Birthday event of art and cybernetics in 1954, not 1968

[Kuja]

September the first is around the corner, and the warm-up for the highly expected Yasmin discussions about CS has already began. Paul Pangaro has called my attention to the following piece of e-mail sent by Jean-Noël Montagné.

Hello all

I have seen on Bricolabs list that a discussion about the origins and new activities of cybernetics and art will stand in Yasmin network in September.

Here is my stone to the building of this discussion.

About history of art, I would like first to comment the nature of the 1968 proposal:

"40 years ago, Jasia Reichart's exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity" showed that the interactive confluence of cybernetics, computing and art had arrived."

I would like to say that she was 14 years late to announce such arrival. Some of you know that the history of art and cybernetics has started very early in the XX century, and I would only talk about a famous french "cybernetic" artist starting cybernetic art in the fifties. Most of us know his name, but few of us know how he is important in the history of interactive/cybernetic art;

One of the first artist to talk in public about cybernetics and art was Nicolas Schöffer in 1954, in his conference in La Sorbonne in Paris. After a tribute to N. Wiener, of course, he mentionned that he wanted to build scuptures in relation with cybernetics, with sensors and electronic brains.

The year after, in 1955, he gathered enough sponsors to build a 50m high interactive sculpture in Paris, named "Tour Spatiodynamique Cybernétique". This sculpture was creating sounds in real time, activated by differents sensors, managed by an "electronic brain". 60 000 visitors have seen/heard this sculpture during summer 1954 and about 30 magazines and newpapers have related and commented the event in french, but also in english and german. (I have all the copies). The comments are really interesting: most of the critics talk about new perspectives in art, some of them speak only about robotics and art, some don't understand... I have tried without success to build a birthday event in France in 2005.

The year after, in 1956, he designed an autonomous cybernetic sculpture, on batteries, moving alone, sensing colors, sound and distance, composing it's path and internal movements in accordance with the data acquired, in real time, of course. This sculpture was named CYSP 1 ( CYbernetic SPatiodynamic 1). The french chorographer Maurice Béjart was the first to compose a ballet with this sculpture, in the first Festival d'avant garde in Marseille, 1956. You can see this treasure in Paris in his atelier. His wife Eléonore de Lavandeyra-Schöffer organises incredibely interesting visits on demand.

When we look at art press articles of the sixties, Schöffer was the leader of cybernetic art. He was so famous that the city of Liege in Belgium asked him to build a monumental cybernetic artwork for the new Palais des Congrès, plus a 52 m cybernetic tower.

Schoffer decided to built a permanent 82 meters long, 13 meters high screen for cybernetic light show, plus the tower. The city of Liege has decided few years ago to restore these 2 monuments in the future (classified Patrimony of Belgium).

In 1963, he started the monumental project of a 300 m high cybernetic tower, driven by computers and activated by indoor and outdoor sensors ( like the level of sound in the french parliament, the trains, the temperature of the Seine river etc.). La Tour Lumière Cybernétique. The project failed in the oil crisis of 1973 after ten years of intense work.

In 1968, 14 years after his public desire to build cybernetic artworks, when Jasia was organizing this exhibition, Schoffer was building cybernetic projects everywhere in the world (artworks, architectures, urbanism, shows, machines, etc..). At this time, he was building a monumental permanent cybernetic installation in Rennes (France), a sculpture crossing 2 floors of the House of Culture, shamelessly dissasembled in secret in the eighties. The sounds of the "cafateria" was sensed by different microphones on the place , and were moving mirrors reflecting light shows in all the place . The components of the installation are hidden in the cellar of the building...

He has writen a dozen books on his works and theories about cybernetic art/urbanism/architecture/music/shows etc.

He died in 1992, at the age of 80.

My second comment is about the second sentence:

40 years later, while computers and art remain, cybernetics has nearly vanished, although there is a reviving interest in art.

Works with interactive systems have never stopped to progress. All hundred thousand interactive artworks created using sensors and real time technologies since the fifties ARE cybernetic works. Of course, the name of cybernetic art is almost dead, replaced by "interactive", or "real time", but the concepts emmitted since the pionners like Schöffer have always been the same. Only the technologies (interfaces, calculation, interconnections, presence of the web) have changed.

I hope that this words will launch the debate on Yasmin with passion.

[RichardB]

Coincidentally an exhibition has just recently opened in Second Life (in parallel with a real exhibition in Hungary) celebrating the work of Nicolas Schoffer - see my latest blog posting from details.

[BRAUN]

Yes, lets look forward, but in a discussion list so intimately linked with Yasmin, it is important to keep in mind the work of Shoffer, a benchmark figure here in France. This isn't just a question of arguing about who "came first": he was active over several decades, beyond the 1960s.

[Kuja]

I totally agree. Pioneers, metaphorically, are cowboys riddled with arrows in some Indian frontier... By other words: martyrs.

[Ranulph Glanville]

It's wonderful to have this enriching information, and it's true that the origins of cybernetic art surely go back before Cybernetic Serendipity, probably to the ancient Greeks!

Cybernetic Serendipity would not have been possible if there had not already been a body of work. It's even possible that Pask's Musicolour precedes Schoeffer. When I wrote of the ARRIVAL of cybernetic art, I was meaning to indicate that there was enough body and breadth of work to make a new field: CS reflected that.

I certainly did not mean to assert that CS was the beginning. It wasn't. It can be seen to mark the point where there was a critical mass, if you like.

And, while I think it's wonderful to have all this material, and all the links, and to build the widest possible resource, and to commemorate and celebrate everyone we can, I would hate this discussion to become an argument about who was first, when the important thing is to celebrate not by looking back but by going forward.

Ranulph