art computer

H I S T O R I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E

The Dilemma of Media Art:Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London

Rainer Usselmann

The coming together of digital communicationstechnology and art in the second half of the 20th century hasattracted a considerable amount of debate. Throughout theearly years of what is now called media art, a sense of great op-timism about the possibilities of the new medium prevailed.As recently as 1997, during the halcyon years of the technol-ogy boom, a sense of genuine excitement was palpable amongtheorists and practitioners. Hans-Peter Schwarz, one of thefounding directors of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien-technologie (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany), described media artas an “explosive charge” at the gates of traditional artistic es-tablishments [1].

A few years later, in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble,Schwarz’s explosive charge turns out to be a dud. The art es-tablishment has not been blown to pieces; on the contrary, ifanything, the enthusiasm for all things digital has suffered aconsiderable setback. But perhaps the time has come to de-bate the evolution of computer art with a greater sense of his-torical and critical distance. It is my intention to contribute tothis debate with a review, 35 years after the event, of “Cyber-netic Serendipity—The Computer and the Arts,” an early land-mark exhibition of computer art at the ICA in London. Oftenregarded as a key event in the institutionalization of media art,Cybernetic Serendipity has been the subject of a growing num-ber of papers [2], to which I would like to add a critique of

the concept, realization and mediareception of this important show.By identifying some opportunitiesmissed in the wake of this exhibi-tion, I want to raise a number of keyissues concerning media art in gen-eral.

HAPPY ACCIDENTSOne year after the Summer of Loveand at a time of considerable polit-ical unrest throughout the United States and Europe, Cyber-netic Serendipity opened at the Institute of Contemporary Artin London on 2 August 1968 (Fig. 1). Under the curatorshipof Jasia Reichardt, then associate director of the institute, theexhibition brought together work from a total of “130 con-tributors, of whom 43 were composers, artists and poets, and87 . . . engineers, doctors, computer scientists and philoso-phers” [3]. One of the ICA’s most successful projects, Cyber-netic Serendipity drew an audience of between 45,000 and60,000 [4]. According to Reichardt, the exhibition “had visi-tors of all ages, all types, all nationalities, all classes” [5]. Theexhibition closed on 30 October 1968.

The title of the exhibition suggested its intent: to makechance discoveries in the course of using cybernetic devices,or, as the Daily Mirror put it at the time, to use computers “tofind unexpected joys in life and art” [6]. It was structured intothree main areas; the first was dedicated to computer-

© 2003 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 36, No. 5, pp. 389–396, 2003 389

A B S T R A C T

One year after the 1967Summer of Love and at a timeof considerable political unrestthroughout the United Statesand Europe, CyberneticSerendipity—The Computer andthe Arts opened at the Instituteof Contemporary Art in Londonto much critical and popularacclaim. This paper outlines theconceptual framework of thisseminal exhibition and looks atsome of the accompanyingpress reception in order toaddress a key question: howmedia art deals with its ownhistoricity and the underlyingsocioeconomic forces thatrender it possible. Presented 35years ago and still paradigmaticfor the ever-shifting boundariesbetween art, technology,commerce and entertainment,Cybernetic Serendipity epito-mizes some of the complicateddynamics that delineate thegamut of media art today.

Rainer Usselmann (art historian), 5 Normandy Street, Alton, Hampshire GU34 1DD, U.K.E-mail: <[email protected]>.

Fig. 1. “Cybernetic Serendipity,”front of exhibition invitation byFranciszka Themerson. (© Cyber-netic Serendipity)

Angelia Fell

generated graphics, film, music and po-etry (see Figs 2–4). The second sectionprovided a showcase for cybernetic de-vices, such as interactive installations, ro-bots and painting machines. The thirdarea was a “learning zone,” which dealtwith the history of cybernetics and thedemonstration of uses for computers(see Fig. 5). The list of contributingartists included Bruce Lacey, Wen YingTsai, James Seawright, Nam June Paik,Jean Tinguely, John Cage and LowellNesbitt, who exhibited a series of opaque,

monochrome paintings of IBM comput-ers. Presentations by General Motors andBoeing concluded the exhibition.

The level of logistic complexity in-volved in organizing, mounting andmaintaining the show was unprece-dented. Instead of handling traditionalartifacts, the administrators and curatorsat the ICA found themselves in charge ofextremely fragile computer soft- andhardware, which proved difficult to setup and run. Interactive systems in neigh-boring exhibits interfered with one an-

other, and sound insulation proved amajor problem. Compared with those oftraditional projects, the difficulties in-volved in keeping the exhibition in work-ing order were greater by several ordersof magnitude. Owing to the unprece-dented cost involved in mounting Cy-bernetic Serendipity, the need forcorporate involvement was considerable,possibly stifling a more critical approach.After some initial reluctance on the partof industry, funding, benefit in kind andparticipation was secured, most signifi-cantly from IBM, Boeing, General Mo-tors, Westinghouse, Calcomp, BellTelephone Labs and the U.S. Air Forceresearch labs. All in all, the resoundingsuccess of the exhibition seemed to vin-dicate the project.

