A wave of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) reached Seattle in 1970 and I rode it in and was I was pummeled. Welcome to a quick history of Northwest art and technology. At the UW, where I was a professor of art, we had enlightened engineers in the instructional media service. Without preconceptions about video art and because of the engineers’ inquisitive nature, my students benefited.

The 60s New York-style EAT proved, Yes, artists can collaborate with engineers in art-making, giving insights and interest in transferable skills. Students learned team-building from experiments in art and technology and found it more interesting than building portfolios.

We knew the happenings in the Big Apple and were envious of NY art stars’ support; however, the graduates saw that Seattle’s techno-economy was poised for takeoff. Technology startups were popping up. Printmaking students at the UW and Cornish experimented with video art and computer graphics. It helped that an old-school adviser didn’t give a damn if students wanted to blend ceramics, video, and printmaking and signed their permission slips. Unwittingly a made the arts school an EAT incubator.

Students in art, music and dance improvised with video, poetry, and some nudity. Musicians played instruments under water and mashed soundtracks. “Time has form,” declared one artist in a performance. Out-of-town experts took note, and suggested that Seattle might become a destination for techno-artists. If they invent tech-art in multimedia, make a splash, they could make a living and a new art movement.

But Seattle’s young artists were naive about getting jobs in hi-tech, marketing tech-based art in the commercial galleries, and the art museums didn’t care at all. UW students had an in with the Henry Gallery where they could exhibit the first blended tech-art in prints and installations. After graduation, they created an alternative show space on Capitol Hill and incubator in Seattle’s Pioneer Square that helped ensure their careers.

We had made our brand of EAT: Old-time printing is the root of high tech, so artists commingle performance art, electronic art with printmaking. Cafeteria-style EAT was closeted for ten years after the UW printmaking program—which had been the source—was eliminated. Our fifteen-year skunk works experiment ended in 1985. The short, exciting history of Seattle’s Big EAT was presumed dead and buried.

What I observed in our Big EAT was that, historically, printing is the root not only of high technology but also art as we came to know it through media. Old time, hand-printed art morphed into engines and texture maps of video games, virtual reality and CGI and bared a kinship with live performance and music.

We rode the art and technology in, but some of us were left on the beach. Even though the Big EAT was an interesting failure, our Big EAT may rise again, bigger and better. If innovation is important in leading technology companies, then persistent creative art students with techno-art in their experience will find work as industrial-grade artists and designers. I am putting out the word for an arts, culture and technology corridor and calling for help from the region’s high tech and educators’ interest groups to help create a sustainable art and technology cultural district in Seattle’s Uptown neighborhood, built a printmaking platform as the ancestor of EAT.