Behaviourist Art and Cybernetics

Mapping a Field
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-61231-7
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm

Reihe: Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies

Drawing together key areas of cybernetic art practice in the UK and USA, this book assesses British and American cybernetic art as relating to the intersecting field of Behaviourism.

This study takes as a starting point Roy Ascott’s essay ‘Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision’ (1966) and uses it to define a field of Behaviourist art from the period 1945-1975. Kate Sloan establishes the role of the cybernetic concept of feedback as a defining factor in understanding works of art as behavioural, expanded well beyond the perimeters of what we consider cybernetic art. The book also demonstrates how light as a behavioural trigger informed several discrete areas of art making, from cybernetic art to countercultural light shows and behaviourist architectures.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, technology studies, music history, architectural history, and design history.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sloan, Kate

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert Konzeptkunst, Postmodernismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Behaviourist Art

Part One: Operant Chambers

1 The Live Subject

2 Nicholas Negroponte’s Seek

3 Hans Haacke’s Living Systems

Part Two: Light Triggers

4 Flicker

5 György Kepes’ Flame Orchard

6 Otto Piene’s Light Ballets

7 Wen-Ying Tsai’s Stroboscopic Organicism

Part Three: Behaviourist Architectures

8 Architectures of Behaviour

9 Cybernetic Towers: CAVS and Schöffer

10 Temporary Architectures of Art: Keith Albarn

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Kate Sloan holds a lectureship in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Edinburgh.