As it turns out nothing is as simple as it is generally made out to be. Take the elegant notion of tensegrity which I have incorporated into my artwork in one form or another for some time now. As a rule I always considered the use of tensegrity as a conceptual and historical reference to R. Buckminster Fuller (we’ll call him Bucky for short which is funny considering I attend school at UW Madison where “Bucky” the Badger is our overstated mascot). Fuller was a futurist, innovator and general all around thinker. He is credited heavily for his writing on systems analysis and his personal bent was on efficiency in material use to make more efficient structures to better the lives of all mankind and end what he termed “man slavery” in his book Nine Chains to the Moon. The results of this bent were wide and varied and I have argued on many occasions that Bucky was as much an artist as an architect and designer. Bucky is also credited heavily for having “invented” the efficient structures known as geodesics (a term he coined) and of course tensegrity (another term he coined). Both of these terms are heavily utilized and defined in his all encompassing work synergetics.

As far as his own claims for what he had “invented” there is some ambiguity to be sure. Many of the concepts he lectured and wrote on are based on geometries which had been around for centuries if not millennia. And in his writing at least he is ambiguous as to whether he claims ownership over the “inventions” or if he simply expounding, defining, and applying the concepts. It is notable that many of the concepts Fuller worked with were applied by him in ways that were innovative. It is equally notable that Fuller invented terminologies to talk about these concepts, like geodesics, tensegrity (a conjunction of tensional integrity), dymaxion, synergetics and others to be sure. However in his invention of words and terms it seems some of the origins of the concepts were hidden or repressed.

A perfect example came as I was researching tensegrity as it related to the artist Kenneth Snelson. Snelson is famous for his needle tower in Washington D.C. among other large public works. I recently stumbled onto his work while trying to find out more about who and what my own work might relate to, and upon initial discovery I figured he must have been among the fascinated students of Fuller. Further study has revealed that my initial assumption was true but only to a point. Ironically that point is a current focus of my own work and the subject of this post: Tensegrity.

If, like me, you were to read Fuller’s books before discovering Snelson’s works you might will assume, like I did, that Kenneth Snelson was a follower of Fuller and adapted his pure forms to modernist sculpture. However Snelson’s account of this is much different. In a letter published in The International Journal of Space Structures November, 1990 Snelson lays out his argument that Fuller co-opted his idea of discontinuous compression in 1948, renamed it Tensegrity, and then quietly took credit for it. I encourage you to follow the above link and read the letter because it is a compelling argument and an interesting look into the relationships of teachers and students.

For my two cents I would have to agree with Kenneth Snelson and credit him for the initial concept that led to Bucky’s tensegrities. There are some notable differences in the standard strut, tendon structures that are often attributed to Fuller and the original structure created by Snelson. Also it is clear in Snelson’s writing that he followed Bucky’s advice leading to the creation of what is now commonly referred to as tensegrity. However the differences really point to adaptation of an original idea that began with Kenneth Snelson’s double-X structure.

The interplay between science, analysis, and art is obviously fascinating to me and it is generally interesting to trace the connections in innovation. For more on this look up James Burke. However, as an academic I have ethical problems with lacking attribution, and not for egotistical reasons. As is demonstrated in the work of James Burke, it is of utmost importance to understand where ideas come from and the various consequences they have in the real world. Lack of attribution is not only dishonest, it clouds the historical record and renders analysis useless to trace the origins and potential directions of threads of knowledge.

In this little connections journey (to reference James Burke again) I would have to say that Snelson’s idea of discontinuous compression is the fore bearer to Fuller’s Tensegrity. Certainly the idea was refined over years of study by Fuller and others like Hugh Kenner, but the original idea certainly belongs to Snelson. At the same time, everything we create is referenced on the creations of those who came before us and we all stand on the shoulders of giants who stand on the shoulders of their forefathers and so on into the primordial soup where the first bacteria to flip its flagellum could not have done so without the important work of its trillions of ancestors who had no such tools. In this same way I see threads of continuity between the work of Kenneth Snelson and Naum Gabo who is twenty years his senior. Could Snelson have made his work without Gabo, or Me without Snelson and Fuller, or Fuller without either of the latter? Could any of us had made our work without the pre-existence of suspension structures like the Brooklyn Bridge? There is no way to tell for sure but there is overwhelming evidence that everything we do is done not in a vacuum but a continuum with all humanity. It seems obvious to say which must explain my instinctual urge to strike that last sentence from the record.

In terms of my own work I still consider tensegrity to be a reference to Fuller but now only as a result of cultural vernacular (i.e. that is the myth behind it). However, in my search for truth I have a new nugget that seems to be more true than the one that last stood in its place, and this is an important lesson. Becoming dogmatic or being inadvertently dogmatic about origins of concepts and ideas without fact checking leads ultimately to an incomplete record and a potentially false understanding of those ideas and concepts. This can be innocent. For example, I knew nothing of Kenneth Snelson until a few months ago and now that I have familiarized myself with his work it has become necessary for me to rethink where my own work fits and its meaning will be slightly different from now on.

The other lesson is one that I already knew of Fuller and men of his ilk. Those who are quick to take credit for “invention” have often overlooked their true origins. Whether this is intentional or not, it is something that honest creators should strive to understand in order to understand their own work more fully in its context in the continuum of human creation. On the other hand history is a continuum as well and as we progress through time and space it seems our understanding falls off as facts become myths and legends and eventually fade into obscurity like the tattered edges of a vibrant tapestry that we continuously weave with our creations. Going back to my previous example of the suspension bridge, we no longer know the initial inventor of the first rope bridge in the depths of the South American rain forest. However that person is at the same time our ambiguous contemporary and they live on through their important work that made jungle transit easier, contributed to a flourishing civilization and ultimately to our own. We do not know this person’s name or the name of the person who their work was based on and so on back into the primordial soup, and yet their ideas flourish. One day the sun will go out and all human ideas will die with it, leaving our creations to the obscurity of the infinite universe in which we are only a blink in a moment that will seem over before it began in the vast depths of time. Before that time we might discover connections that span the galaxy and the universe in ways we could never imagine. Perhaps we are a continuum in a vacuum and perhaps we are part of a much larger continuum we are yet to discover. Perspective, it seems, is everything and in the mean-time before the sun goes out we will continue to grapple with credit where its due and ambiguity when credit is finally lost to the darkness.