The media reception of CyberneticSerendipity was on the whole extremelyfavorable. In a review symptomatic ofmuch press coverage, the Evening Stan-dard enthused: “Where in London couldyou take a hippy, a computer program-mer, a ten-year-old schoolboy and guar-antee that each would be perfectly happyfor an hour without you having to lift afinger to entertain them?” [7] TheGuardian agreed that it “lured into NashHouse people who would never havedreamed of attending an ICA exhibitionbefore” [8]. Cybernetic Serendipitypromised fun for the whole family, notjust an elite of art connoisseurs. “Chil-dren, scientists and the simply curiouscould spend fascinated hours in thisworld of computer art” [9]. The press cel-ebrated the exhibition as an event that“guaranteed to fascinate anyone fromtoddling age to the grave” [10]. Even thewriter in The Lady felt compelled to urgethat “one must go to the present exhibi-tion at the INSTITUTE OF CONTEM-PORARY ARTS . . . not to understand inthe least what is going on but to experi-ence that particular tingle which is in-herent in an act of threshold-crossing”[11]. Art critic Jonathan Benthall de-clared that Cybernetic Serendipity wouldbe remembered as a “landmark,” notleast due to its “breeziness and catholic-ity” [12]. Others agreed: “For breakingnew ground, revealing new fields of ex-periment, seminal importance, sheerhard work and enormous organization,the exhibition Cybernetic Serendip-ity . . . is arguably the most important ex-hibition in the world at the moment”[13]. According to Brent McGregor, “thestatus of the event was such that UmbertoEco came from Italy to view its wonders”[14].

Aside from the almost unanimous con-sensus that Cybernetic Serendipity was

390 Usselmann, The Dilemma of Media Art

Fig. 2. Andrew Rawlinson, computer poetry, 1968. (© Andrew Rawlinson. Photo © Cyber-netic Serendipity.)

worth seeing, two recurring themes canbe identified in the reception and pre-sentation of the exhibition.

THE END OF ART?Mario Amaya, in the Financial Times,pondered: “I am left with the sneakingsuspicion that much of this exhibitionhas little to do with art as such. In fact,the show seems to be telling us moreabout what art is not, rather than what itcould be” [15]. More to the point,Michael Shepard in the Sunday Telegraphfound that “this exhibition . . . serves toshow up . . . a desolation to be seen in artgenerally—that we haven’t the faintestidea these days what art is for or about”[16]. Robert Melville from the New States-man went even further: “The winkinglights, the flickering television screensand the squawks from the music ma-chines are signaling the end of abstractart; when machines can do it, it will notbe worth doing” [17]. According toLeslie Stack, the ICA’s information offi-cer, “people will not know what has beencreated by the scientist and what comesfrom artists” [18]. Reichardt related anexperiment, carried out under the aus-pices of Michael Noll at the Bell Tele-phone Laboratories, in which a sampleaudience attempted to distinguish a gen-

uine Mondrian painting from a com-puter fake of a Mondrian painting: “59%of the people who were shown both theMondrian and one of the computer ver-sions preferred the latter, 28% identifiedthe computer picture correctly, and 72%thought that the Mondrian was done bycomputer” [19].

COMPUTERS ARE FUN!Lingering doubts about the merits of“artistic” experiments with computerhard- and software aside, many observersemphasized the sheer fun that could behad by putting art and science together.Nigel Gosling remarked that “this exhi-bition . . . could have been mounted withequal validity in the Science Museum, anddiscussed with equal . . . understandingby a science correspondent” [20].

The ICA’s Leslie Stack declared:

We want people to lose their fear of com-puters by playing with them and askingthem simple questions. . . . So many peo-ple are afraid that computers will takeover, but in this show they will see thesemachines will only do what we want themto. . . . Happy accidents . . . can happenbetween art and technology [21].

The Daily Mirror duly delivered a pop-ulist note: “Computers don’t bite, for itis a joyous exhibition” [22]. Mario Amayaseemed to capture the atmosphere of Cy-bernetic Serendipity, describing it as “averitable Luna Park of sideshows, displaybooths, and fun-houses, inviting visitorsto touch, push buttons, talk or sing intomicrophones and television screens, or

listen to speakers and earphones issuingsounds and information” [23]. TheEvening Standard characterized the exhi-bition as “a kind of homage to electron-ics, with the emphasis on fun rather thanart or technical achievement” [24]. Kath-arine Hadley commented that “if the exhibition’s artistic achievement is con-troversial, for the sheer enjoyment ofplaying with some of 1968’s most inge-nious computer toys, Cybernetic Seren-dipity is unrivalled” [25]. MichaelShepard of the Sunday Telegraph described“the most sophisticated amusement ar-cade you could hope to find around, anintellectual funfair without parallel” [26],while John Russel from the Sunday Timessaw “computers at playtime” [27].

