Softspace From A Representation of Form To A Simul... - (Cybernetic Anything... )
Softspace From A Representation of Form To A Simul... - (Cybernetic Anything... )
Softspace From A Representation of Form To A Simul... - (Cybernetic Anything... )
Cybernetic anything...
Marcelyn Gow (servo)
[W]hat is also ultimately disturbing and fascinating about the whole cybernation scene
when you get down to its nitty gritty, is precisely that it isn’t ‘neutral’ and safe, but
that it constantly poses threatening opportunities that invite us to do some basic hu-
man thinking, and not make culturally automated yes/no binary responses.1
– Reyner Banham
From an architectural perspective, the work of the Art and Technology practices, notable for their
integration of cybernetic principles, electronics, and computational technology into artistic prac-
tice during the 1960s, is informative for a broader understanding of the cultural role that technol-
ogy played in the shift from a mechanized to a mediatized society and the ramifications this has
for contemporary obsessions with responsivity in architectural practice and discourse. The ‘proto-
interactive’ environments that emerged from this art and technology nexus operated in many
instances as performing media rather than iconic representations of technological processes.
Copyright © 2007. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Low-definition effects
Dynamic systems were the order of the day in London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in August
of 1968. The seminal exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts had just
opened. Curated by Jasia Reichardt, it was one of the first exhibitions to bring together an exten-
sive résumé of developments in computational technology and electronically motivated projects
in the context of an art venue. It included a myriad of contributions from such diverse disciplines
as music, engineering, computer science, medicine, and philosophy, and was instrumental in
establishing the category of ‘cybernetic art’.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
acted as a kind of educational section with demonstra- debate at the time, and to contemporary architectural
tions of various applications of computers and informa- discourse, as it strove to generate a relational environ-
tion on the development and history of cybernetics. The ment through connections between a series of objects, as
Machines and Environments section, which fell into the opposed to reifying objects in and of themselves as con-
second category, included the work of Wen-Ying Tsai in tent. The tendency for objects to elude their materiality
collaboration with Frank Turner, one of a then emerg- or corporeality through literal motion was characteristic
ing category of engineer/artist practices. of the majority of kinetic projects but Cybernetic Sculp-
Their aptly titled Cybernetic Sculpture combined ture was also responsive. The piece absorbed inputs from
the low-inertia qualities of oscillating servomotors with external stimuli in the environment and was affected
high-frequency strobe lighting to produce an ‘electroni- by them, changing the environment in turn through
cally activated environment’ in which a cluster of vibrat- the effects that it generated. This system of inputs and
ing steel rods traced luminous patterns that ranged from outputs acted as a self-regulating phenomenon that
linear bands to fluid sinusoidal curves.3 The individual incorporated feedback into its logic of development
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
and adaptation. This phenomenon of self-regulation is missed opportunity in the exhibition. This shortcoming
tied to the cybernetic theories of Norbert Wiener who is, in all probability, tied to the failure of many of the
defined it in the following terms: exhibited devices to generate spatial effects that would
The control of a machine on the basis of its actual have the potency to subsume their conventional roles in
performance rather than its expected performance the context of industrial production, their ‘proscribed ap-
is known as feedback, and involves sensory mem- plications’. The devices in Cybernetic Serendipity were
bers which are actuated by motor members and largely ‘on display’, calling attention to themselves as
perform the function of tell-tales or monitors – that machines rather than eroding their conventional identi-
is, of elements which indicate a performance.4 ties through the production of more extensive spatial and
Cybernetic Sculpture connected physical presence, sound environmental qualities. Tsai and Turner’s contribution
emission, and vibration and light frequencies, enabling was one of the few to approach the territory where the
these variables to produce an environment that was not machine itself was secondary to the effects it generated.
in stasis and to generate low-definition effects of oscil- The machine in a sense became ambient.
lating matter. Cybernetic Serendipity was hailed in the popular
press as a nearly undisputed success. The event’s detrac-
When the machine becomes ambient… tors were few in number, but notably they included
Outlining some of the discursive dilemmas of Art and Reyner Banham, whose skeptical review appeared in the
Technology practices of the 1960s, Edward Shanken, in journal New Society shortly after the show had opened.
