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27.
CYBERNETIC SERENDIPITY: The Computer and the Arts + two tickets + original digital print.
London: Studio International, 1968. First edition. Lge. 4to. Glossy magazine format, 104pp. + subscription form. Illustrated in b/w throughout. A Studio International special issue, "published to coincide with an exhibition dealing broadly with the demonstration of how man can use the computer and new technology to extend his creativity and inventiveness", a pioneering event three years in the making, curated by Reichardt and held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London between August 2 - October 20, 1968.
The cover art, exhibition, poster, invites and various tickets were all designed by Franciszka Themerson, and two original numbered admission tickets are loosely inserted, each one date stamped on the verso. The exhibition featured Honeywell-sponsored demonstrations (referred to on the tickets), and during the show a series of prints were created through computer programmes and printed on large-scale plotters. One of them, Kerry Strand's 'The Fisherman', done on a GE 425 computer and a CalComp 760/502 incremental plotter, has been loosely inserted, presumably by the ticket holders, constituting a rare tangible object to survive from the event (there was no catalogue made for the exhibition and no published list of the works included in it). Strand won first prize in the Sixth Annual Computer Art Contest in 1968, and Computers and Automation magazine (who organised the competition) reproduced 'The Fisherman' in their August issue (the journal, founded in 1950 and the first one dedicated to computer technology and software, provided Reichardt with the original inspiration for the ICA exhibition and the contacts for many of its participants).
Contents include Norbert Wiener on cybernetics; Mark Dowson on digital computers; a section on computers and music, featuring contributions by Joseph Schillinger, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Herbert Brün, Lejaren A. Hiller, James Tenney, John Cage, Gerald Strang, Peter Zinovieff, and others (Peter Schmidt, later Brian Eno's collaborator on Oblique Strategies, acted as an adviser to Reichardt on this section); "Five screens with computer", a project by Gustav Metzger (who critiqued the show at the time for its failure to address the use of computers in warfare and foresaw their increasing role in data surveillance); computer-programmed choreography; "Machines and environments", with contributions by Gordon Pask and Bruce Lacey, also featuring work by Jean Tinguely, Nam June Paik, Nicolas Schöffer, and Ken Cox, among others; "Computer poems and texts", reproducing work by Marc Adrian, Edwin Morgan, Alison Knowles and James Tenney, and others; "Computer paintings"; "Computer films" (John Whitney); "Computer graphics", including Jasia Reichardt on computer art, plus the Computer Technique Group (an artists' collective and the lone Japanese exhibitors), Boeing computer graphics, computer prints and the CalComp plotting system (California Computer Products of Anaheim were one of the 300+ participants in the exhibition); + 3pp. glossary and bibliography.
Reichardt argues in her introduction that Cybernetic Serendipity "deals with possibilities rather than achievements, and in this sense it is prematurely optimistic", since "computers have so far neither revolutionized music, nor art, nor poetry, in the same way that they have revolutionized science." Her stated intention was that "no visitor to the exhibition… will know whether he is looking at something made by an artist, engineer, mathematician, or architect", and she expresses the hope that "new media and new systems should bring in their wake new people to become involved in creative activity", a vision of cross-disciplinary collaboration in the arts since borne out in the contemporary art world via intermedia, electronic music, animation and digital image-making. After London, the exhibition opened in Washington D.C., and in October 1969 a smaller subset travelled to the newly opened Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Minor spotting to upper right corner of front cover, and slight age-toning, o/w A Very Good plus copy of this important publication, scarce in the first printing and scarcer still with the tickets (both Fine) and an original computer print from the exhibition (folded, o/w Fine).