DISSENTING VOICESOverall, the praise for Reichardt’s un-dertaking seems almost unanimous andthe near absence of critical debateequally striking. Could it be that the ICA’s“happy accidents” flourished so well be-cause they were staged in an atmosphereof breathtaking naïveté? Only a few lonevoices seem to acknowledge the more se-rious and inevitably unhappy accidentsthat litter the history of cybernetics. “Donot be fooled,” cautioned MichaelMcNay of the Guardian in a rare criticalreview of the exhibition: “NorbertWiener . . . knew better. He publishedthe first treatise on the new science notvery long after the holocausts of Hi-roshima and Nagasaki, yet he felt able topredict for cybernetics a destiny as fate-

Usselmann, The Dilemma of Media Art 391

Fig. 3. Plotter print-out. Computer graphicsby Peter Milojevic, McGill University, Mon-treal. Milojevic created his graphics programin Fortran on an IBM 7044, which was con-nected to a Calcomp 565 plotter. (© PeterMilojevic. While every effort has been madeto locate the copyright holder for permissionto use this image, we have been unable to doso. Photo © Cybernetic Serendipity.)

Fig. 4. Installation view. To the left, Sidebands by Hugh Riddle and Anthony Pritchett, 1968.These graphic forms are stills from a kinetic sequence using oscillographic techniques, whichare used for frequency measurement. The system on display was originally developed togenerate graphics for the television trailer of the BBC science-fiction series “Out of theUnknown.” (© Cybernetic Serendipity)

ful as for the atom” [28]. McNay correctlypointed out that “these words do not ap-pear in the promotional literature for theexhibition, but in their shadow the jokestake on a pallid look” [29]. The writer inNew Society put it more succinctly:

The conclusion is a rather sinister onefor those who believe that cybernation isnot a neutral development, but an in-strument of a growing technocratic au-thoritarianism, which deserves thecritical resistance and not the consolingfellowship of our artists. When we ignorethe total social context in which theywork, and begin to accept the after-hoursfun and games of IBM technicians as art,we are not all that far from admiring theaesthetic surface of thermonuclearmushroom clouds and ballistic missiles[30].

The fact that Cybernetic Serendipityenjoyed tremendous popularity in thelate summer of 1968 in London, while,in the words of its curator, “the same ven-ture in Paris would have needed policeprotection” does indeed raise some im-portant questions [31]. Critics mightargue that, in the United Kingdom, thesubversive momentum of 1968 never un-furled in the same way, with the sameforce, as it did in continental Europe orthe United States; that Britain’s pathetic“revolt” hardly left the campus of theLondon School of Economics. Still, at a time of heightened global politicalawareness, not least in the wake of theAmerican war in Vietnam, it seems ex-traordinary that the ICA did not deem itnecessary to make any statements otherthan that “computers can be used for

pleasure” [32]. Does this total lack of crit-ical engagement with the socioeconomicsphere point to a wider dilemma inmedia art?

TECHNOLOGY, ARTAND POLITICS: FROMNORBERT WIENER TO THEMILLENNIUM DOMEFar from being the first exhibition toshowcase art and technology in the post-war years, Cybernetic Serendipity wasone of many high-profile events stagedtowards the end of a first phase of inno-vation and experimentation. But perhapsmore successfully than any other exhibi-tion at the time, Cybernetic Serendipity,with naïve enthusiasm, managed to cap-ture a snapshot of art, entertainment, sci-ence and politics, all mixed up in acurious amalgam that came to be knownas media art.

In the decades immediately afterWorld War II, an increasing curiosity andcompetence began to emerge amongartists, focusing on technology as a newmeans to facilitate exploration of and in-teractions with the physical environment.An interest in the use of industrial mate-rials, chemical processes and state-of-the-art engineering practices characterizesmany artistic experiments in the 1950sand 1960s. In the wake of these explo-rations, artists appropriated modern materials, equipment and scientificknow-how, often in partnership with busi-ness corporations, research institutes,technicians and engineers. The utiliza-

tion of scientific know-how, however, didnot simply lead to a re-valorization of theart object and the materials that could bemade of it. On the contrary, the integra-tion of technology engendered a grow-ing interest that went beyond a strictlyobject-oriented approach toward prac-tices that focus on process, ideas and(inter-) actions. Concomitant with ex-periments in participation and interac-tion, with happenings, performances,land art and conceptual art, media art isoften regarded as a conclusion of the de-materialization of the art object [33].What better way to conceptualize the artobject than to program a machine in agrammar of pure electronic differences[34], zeroes and ones?

Back in the 1940s, Norbert Wiener’snew science of cybernetics evolved frommilitary experiments with feedback loops[35]. Wiener devised a tracking mecha-nism for anti-aircraft guns, feeding in-formation about the predicted flightpath of an enemy plane back into the sys-tem so that the gun could change its position accordingly. The whole con-traption, including the gunner, could bedefined as a goal-driven, dynamic systemthat responded to environmentalchanges in order to achieve predeter-mined objectives. The anti-aircraft gun-ner as part of an integrated, nervous—ifnot downright twitchy—system (Wiener’s“hunting” [36]), an early cyborg of sorts,constitutes a striking image for theemerging theory of cybernetics (see Fig. 6 for an exhibit that provided a pre-scient connection with cybernetics in thecase of “Joey”).

