The Dilemma of Media Art: Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London
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Leonardo_36-5_339-422 9/18/03 10:26 AM Page 389 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Dilemma of Media Art: ABSTRACT Cybernetic Serendipity One year after the 1967 Summer of Love and at a time at the ICA London of considerable political unrest throughout the United States and Europe, Cybernetic Serendipity—The Computer and the Arts opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London Rainer Usselmann to much critical and popular acclaim. This paper outlines the conceptual framework of this seminal exhibition and looks at some of the accompanying press reception in order to address a key question: how media art deals with its own he coming together of digital communications the concept, realization and media T historicity and the underlying technology and art in the second half of the 20th century has reception of this important show. socioeconomic forces that attracted a considerable amount of debate. Throughout the By identifying some opportunities render it possible. Presented 35 early years of what is now called media art, a sense of great op- missed in the wake of this exhibi- years ago and still paradigmatic timism about the possibilities of the new medium prevailed. tion, I want to raise a number of key for the ever-shifting boundaries between art, technology, As recently as 1997, during the halcyon years of the technol- issues concerning media art in gen- commerce and entertainment, ogy boom, a sense of genuine excitement was palpable among eral. Cybernetic Serendipity epito- theorists and practitioners. Hans-Peter Schwarz, one of the mizes some of the complicated founding directors of the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien- dynamics that delineate the gamut of media art today. technologie (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany), described media art HAPPY ACCIDENTS as an “explosive charge” at the gates of traditional artistic es- One year after the Summer of Love tablishments [1]. and at a time of considerable polit- A few years later, in the aftermath of the dotcom bubble, ical unrest throughout the United States and Europe, Cyber- Schwarz’s explosive charge turns out to be a dud. The art es- netic Serendipity opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art tablishment has not been blown to pieces; on the contrary, if in London on 2 August 1968 (Fig. 1). Under the curatorship anything, the enthusiasm for all things digital has suffered a of Jasia Reichardt, then associate director of the institute, the considerable setback. But perhaps the time has come to de- exhibition brought together work from a total of “130 con- bate the evolution of computer art with a greater sense of his- tributors, of whom 43 were composers, artists and poets, and torical and critical distance. It is my intention to contribute to 87 . engineers, doctors, computer scientists and philoso- this debate with a review, 35 years after the event, of “Cyber- phers” [3]. One of the ICA’s most successful projects, Cyber- netic Serendipity—The Computer and the Arts,” an early land- netic Serendipity drew an audience of between 45,000 and mark exhibition of computer art at the ICA in London. Often 60,000 [4]. According to Reichardt, the exhibition “had visi- regarded as a key event in the institutionalization of media art, tors of all ages, all types, all nationalities, all classes” [5]. The Cybernetic Serendipity has been the subject of a growing num- exhibition closed on 30 October 1968. ber of papers [2], to which I would like to add a critique of The title of the exhibition suggested its intent: to make chance discoveries in the course of using cybernetic devices, or, as the Daily Mirror put it at the time, to use computers “to Rainer Usselmann (art historian), 5 Normandy Street, Alton, Hampshire GU34 1DD, U.K. find unexpected joys in life and art” [6]. It was structured into E-mail: <[email protected]>. three main areas; the first was dedicated to computer- Fig. 1. “Cybernetic Serendipity,” front of exhibition invitation by Franciszka Themerson. (© Cyber- netic Serendipity) © 2003 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 36, No. 5, pp. 389–396, 2003 389 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409403771048191 by guest on 24 September 2021 Leonardo_36-5_339-422 9/18/03 10:26 AM Page 390 other, and sound insulation proved a major problem. Compared with those of traditional projects, the difficulties in- volved in keeping the exhibition in work- ing order were greater by several orders of magnitude. Owing to the unprece- dented cost involved in mounting Cy- bernetic Serendipity, the need for corporate involvement was considerable, possibly stifling a more critical approach. After some initial reluctance on the part of industry, funding, benefit in kind and participation was secured, most signifi- cantly from IBM, Boeing, General Mo- tors, Westinghouse, Calcomp, Bell Telephone Labs and the U.S. Air Force research labs. All in all, the resounding