B. F. Skinner was already a well known psychologist - and by that time controversial for defending a stricly behavioristic position - when he produced the address On the Future of Art: “Creating the Creative Artist” in the Guggenheim Museum in March 25 1969.
Both the transcript and the audio are available and they document the importance given to psychologists and psychological theories in reflections about creativity in artistic contexts and art institutions, as well as how challenging (and in some ways illuminating) a strictly behavioural perspective on how to create producers of art (artists, or people who behave as artists) and art consumers (publics) that adequatly reinforce (themselves and) each other can be. Skinner approaches the issue technically, as a practical problem that requires manipulating behaviours and consequences, and designing humans and a culture in order to build a world that is desired, imagined as possible, using tools and technologies that can be expected to produce it. The goodness of its ends demands it. Creativity or something else.
If we could engineer humans, which humans would we engineer? Can we see the violence that is present in what we produce and in what we supress?
PF