Owing to its broad remit, cyberneticthinking lent itself to an extremely widerange of interdisciplinary practices andscientific discourses. Cybernetics prom-ised to constitute nothing less than an in-tegrative lingua franca, which biologistsand mathematicians, economists and an-thropologists were invited to take up anduse [37]. By the mid-1950s, artists andcomposers also began to explore and en-gage with cybernetic thinking. Unlikemechanical technology, however, elec-tronic hardware could only be obtainedand manipulated in collaboration withindustrial corporations. Engineers,whose help became indispensable, beganto develop an interest in the work ofartists.

When E.A.T. (Experiments in Art andTechnology) formed in 1967, it wasfounded on the strong belief “that an in-dustrially sponsored, effective workingrelationship between artists and engi-neers will lead to new possibilities whichwill benefit society as a whole” [38]. In-


Fig. 5. “Highlights of the History and Technology of IBM Computers from 1890 to the Pres-ent.” The display was produced by IBM for an exhibition entitled “History and Technologyof Computers,” which was held at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., in 1967.The IBM section won the gold medal as the most outstanding exhibit of that year at the 1967International Display World Competition. (© IBM/Cybernetic Serendipity)

dicative of the pitfalls that lie ahead whenart, technology and entertainment aremarried under industry patronage, theE.A.T. project climaxed with the com-mission to build the Pepsi-Cola Pavilionat the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair. Literallyan inflatable edifice of smoke and mir-rors, E.A.T.’s dome merged the psyche-delic with the corporate, resulting in anexperience akin to imagining RichardWagner on acid. Gene Youngblood’s callfor a “practical utopianism” by means of“perpetual fog banks and krypton laserrainbow light showers” [39] adds an al-most tragicomic footnote.

In the British art scene, it was perhapsone individual, more than any others,who contributed to the spread of cyber-netic thinking. In a letter to the editor ofStudio International published in July1968, Roy Ascott claimed precedence “asthe artist responsible for first introduc-ing cybernetic theory into art educationin this country (Ealing 1961) and for hav-ing disseminated the concept of a cyber-netic vision in art through various art andscientific journals in recent years” [40].Ascott’s Groundcourse, a unique pro-gram of study at Ealing School of Art(1961–1964) and later at Ipswich CivicCollege (1964–1967), incorporated in-novative methods, such as behavioral psychology, chance operations and in-teractive collaborations. Groups of sixstudents functioned as integrated unitsof self-regulation, who had to react to en-vironmental stimuli according to prede-termined parameters. Ascott’s 1964 show“Diagram Boxes and Analogue Struc-tures,” at the Molton Gallery in London,presented “a cybernetic model of art asan interactive system” [41]. For Ascott,the participatory nature of his art sug-gested a model in which environment,artist and audience were all part of thesame system. Tellingly, however, Ascott’sinnovative practice was not consideredsuitable for Cybernetic Serendipity.

Nonetheless, the exhibition’s pseudo-progressive message, wrapped up in afun-fair of blinking, hooting robots, hitupon an impressionable sociopoliticaland cultural environment. For the firsttime since the end of the war, Britain wasexperiencing a rapidly rising standard ofliving and the emergence of youth cul-ture. Labour’s election victory in 1964had put a modernization program at thetop of the political agenda, and theprime minister’s call for a technologicalutopia is unforgotten. Outlining his vi-sion of a modern Britain, Harold Wilsondescribed a country “forged in the whiteheat of this revolution” where therewould be “no place for restrictive prac-

tices or for outdated methods on eitherside of industry” [42]. If Britain were toremain a player on the world stage, itwould have to embrace modern tech-nology, modern practices and modernthinking.

Against this backdrop, CyberneticSerendipity fitted in extremely well, as itoffered a lighthearted view of the mod-ern world without raising too many (ifany) objections or stirring fears. Ratherthan focus on the technocratic, threat-ening or plainly vacuous elements in Wil-son’s vision, the exhibition mergedscience and technology with great enter-tainment and a dash of art. Staged whencomputers consisted of large, centralizedmainframes guarded by a caste of sternprogrammers, Cybernetic Serendipitysucceeded in injecting an overdue ele-ment of fun into the information-technology sector. Perhaps for the firsttime, it could be considered “cool” to beinvolved with computers. Especially forthe young and impressionable, Cyber-netic Serendipity provided a sense of ex-citement, much needed if Britain wasgoing to compete successfully in the newage of digital computing.

According to Roger Beard in a 1968issue of Technical Education & IndustrialTraining, the National Computing Cen-tre (NCC), a government agency set up

in 1965 to encourage the growth of com-puter usage in the U.K., “might well takea leaf from the ICA’s book” [43]. Beardattested to a widespread lack of “com-puter appreciation” in society and en-dorsed the ICA exhibition as “requiredviewing,” since it achieved “in an instant”what the unwieldy, technocratic NCCcould only dream of: a “re-definition”without which it was “undoubted that thecomputer will remain in an exclu-sive . . . field which the bulk of the nextgeneration will no more understand thanwe do” [44]. Judging from the public reception of the exhibition, CyberneticSerendipity certainly succeeded in increasing “computer appreciation.”More interestingly, however, it did so by transforming the austere “modernistcomputational aesthetic” [45], with itsmainframes and technician program-mers, into a new kind of cool, entertain-ing and decidedly postmodern spectacle.

