Abstract
Studio International (Studio International 2018), the now on-line successor to print art magazine The Studio, is planning a late April 2018 50th anniversary reprinting of its Special Issue dedicated to the historic 1968 “Cybernetic Serendipity” techno-art exhibition (Benavides 2018a)[...]
Highlights
Published in July of 1968 (Benavides 2018b)—one month before the London opening of the show itself—and edited by curator Jaisa Reichardt, the lengthy (104 pages), lavishly-illustrated Special Issue featured a cover designed by Franciszka Themerson (Figure 1); an introduction by Ms Reichardt; an overview of cybernetics and its founder, Norbert Wiener; separate sections dedicated to the newly-established connections between the computer and music, dance, poetry, painting, film, architecture, and graphics; a glossary; and a bibliography (Reichardt 1968a)
The Cybernetic Serendipity show itself, as one of the early and influential techno-art exhibitions—along with “Artist versus Machine” of 1954 (Grieve 2005); “Bewogen Beweging” of 1961 (Hultén 1961); and “The Machine as seen at the end of the Mechanical Age” of 1968 (Hultén 1968)—opened at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) in London, where it ran from 2 August to 20 October 1968; it moved to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., running there from 16 July to 31 August 1969; and it moved to the recently founded Exploratorium in San
The show featured a comprehensive assortment of pioneer techno-artists including Edward Ihnatowicz, Liliane Lijn, Gustav Metzger, Nam June Paik, Nicolas Schöffer, and Jean Tinguely, and as represented by a number of their more noteworthy pieces including Paik’s Robot K-456 (1964); Schöffer’s Cysp-1 (1956); and Tinguely’s Méta-Matic (1961) (Reichardt 1968b; Mason 2018)
Summary
The Cybernetic Serendipity show itself, as one of the early and influential techno-art exhibitions—along with “Artist versus Machine” of 1954 (Grieve 2005); “Bewogen Beweging” of 1961 (Hultén 1961); and “The Machine as seen at the end of the Mechanical Age” of 1968 (Hultén 1968)—opened at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) in London, where it ran from 2 August to 20 October 1968; it moved to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., running there from 16 July to 31 August 1969; and it moved to the recently founded Exploratorium in San. Studio International (Studio International 2018), the on-line successor to print art magazine The Studio, is planning a late April 2018 50th anniversary reprinting of its Special Issue dedicated to the historic 1968 “Cybernetic Serendipity” techno-art exhibition (Benavides 2018a).
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