Art of noise

Credit: IMAGE COURTESY OF D. BOWIE

An early collaboration between engineers at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and ten artists, among them Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman and John Cage, is highlighted in an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The group built and featured novel technical equipment in avant-garde theatre and dance performances in October 1966 in New York. This formed part of a wider programme by Experiments in Art and Technology, an organization that promoted crossover projects until the 1980s.

Looking at Music, which runs until January 2009, explores how music, art and technology have influenced each other since the innovations of video and electric guitars in the 1960s. On display are video, audio and photographic works by artists such as Laurie Anderson, Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman. Films accompany the show and track developments in technologies, including those in early music videos by The Beatles, David Bowie (pictured) and Captain Beefheart.

Credit: P. BADGE/WILEY–BLACKWELL

http://tinyurl.com/5gakt6

Smiles of success

Portraits of Nobel prizewinners by the German photographer Peter Badge are collected in Nobels, published by Wiley this month. Badge has tracked down and photographed more than 300 living Nobel laureates for this glossy coffee-table book, including economist John Nash and physicist Hans Dehmelt (pictured). A biography is presented alongside each portrait.

http://tinyurl.com/5qmu7s