success of the exhibition seemed to vin- dicate the project. The media reception of Cybernetic Serendipity was on the whole extremely favorable. In a review symptomatic of much press coverage, the Evening Stan- dard enthused: “Where in London could you take a hippy, a computer program- mer, a ten-year-old schoolboy and guar- antee that each would be perfectly happy for an hour without you having to lift a finger to entertain them?” [7] The Guardian agreed that it “lured into Nash House people who would never have dreamed of attending an ICA exhibition before” [8]. Cybernetic Serendipity promised fun for the whole family, not just an elite of art connoisseurs. “Chil- dren, scientists and the simply curious could spend fascinated hours in this world of computer art” [9]. The press cel- ebrated the exhibition as an event that “guaranteed to fascinate anyone from toddling age to the grave” [10]. Even the writer in The Lady felt compelled to urge that “one must go to the present exhibi- tion at the INSTITUTE OF CONTEM- PORARY ARTS ...not to understand in the least what is going on but to experi- ence that particular tingle which is in- herent in an act of threshold-crossing” Fig. 2. Andrew Rawlinson, computer poetry, 1968. (© Andrew Rawlinson. Photo © Cyber- [11]. Art critic Jonathan Benthall de- netic Serendipity.) clared that Cybernetic Serendipity would be remembered as a “landmark,” not least due to its “breeziness and catholic- generated graphics, film, music and po- monochrome paintings of IBM comput- ity” [12]. Others agreed: “For breaking etry (see Figs 2–4). The second section ers. Presentations by General Motors and new ground, revealing new fields of ex- provided a showcase for cybernetic de- Boeing concluded the exhibition. periment, seminal importance, sheer vices, such as interactive installations, ro- The level of logistic complexity in- hard work and enormous organization, bots and painting machines. The third volved in organizing, mounting and the exhibition Cybernetic Serendip- area was a “learning zone,” which dealt maintaining the show was unprece- ity . is arguably the most important ex- with the history of cybernetics and the dented. Instead of handling traditional hibition in the world at the moment” demonstration of uses for computers artifacts, the administrators and curators [13]. According to Brent McGregor, “the (see Fig. 5). The list of contributing at the ICA found themselves in charge of status of the event was such that Umberto artists included Bruce Lacey, Wen Ying extremely fragile computer soft- and Eco came from Italy to view its wonders” Tsai, James Seawright, Nam June Paik, hardware, which proved difficult to set [14]. Jean Tinguely, John Cage and Lowell up and run. Interactive systems in neigh- Aside from the almost unanimous con- Nesbitt, who exhibited a series of opaque, boring exhibits interfered with one an- sensus that Cybernetic Serendipity was 390 Usselmann, The Dilemma of Media Art Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409403771048191 by guest on 24 September 2021 Leonardo_36-5_339-422 9/18/03 10:26 AM Page 391 uine Mondrian painting from a com- listen to speakers and earphones issuing puter fake of a Mondrian painting: “59% sounds and information” [23]. The of the people who were shown both the Evening Standard characterized the exhi- Mondrian and one of the computer ver- bition as “a kind of homage to electron- sions preferred the latter, 28% identified ics, with the emphasis on fun rather than the computer picture correctly, and 72% art or technical achievement” [24]. Kath- thought that the Mondrian was done by arine Hadley commented that “if the computer” [19]. exhibition’s artistic achievement is con- troversial, for the sheer enjoyment of playing with some of 1968’s most inge- COMPUTERS ARE FUN! nious computer toys, Cybernetic Seren- Lingering doubts about the merits of dipity is unrivalled” [25]. Michael “artistic” experiments with computer Shepard of the Sunday Telegraph described hard- and software aside, many observers “the most sophisticated amusement ar- emphasized the sheer fun that could be cade you could hope to find around, an had by putting art and science together. intellectual funfair without parallel” [26], Nigel Gosling remarked that “this exhi- while John Russel from the Sunday Times bition ...could have been mounted with saw “computers at playtime” [27]. equal validity in the Science Museum, and discussed with equal ...understanding by a science correspondent” [20]. DISSENTING VOICES The ICA’s Leslie Stack declared: Overall, the praise for Reichardt’s un- dertaking seems almost unanimous and We want people to lose their fear of com- Fig. 3. Plotter print-out. Computer graphics the near absence of critical debate by Peter Milojevic, McGill University, Mon- puters by playing with them and asking treal. Milojevic created his graphics program them simple questions. ...So many peo- equally striking. Could it be that the ICA’s in Fortran on an IBM 7044, which was con- ple are afraid that computers will take “happy accidents” flourished so well be- nected to a Calcomp 565 plotter.