Page 62 - Studio International - April 1970

which admits of cybernetic analysis.6 We have compete with technology at its own level. level of consciousness which in turn generate
also seen the underlying cybernetic structure After all, the creativity in technology is to be anticipated future structures and relation-
of art misunderstood, or simply made fashion- found in its own advance. Art is concerned to ships. I would like the boards to be read like
able with large-scale exhibitions of what is give expression to process and system under- the palm of the hand—`pictomancy', a kind of
effectively cybernetic camp— creaking hard- lying technological culture, and will be con- non-figurative, all-at-once tarot. The crystal
ware and antique concepts—simply out to cerned increasingly to ally this with the ball rolled out and transferred on to the flat
capture public attention at a trivial level. But expression of behaviour at the psychic level. surface of the board like some kind of carto-
however it is grasped, with or without It's worth noting that as with TV so with graphical projection of the world—not the
imagination or insight, with or without finan- ESP, the medium is the message. world geographically described, but an alter-
cial support, there is no doubt that the cyber- So I want an art which reads like the palm of native future structured in terms of pure
netic era, perhaps we should call it the your hand. I would like the critics to have a visual energy.
psibernetic era, is upon us and that art, how- chance of being useful again. Instead of judg- Other levels of work, apart from the intimate
ever obscurely, has anticipated the fact. ing and interpreting with their eyes in the and the social (the studio and the Cybernetic
I want to suggest that art has anticipated back of their heads, they could begin to look Art Matrix), are called for, and experiments
something more, the real value for human outfront, exercising the pineal gland for a have begun. Psychic systems for generating
beings of a cybernated culture : the leisure and change; interpreting alternative futures from instructions for creative behaviour have been
abundance to choose and anticipate. Art has the configurations thrown up by the artist. set up recently with a group of associates,
anticipated anticipation: the ability to predict, The critic as seer would be involved in seeing using for example, simultaneously four or five
to sketch for oneself all kinds of alternative again, in an entirely fresh light, a visionary ouija boards. We are planning to feed
futures. Unlike the past, when poverty and rather than a merely visual art. An art which instructions from a planchette on a wired
shortage caused science to be used merely to sets you off dreaming; ambiguous, uncertain, table (on/off switches replace the circle of
mitigate a certain future of hardship and non-specific; certainly not literary or merely letters and numbers normally used) within a
anxiety, the future economy of abundance arcane; prefigurative painting perhaps, or domed structure linked to an electronic
will mean life of personal choice and inven- prospective modelling! I am pointing to an art system of light and sound located on the
tion. Given raw materials and automatic which is formed reaching, anticipatory, which exterior of the structure—a kind of system with
processing we are free to elaborate and triggers you outside of time. a psychic brain. The implications for art of
realize our dreams. This is the promise of Ambiguous, uncertain, indeterminate—these ESP and clairvoyant channels as media are
advanced technology with which the United are qualities to be found in the artforms of very great. There is room for fascinating
States, a post-industrial society, and the today. The germs of the new culture have speculation on the possibilities of linking a
USSR have already come to terms. In art, formed but the issues need to be clarified—they sensitive clairvoyant to a computer so that it
the action is where the power is. In Western are not, at present, simply vague and cloudy, can acquire a psychic repertoire and in turn
art this has usually been so whether the power but confused. The vision of our time must be amplify the subject's messages and images.
was temporal or spiritual. In the future the seen as a prevision; a function and purpose It can be argued that the rainbow arch
power will be with the post-industrial societies can be restored to art, where there now between psi and cybernetics has hardly
and we can expect to see the psibernetic appears to be only aimlessness and lassitude. formed. Maybe it is a futurible, but I think
culture engendered within their constraints. The future of art is with the futuribles. not, there is too much evidence to suggest
Electric technology is the artificial supporting In my painting, with which these ideas are that the structure is forming. Maybe it is
redundancy for psychic systems. ESP is more consistent, I find it necessary to operate at finally a dream, but as Montaigne said,
instant than instant electronic communica- what amounts to the level of trance. I mean defending in anticipation, no doubt, the
tions because it involves no media. Finally it that kind of open, unconstrained but intense futurible syndrome : 'It is pricing life exactly
can mean a kind of instant global sympathy, a process of working which can be induced by as it is to abandon it for a dream'. q
galactic sympathy perhaps. Out-of-time be- random behaviour, open systems of play with ROY ASCOTT
haviour, clairvoyance and psychokinesis are, marks, colours and gestures interacting with a
for example, the only real hope of travel deliberate grid. This intimate level of opera-
around the galaxy and beyond. tion is for me an analogue of possible processes
It is a prediction, then, that art will become, at the social level, mirrored in fact in the blue-
and is perhaps already beginning to be, the print for a Cybernetic Art Matrix,7 where
expression of a psibernetic culture in the fullest free and infinitely variable human behaviour
and most hopeful sense : the art of visual and interacts with a matrix of hardware and
structural alternatives. environmental amenities adaptive to the
We are familiar with an abstract art which is needs of inducing and reinforcing creative
the restructuring of past experiences at a behaviour in a community. In this micro-
general level; of an impressionistic art which cosm/macrocosm relationship there is much to 1 'Mankind 2000', R. Jungk and J. Galtung, Allen &
Unwin, 1969.
distills experience at a more specific level; and be learned from Tantra art.
2 'Cybernetics', Norbert Wiener, The Technology Press
of an Art of the Real, of now, of the moment. At this personal level there is a stage of work- of M.I.T. and John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1948.
The art I am pointing to is an art of predictive ing where actions become automatic (in the 3 Soviet Cybernetics and International Development, John
or anticipatory structure, which creates alter- sense of automatic writing). The board I J. Ford; Cybernetics and Marxist-Leninism, Maxim W.
native futures, a distillation in pure visual work on can become the arena for any kind of Mikulak; both papers in 'The Social Impact of Cyber-
energy of what could be the case. The art of force, just as the ouija board seems to elicit netics', Charles R. Dechert (ed.), Simon and Schuster,
New York 1966.
futuribles. information from a deep psychic level of the 4 New Scientist, October 16, 1969. 'Quantum Processes
Because it will develop, in my view, upon an participants. In the CAM also, sub-systems Predicted', Dr H. Schmidt, and Editorial.
arch of cybernetic technology and psychic tend to become automatic as the level of `The Year 2000', Herman Kahn and Anthony J.
behaviour, this does not mean necessarily that complexity overall rises, and a psychic con- Wiener, The Macmillan Company, New York 1967.
6 'Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision', Roy
it needs to employ the media of either. Neither sciousness of the human group within it Ascott, Cybernetica, Vol. IX, 1966 and Vol. X, 1967.
advanced hardware nor elaborate ectoplasm evolves. So the board, the analogue structure Association Internationale de Cybernetique, Namur,
need be involved! Indeed we see much evi- as futurible, offers feedback facilities for drag- Belgium.
dence in art now of the futility of trying to ging up visual configurations from a deep 7 Roy Ascott, ibid.