Over 30 years on, Britain’s trendymedia and IT industries were once againat the heart of government drives to pro-mote an image of cutting-edge art andtechnology as national assets. Tony Blair’s“Cool Britannia” project and a plethoraof new art and technology initiatives putNew Labour’s new millennium intosharp relief. From dotcom start-upsaround London’s Hoxton Square to the


Fig. 6. The Mechanical Boy,drawing by Joey. In 1959, BrunoBettelheim published an ac-count of “Joey,” a boy whothought of himself as a robot.Joey constructed machines in hisbedroom and attempted toconnect himself with imaginarywires to power outlets in orderto perform basic bodily func-tions. Bettelheim argued thatJoey’s autism was caused by hisunloving parents. Joey’s drawingshows a man whose body isformed by electrical wires. (©“Joey.” While every effort hasbeen made to locate the copy-right holder for permission touse this image, we have beenunable to do so. Photo © Cyber-netic Serendipity.)

newly built Wellcome Wing of the Sci-ence Museum, the alliance between com-puters and art was portrayed once againas integral to the notion of a modern na-tion with a bright and prosperous future.

New Labour’s Millennium Dome proj-ect, however, came to epitomize the fal-lacy of “irrational exuberance” [46] andempty political rhetoric, a bubble thatburst soon after the millennium fire-works had gone off. Packaged as a family-friendly exhibition of digital wizardryand sponsored by corporate business, theDome project failed to recoup its costand remains, to this day, a liability to thepublic purse. The magic formula thatcombined, in one big spectacle, science,entertainment, art and politics seemedto have lost its pulling power. However,in science museums, educational estab-lishments and media art institutionsaround the world the spirit of CyberneticSerendipity lives on. Interactive themeparks and digital teaching aids have be-come standard fare, except that, afterover two decades of exposure to digitalconsumer products, the visiting public isperhaps less impressionable. If you owna PlayStation 2, why get excited about aninteractive museum display unless youget blown away by more bang for yourbuck?

CYBERNETIC SERENDIPITY,SUPERVENING SOCIALNECESSITY AND DATABASEPOLITICSContrary to the assumptions made in Cy-bernetic Serendipity, science and tech-nology are not self-sufficient, immunefrom outside influences, political pres-sures and economic interests. On thecontrary, technological developmentsare symptomatic in character, and the so-cioeconomic conditions that drive scien-tific progress must be understood iftechnology is to be brought to bearwithin artistic practice.

Why is it, for instance, that CharlesBabbage’s proposals for an analytical en-gine in 1833 were only realized some 100years later in Vannevar Bush’s Differen-tial Analyzer? According to Brian Win-ston, technology is far more implicatedin the social sphere than is usually ac-knowledged. He proposes a model thatillustrates his point:

In this model, the “accelerator” is the su-pervening social necessity transformingthe prototype into an “invention” andpushing the invention out into theworld—causing its diffusion. But there isalso a “brake”: this operates as a thirdtransformation, wherein general social

constraints coalesce to limit the poten-tial of the device radically to disrupt pre-existing social formations. I will refer tothis particular “concentration” of deter-mining social factors as the “law” of thesuppression of radical potential [47].

The success of an invention or a pro-totype, according to Winston, dependsupon its perceived threat to institutionalpolitics and associated business interestson the one hand and its perceived bene-fit on the other. Only if an unequivocalsupervening social necessity becomes ap-parent can the invention enter into thephase of diffusion. Powerful factors,however, jeopardize the success and dis-semination of the invention for sometime. Winston argues: “Understandingthe interaction of the positive effects ofsupervening necessity and the brake ofthe ‘law’ of the suppression of radical po-tential is crucial to a proper overview ofhow telecommunications technologiesdevelop” [48].

Babbage’s analytical engine could nothave been built in 1833, due to the ab-sence of a supervening social necessity.Only with the increasing complexity ofthe American population census in thelate 19th century and the emergence ofa modern business culture could an im-petus emerge. Yet it had to come to the“firing table crisis” in the United Statesand the ENIGMA blackouts in Britainduring World War II for Winston’s “law”of the suppression of radical potential tobe crushed by emerging supervening so-cial necessity [49]. The need for militaryprocessing power had become over-whelming. Towards the end of World War II, the first electronic computerswere operational, ready to be fully de-ployed in the nuclear arms race of theCold War. The military-industrial com-plex had become the main driving forcein the development of computer science.Michael De Landa warns that

we may easily dismiss the role that themilitary played, arguing that without theintensification and concentration of ef-fort brought about by the war, the com-puter would have developed on its own,perhaps at a slower pace. And I agree thatthis is correct. On the other hand, manyof the uses to which computers were putafter the war illustrate the other side ofthe story: a direct participation of mili-tary institutions in the development oftechnology, a participation which actu-ally shaped this technology in the direc-tion of uniformization, routinization andconcentration of control [50].

