When Cybernetics meets Aesthetics


'Dieter Daniels Dieter Daniels / 'Claus Pias Claus Pias

“Study cybernetics!” So began a 1977 publication designed to introduce young readers to cybernetics.(1) It would end up being one of the last such exhortations, as the first wave of enthusiasm for cybernetics was already ebbing in the mid ‘70s. Nevertheless, what had transpired over the previous 25 years or so was perhaps the most significant upheaval in the entire history of ideas of the 20th century. As an intellectual discipline positioned at the nexus of neurology, computer processor architecture and information theory, cybernetics had attempted to develop a universal theory of regulation and control that could claim applicability to both living creatures and machines, economic as well as physical processes, and phenomena of a sociological and an aesthetic nature. A general model of logical machines (Warren McCulloch), a non-deterministic concept of feedback (Norbert Wiener) and a stochastic theory of information and communication (Claude Shannon) constituted the stuff from which both a philosophical challenge and a technological utopia emerged. Cybernetics is said to have represented the end of philosophy for Martin Heidegger, whereas Arnold Gehlen saw it as the consummation of technology and thus the final stage of human history. And Pierre Bertaux even drew the conclusion that a “new man” would now have to be engendered. But as great as the disappointment was that the many lofty speculations of the 1950s and ’60s left in their wake, cybernetics was to just as great an extent the point of departure of the epoch-making constructions that have been described since the late ‘60s as Knowledge-based (Lane), Information (Lyotard), Control (Deleuze) and Post-industrial (Bell) Society.

Thus, a plausible hypothesis might be that the science fiction that always made up a substantial part of cybernetics has, in the meantime, quietly come true, but there’s still no sign of a grand, all-encompassing theory about the conception of self prevailing in a society in which this science fiction is now an operative fact. Modern everyday life is determined by information, control and feedback processes involving human beings, media and machines. As a sort of second nature, these processes and effects constitute a link-up between the cultural and technological spheres. The term cyberspace—derived from cybernetics and widely used in the ’80s and ’90s—has, in retrospect, rather confused matters with respect to cybernetic concepts or reduced them to technical solutions. Nevertheless, seeing things from a distance of half a century provides us with an extremely incisive impression of the very radical nature of this dramatic epistemic turning point within the context of its historical circumstances. Furthermore, we are presently arriving at that threshold at which the quantum leap from communicative to collective memory normally takes place. Now is the time to rediscover cybernetics’ scornfully dismissed and long-forgotten utopian potential and to draw upon it for a diagnosis of our current situation.

First and foremost here is the hope that a meta-disciplinary analysis of control, regulation and feedback processes could be the way to bridge the gap between “two cultures”—technology and the natural sciences on one hand, and the arts and humanities on the other. Art has always been assigned an exemplary role in the ongoing effort to close this gap. Theoreticians like Max Bense and Abraham Moles have demanded that aesthetics be solidly grounded in a mathematical and technical language in which its practitioners would be just as fluent as their colleagues in the exact sciences. They insistently maintained the structural equivalence of technical and aesthetic approaches to construing reality, and called upon artists to adopt the so-called new technologies so that art would not find itself in a position “beyond the fringe of civilization” (Bense). So then, if it’s the conceptual origins of a “third culture” (Brockman) that one seeks, then it’s cybernetics—and, in particular, the proceedings of the Macy Conferences from which this field emerged—where the major finds are to be made.(2)

Accordingly, a second hypothesis might be that the history of cybernetics sheds significant light on the current state of media art. Even though the lines of tradition of information aesthetics were severed in Europe around 1968 and cybernetic approaches in the USA ended up flowing into the counterculture, the efforts aimed at overcoming cultural bifurcation are still with us and are just as problematic as ever. To this day, technically advanced media art stands—both ideologically and factually—with one foot in each of these “two cultures,” a situation manifested very poignantly by its unsuitability for either display in a traditional museum setting or implementation in the technology of everyday life. And this is precisely why the media art euphoria of the ’90s has since given way to increasing uncertainty about what such pieces have in common and what sets them apart from works in other genres, since, in the wake of the complete mediatization of society and culture, media art seems to have lost its uniqueness and thus the credentials entitling it to legitimacy and esteem. But it’s this very situation that ultimately paves the way for media art to return to its former distinctiveness situated in a privileged position where a dialog between the “two cultures” actually can take place.

When Cybernetics meets Aesthetics is the title of a conference that will bring the revaluation of cybernetics to bear as a potentially decisive contribution to the dialog focused on the necessary redefinition of the status of media art. How can the diametrical opposition of the “two cultures” ultimately attain convergence in artistic-technical work with media? Can the modern-day “art of complexity” of simulating social networks, natural systems of rules, and the dynamics of feedback effects at work in the economy be understood as a cybernetic process? Which current prospects are opened up by reviewing the theory and practice of the cybernetic art of the 1950s and ’60s?

The speakers at this conference are scholars of media, culture and art who are contributing to the revival of cybernetics, as well as contemporary eyewitnesses to the origins of cybernetic art. They’ll be taking a retrospective look at some of the highlights of cybernetic art in the ’60s such as 9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering from Experiments in Art and Technology (1966) as well as the 1968 exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity. One of the issues to be investigated will be the extent to which such art can be documented. Parallel to this, participants will discuss overarching theoretical aspects of the current relevance of cybernetic thinking and pursue lateral connections to the leitmotif of the Ars Electronica Symposium on complexity theory.

These considerations are meant to serve as the point of departure for the process of positioning the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. that was founded in Linz in 2005. The institution’s mission is to adopt a holistic scholarly perspective in dealing with the fundamental principles of documenting and describing media art and digital culture.

(1)
Viktor Pekelis, Kleine Enzyklopädie von der großen Kybernetik, East Berlin 1977, p. 10 (first edition: Moscow 1973) back

(2)Cybernetics/Kybernetik. Die Macy-Konferenzen 1946–1953, 2 Vols., Ed. by C. Pias, Berlin / Zurich 2003–04 back

When Cybernetics meets Aesthetics
A conference being held in conjunction with the 2006 Ars Electronica Festival