Kinetic Art

Abstract

ABSTRACTFrom 1962 to 1966 the author was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. During this period awareness of Kinetic Art grew nationally and internationally. Two student-run magazines – Granta and Image – became important platforms for dissemination of information and critical discourse about Kinetic Art in the context of other avant-garde developments. Having met several pioneers in the field in Paris before University, the author soon made contact with Professor Richard Gregory in the Experimental Psychology Department of the Cambridge Psychology Laboratory with whom he then collaborated. He worked closely also with Mike Weaver, an academic in the English Literature faculty, who initiated the First International Exhibition of Concrete, Kinetic and Phonetic Poetry at St Catharine’s College in November 1964. They infused the Cambridge context with influences in Concrete Poetry and Kinetic Art from elsewhere. This article describes this period of early experimentation and reflects briefly on its legacy.