While it may be simplistic to maintainthat computer-scientific activity tookplace exclusively for and within the mil-itary sector, Arthur L. Norberg and JudyE. O’Neill point out that throughout the

Cold War a strong “partnership” was en-couraged between the military and theacademic community [51]. The maindriving force for military-technologicaldevelopments was the Advanced Re-search Projects Agency (ARPA), whichwas founded in the aftermath of the Sput-nik shock of 1957:

When the space program acceler-ated . . . in 1957, digital computers be-came an integral part of that activity aswell. The more sophisticated the variousmilitary systems became, the greater thedemands placed on their computing el-ements [52].

Responsible for coordinating the aca-demic research effort in electronics andengineering was ARPA’s InformationProcessing Techniques Office (IPTO).According to Norberg and O’Neill, threemajor branches in computer science ben-efited from the massive injection of gov-ernment money through the IPTO”:computer graphics—“the fundamentalconcepts behind the remarkable com-puter graphic images we encounter everyday emerged primarily from researchprojects funded by the IPTO’; artificialintelligence—“IPTO . . . was the largestfunder of AI in the world for at least a de-cade and a half after 1962—providing anamount far greater than the total pro-vided by all other groups”; and network-ing—”It is well to remember that thebasis for this program to connect us tothe ‘Information Superhighway’ is onlythe latest chapter in the story of inven-tion, development, and implementationof networking, a technology begun byIPTO” [53].

Here, then, we have the “happy” in-gredients of Cybernetic Serendipity’s suc-cess: funny-sounding robots, interactivecomputer graphics, simulators and sys-tems that react to the environment; in aword, a re-packaged and sanitized arse-nal of high technology, straight from thelaboratories of the American military-industrial complex. And not a singlemention of the real driving force behindcomputer technology of the 1940s, 1950sand 1960s can be found in the exhibitioncatalogue or in most of the accompany-ing press coverage: the demands of theU.S. war economy. Concerning com-puter technology’s supervening socialnecessity of the late 1960s, CyberneticSerendipity excelled only in its conspic-uous silence (see Fig. 5). This glaringomission is particularly poignant at atime of heightened global tensions, warin the Far East and political unrest inmost major Western capitals. CyberneticSerendipity, without doubt, failed to ad-dress what needed addressing; it did not


balance the potential for entertainmentwith the need for critical reflection. Itcreated a huge amount of enthusiasmabout technology without revealing itshidden agenda or indeed its true poten-tial.

Clearly, an analysis of the aesthetics ofmedia art must recognize and acknowl-edge some sort of critical framework; itmust investigate how, if at all, art andtechnology can engage with the super-vening social necessity of its time withoutplaying into the hands of those whoseeconomic interests bring about the evo-lution of technology in the first place. Anemergent medium founded on tech-nologies of modern warfare must prob-lematize issues that established artisticmedia need not take up. But if scientificprogress is predetermined by socioeco-nomic forces, as proposed by Brian Win-ston, where exactly does that leavemedia-artistic practice? Can media arthope to escape the gravitational pull ofthe techno-economic sphere?

Media art is implicated in the processof organizing and perpetuating techno-logical innovation and commercial dis-semination in a way that traditionalmedia such as painting and sculpture areclearly not. At the same time, however, itis ideally placed to put to use, disrupt orre-represent the streams of data that con-nect the economies of the informationage. In a regime of ubiquitous con-sumption of content, media art couldhelp augment criticality by subverting,disrupting and revealing the “total flow”of corporate data and by allowing con-nections and associations to be madewhere these are otherwise denied or ob-scured [54]. Media art could help re-cover and “augment” self-awareness andthe importance of point of view. Whencybernetic systems from electronic bank-ing to interactive doormats become ubiq-uitous, data emerges as the key currencyenabling the ebb and flow of informa-tion. Abstract and pristine in mathemat-ical structure, and traveling with thespeed of light through nodes and net-works, data must be re-represented forhuman consumption as a sensory stimu-lus, as image, sound, smell, touch or taste.Media art can problematize this processof re-representation; it can discuss howmeaning is constructed, how social real-ities are revealed and how subjectivity canbe undermined or re-affirmed. Sensorystimuli that re-translate bits of informa-tion back into human bandwidth do notneed to dumb down, immerse and pacifythe human recipient. Media art can re-cover “statistical representation as polit-ical performance” [55], it can introduce

database politics as the site for criticalpractice, operating from within an all-encompassing “information paradigm”[56]. At a time when the interface be-tween human and computer begins itsevolution into an alluring, multi-sensoryspectacle, not least thanks to willingmedia artists such as Youngblood, Cy-bernetic Serendipity does not address theneed for such practice. On the thresholdbetween modernist computing with itstowering stacks of punch-cards and therather more entertaining, corporate kindof immersive computing, the ICA exhi-bition presents art as the willing progen-itor of the latter.

CONCLUSIONTo be sure, the ICA exhibition repre-sents an early landmark in the evolutionof digital media. Paradigmatic for the in-stitutionalization and commercializationof media art over the last decades, Cy-bernetic Serendipity anticipated theblurring of boundaries between art, sci-ence, technology and entertainment, be-tween corporate interests and artisticintegrity. Exemplary for the appeal ofthe great promises made early in thecomputer age, Cybernetic Serendipityepitomizes the dilemma much of mediaart faces today: its complicated relation-ship with the socioeconomic environ-ment, the difficulty of engaging with itsown historicity and transcending meretechno-fetishism, and the all-too-familiarsense of a naïve, unbridled optimismwith its inevitable pitfalls and falsedawns.

