beam sculpture by Rockne Krebs.  The artist’s conception of what the work will look like in action appears on our cover.”

“I was disheartened to read Rockne’s 1977 statement, that of the thirty-eight major pieces he had made, only four were still extant.

Rockne’s sobering quote speaks volumes about the temporal nature of all art.  However, there is one piece that certainly exists and has become a touchstone for me.  Miami Line is a signature Krebs light sculpture that stretches for a third of a mile along the under edge of a Metrorail overpass in downtown Miami ….”  *4
William Dunlap, Dec. 2, 2011

“...Krebs’s made one feel extremely happy and proud to be alive at a particular time and place…”  *5