Herbert Franke (1927, de): Lichtformen, 1953-55
"The use of computers in art leads to a compatibility of the instrumentarium - to a closer link between the different art forms which, owing to the different classical methods and instruments, have been separated and taught in different institutions. It is one of the decisive aspects of the new situation brought about by the introduction of the computer that there is no longer a reason for dividing art into different forms, be they classical or modern."READ FULL TEXT
In this 1987 text, originally published in Leonardo, scientist and artist Herbert Franke optimistically envisions the potential significance of computer art on perspective and interdisciplinary practice.
Instrumental reason is the objective form of action which treats objects as a means as opposed to ends. I guess one could say that it's a cognitive mode masking desire, which is fundamentally destructive (desire has an object, then when desire is realized in action, the object of desire is "used up," materially or otherwise).
Adorno, Horkheimer, the Frankfurt School, etc., I think it was, set up the category or at least put a new name on an old notion. They saw instrumental reason as the dominant form of Reason within modern capitalist society, leading to the destruction of Nature, the rise of Fascism and bureaucratic capitalism, the reduction of human beings to objects of manipulation, from which only Art offered a way out. Habermas was the main proponent of Communicative Reason as a fundamental form of social action counterposed to instrumental reason.
But it seems that several older religious texts, like the Book of Genesis or the Rg Veda set up this dichotomy of man/nature: the world and its creatures as *for* man ... ? Maybe that was a fantasy of ancient peoples that lived in a harsh world of famine, disease, and violence -- a world that reminded them every day that it did not exist *for* them. Maybe, conversely, our current fantasies of environmentalism, social liberalism, or postmodernism are our fantasies of the world/collective existing for no one when it seems that the world is increasingly defined/inscribed/instrumentalized by the same few informationally and technologically dominant indiduals ...?
I don't know.