If exhibitions must pull crowds, how-ever, Cybernetic Serendipity was a re-sounding success. Completely unlike thedour and self-referential hermeticism ofconceptual art in the late 1960s and early1970s, Cybernetic Serendipity pointedfar ahead to the more recent phenome-non of interactive scientific theme parksand popular blockbuster exhibitions.The exhibition generated a sense of ex-citement about technology, especiallyamongst a younger audience, to a degreethat can only be described as “unheardof” in the context of an arts institution.However, the widespread absence of crit-ical debate in the wake of this exhibitionrepresents a serious omission on the partof the organizers and points to a widerdilemma that media art needs to addressin order to be taken seriously.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Steven Johnstone and David Evansfor their suggestions and Jasia Reichardt for her in-valuable help and generosity.

References and Notes

1. Hans-Peter Schwarz, “Discourse 1: Media Muse-ums,” in Rebecca Picht and Birgit Stöckmann, eds.,Media Art History (New York: Prestel, 1997) p. 11.

2. P. Brown, “30 Years On: Remembering CyberneticSerendipity,” Outline, The CTIAD Journal 6 (Autumn1998) pp. 3–5; Mitchell Whitelaw, “1968/1998: Re-thinking a Systems Aesthetic,” ANAT (Australian Net-work for Art and Technology) (June 1998)<http://www.anat.org.au/archived/deepimmersion/diss/mwhitelaw.html>; Brent MacGregor, CyberneticSerendipity Revisited (Edinburgh, Scotland: EdinburghCollege of Art, 2002).

3. Jasia Reichardt, “‘Cybernetic Serendipity’— Get-ting Rid of Preconceptions,” Studio International 176,No. 905, 176–177 (November 1968).

4. The figures are somewhat contradictory. Jasia Reichardt counted “more than 60,000 visitors dur-ing the eleven weeks of the exhibition.” Reichardt[3] pp. 176–177. Michael Kustow, however, then di-rector of the ICA, in an interview with the Guardian,cited a much lower figure: “In eleven weeks 45,000saw it, it is now touring America, and with luck it willlose no more than £4,000.” In Terry Coleman, “Wildin the Mall: Terry Coleman on the ICA’s FinancialCrisis,” Guardian (5 December 1968).

5. Reichardt [3] pp. 176–177.

6. David Clemens, “Scene,” Daily Mirror (9 August1968).

7. “Fun by Computer,” Evening Standard (2 August1968).

8. “Happy and Unexpected Discovery Closing,”Guardian (19 October 1968).

9. Katharine Hadley, “Serendipity with Cybernetics,”Hampstead and Highgate News (9 August 1968).

10. Michael Shepherd, “Machine Mind,” Sunday Tele-graph (11 August 1968).

11. “In the Art Galleries,” The Lady (15 August 1968).

12. Jonathan Benthall, “Lucky Computers,” The Lis-tener (15 August 1968).

13. Shepherd [10].

14. MacGregor [2].

15. Mario Amaya, “Software in the Mall,” FinancialTimes (13 August 1968).

16. Shepherd [10].

17. Robert Melville, “Signalling the End,” New States-man (9 August 1968).

18. Leslie Stack quoted in Linda Talbot, “Meet theFriendly Robots,” Hampstead and Highgate Express (26July 1968).

19. Jasia Reichardt, “Computer Graphics—Com-puter Art,” in Jasia Reichardt, ed., Cybernetic Serendip-ity—The Computer and the Arts, exh. cat. (London:Studio International Special Issue, 1968) pp. 70–71.

20. Nigel Gosling, “Man in an Automated Wonder-land,” in Observer (4 August 1968).

21. Talbot [18].

22. David Clemens, “Scene,” Daily Mirror (9 August1968).

23. Amaya [15].

24. Evening Standard [7].

25. Hadley [9].

26. Shepherd [10].

27. John Russel, “The Art of the Computer,” SundayTimes (4 August 1968).

28. Michael McNay, “Blind Idiots Need Not Apply,”Guardian (2 August 1968).


29. McNay [28].

30. “Aesthetic Gadgetry,” New Society (8 August 1968).

31. Reichardt [3].

32. Talbot [18].

33. Jack Burnham, “Systems Esthetics,” Artforum 7,No. 1 (September 1968) p. 31.; Lucy R. Lippard, SixYears: The Dematerialization of the Art Object (New York:Praeger, 1973).

34. Roy Ascott, “Is There Love in the Telematic Em-brace?” Art Journal 49, No. 3 (1990) p. 241.

35. Norbert Wiener, “Introduction,” in NorbertWiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication inthe Animal and the Machine (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 1999; originally published 1948) pp. 11–12.