his dissertation ‘Art in the Information Age: Cybernetics, Banham critiqued the array of ‘electronic gismology’
Copyright © 2007. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Software, Telematics, and the Conceptual Contributions assembled in Nash House for a lack of artistic concepts:
of Art and Technology to Art History and Theory’, pro- cybernation is all too often being used as a front
poses that there have historically been three approaches ... The general lack of aesthetic originality or cre-
to Art and Technology: the ativity that paralyses so much of the show is neatly
aesthetic examination of the visual forms of sci- (and inadvertently) underlined by a statement on
ence and technology, the application of science and the wall in the cybernetic music section which says
technology in order to create visual forms, and the (and I quote verbatim) where ideas are relevant
use of scientific concepts and technological media to the development of computer-generated music,
both to question their proscribed applications and material is included which antedates cybernetic
to create new aesthetic models.5 music. That just about sums it up; most of the ideas
Cybernetic Sculpture exemplifies the last approach around antedate cybernetic anything.6
– creating a more nuanced form of performance or It is revealing that Banham’s critique centers on what
responsiveness, which seems to have otherwise been a he refers to as the ‘lack of ideas’ that characterized the
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
arena’s loudspeakers. Banham’s skepticism regarding seum of Art (LACMA) between 1966 and 1970, which
Cybernetic Serendipity permeates his closing remarks in placed artists in close collaboration with industrial
the article, where he asserts that there can be no binary firms – the appropriation of high-end technology for
response to technology: technology is multifaceted and artistic ends was not always possible without the inter-
nuanced. His critique centers on the failure of the artists vention of a cultural institution. The absorption of these
to address the complex nature of the medium. A more technologies was due not only to reduced costs and
considered approach to technological performance increased availability but perhaps more significantly to
would possibly have produced the ‘new aesthetic mod- a shift in attitudes toward the production of ‘high art’,
els’ to which Shanken alludes. which made the precision and efficiency of industrial
The integration of electronic and digital media into processes attractive.
a popular cultural context addressed by exhibitions Art and Technology projects, among them earlier
like Cybernetic Serendipity; the Software, Information events like the EAT organization’s 9 Evenings: Theater
Technology show at the Jewish Museum in New York in and Engineering from 1966, usually took a literal
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
was required in the production as well as in the recep- under way with his Art and Technology program, at-
tion of the work. The viewer’s participation, advertently titudes towards the role of technology in artistic practice
or inadvertently, was often used as a trigger to motivate were becoming increasingly polarized. In contrast to the
these kinetic pieces: staging connections between the proponents of technological art like Reichardt, Tuch-
motion of bodies and the oscillation of objects, for man, and the EAT organization, the shared interests of
instance. These projects relied heavily on technologi- hi-tech corporate sponsors and the US defense industry
cal processes to act as transducers between the inputs had generated substantial skepticism in other sectors
and outputs that they connected, causing detractors to of the art world regarding the use of new technologies
dismiss the work as simply reifying the technological in art. It is significant that the alliance between art
apparatus. and technology was promoted through these corporate
sponsors and given public exposure by governmental
institutions like the United States Information Agency,
who managed the US pavilion for the Osaka World Expo
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
– Mud-Muse, 1968–1971.
Art © Robert Rauschenberg /
Licensed by VAGA, New York,
NY. Photo: Moderna Museet,
Stockholm.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
Low-definition effects on hi-tech time ment’.16 McLuhan’s understanding of media as ‘any and
If we look at Cybernetic Sculpture and Mud-Muse as me- all technological extensions of body and mind’ suggests
dia, their decorporealizing effects align with McLuhan’s that electronic media are inseparable from the people
description of low-resolution or ‘cool’ media like TV, who engage with them. In low-definition technology,
which encourage increased involvement on the part of these ‘proto-interactive’ environments can be understood
the viewer who has to work to fill in the gaps that are as performing media rather than iconic representations
not presented.14 In Cybernetic Sculpture the substance of technological processes. Cybernetic Sculpture and
of the piece itself ultimately dissolved into a barrage Mud-Muse performed as ambient machines – antici-
of pure media, turned into electrostatic by the pulsat- pating, perhaps, contemporary ideas of architectural
ing strobe, implicating its viewers in real time through operating systems in which hardware is subsumed by
connections between sounds they emitted and emergent the atmospheric effects of software, and materiality de-
light patterns that issued from the piece. The substance instantiates itself into responsive networks.
of the hardware was evacuated, creating an overriding
‘mosaic mesh’, demanding the viewer’s involvement
and subsuming content. In Mud-Muse, the audience
was also implicated in a feedback loop in which gaps
between observer influence and spatial effects were
intended. In Rauschenberg’s words:
Mud-Muse starts from sound. An impulse is turned
Copyright © 2007. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.
Lally, Sean, and Young, Jessica, eds. <i>Softspace : From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space</i>. Independence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Accessed
April 26, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Created from rmit on 2024-04-26 14:22:40.