36. The term “hunting” is used in mechanical engi-neering to describe pathological oscillations betweentwo fixed points. The mechanism, due to its initialinertia, overshoots the target coordinates, but receives instant feedback resulting in an over-correction in the opposite direction and so forth.Wiener and Rosenblueth saw a connection betweenthis and other mechanical phenomena and symp-toms in patients with neurophysiological damage.For an early appraisal of these ideas, see ArturoRosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow,“Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,” in Philosophy ofScience 10 (1943) pp. 18–24.

37. Steve J. Heims, Constructing a Social Science for Post-war America—The Cybernetics Group 1946–1953 (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993; originally published1991) pp. 27–28.

38. Billy Klüver and Robert Rauschenberg, E.A.T.News 1, No. 2 (June 1967).

39. Gene Youngblood, “The Open Empire,” StudioInternational 179, No. 921, 177–178 (April 1970).

40. Roy Ascott, “Cybernetics—Letter to the Editor,”in Studio International 176, No. 902 ( July/August1968) p. 8.

41. Roy Ascott, e-mail to the author (2000).

42. Harold Wilson, “Speech by the Rt. Hon. HaroldWilson MP,” in Report of the Annual Labour Party Con-ference (London: Labour Party, 1963) pp. 135–140.

43. Roger Beard, “Editorial: The Computer,” Tech-nical Education & Industrial Training 10, No. 9 (Sep-tember 1968).

44. Beard [43].

45. Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen—Identity in theAge of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997;originally published 1995) pp. 18–36.

46. Alan Greenspan, Speech to the American En-terprise Institute (1996).

47. Brian Winston, Media Technology and Society—AHistory: From the Telegraph to the Internet, (London:Routledge, 1998) p. 11. For a diagrammatic rendi-tion of Winston’s model, see Figure 7 on p. 14.

48. Winston [47].

49. For the production of so-called firing tables, ahuge number of differential equations had to be cal-culated. Goldstine recalls that “a typical firing tablerequired perhaps 2,000–4,000 trajectories” andquotes from a working memo from the Ballistic Re-search Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, of 1 Feb-ruary 1944, stating that “‘even with the personneland equipment now available, it takes about threemonths of work on a two shift basis to turn out thedata needed to construct a director, gun sight, firingtable. . . . The number of tables for which work hasnot been started because of lack of computationalfacilities far exceeds the number in progress.”Quoted in H.H. Goldstine, The Computer from Pascalto von Neumann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press,1993 [1972]) pp. 138, 165–166. The firing table cri-sis eventually led to the development of ENIAC (Elec-tronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). TheBritish equivalent of the firing table crisis was ofcourse the crucial effort to crack the German Navy’sENIGMA codes in the U-boat war. Alan Turing’s ef-forts in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park succeeded by May1941, enabling British intelligence to read all U-boatmessages within one day. Yet improvements in Ger-man encryption efforts led to a number of ENIGMAblackouts, when, once again, Allied intelligencecould not decode German radio traffic sufficientlyspeedily to influence decision-making on theground. Turing and his team decided to solve the in-creasing mathematical complexity of code breakingby building Colossus, an advanced electronic com-puter, which was completed in 1943.

50. Manuel De Landa, “Economics, Computers andthe War Machine,” in Gerfried Stocker and Chris-tine Schöpf, eds., Infowar (New York: Springer, 1998)p. 167.

51. Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O’Neill, “Intro-duction,” in Transforming Computer Technology: Infor-mation Processing for the Pentagon 1962–1986

(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000) p. 1.

52. Norberg and O’Neill [51] p. 4.

53. Norberg and O’Neill [51] pp. 151–197.

54. A compelling example of disruptive strategies canbe found in Brecht’s “Epic Theatre.” Rejecting “culi-nary” consumption, Brecht favored interruptionover intoxication; he juxtaposed more than he fusedtogether in order to make the audience realize, rec-ognize and respond, rather than dream and escapein theatrical pseudo-reality. See Bertolt Brecht, “AShort Organum for the Theatre,” in John Willett, ed.and trans., Brecht on Theatre—The Development of anAesthetic (London: Methuen, 1990; essay originallypublished 1948) p. 194.

55. Natalie Jeremijenko, “Database Politics and So-cial Simulations,” in Barbara London, ed., Technologyin the 1990s: Natalie Jeremijenko, MOMA (2000) [orig-inally published 1995]; <http://tech90s.walkerart.org/nj/>.

56. N. Katherine Hayles, “Virtual Bodies and Flick-ering Signifiers,” October 66 (Fall 1993) pp. 69–70.

General Bibliography

Briers, David. “Star Dot Star,” Art Monthly 219 (Sep-tember 1998) p. 50.

Burnham, Jack. Beyond Modern Sculpture (London:Penguin, 1968).

Burnham, Jack. “Art and Technology: The PanaceaThat Failed,” in John Hanhardt, ed., Video Culture(New York: Peregrine Smith Books, 1986).

Shanken, Edward A. “From Cybernetics to Telemat-ics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott,”in Edward A. Shanken, ed., Telematic Embrace: Vi-sionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness byRoy Ascott (Berkeley, CA: University of CaliforniaPress, 2001).

Manuscript received 22 June 2001.

Rainer Usselmann is the recipient of the 2003Art Journal Award. He teaches theory andpractice of photography and media art at theArts Institute at Bournemouth, U.K.


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