Research Catalog

Title

Systems / edited by Edward A. Shanken.

Publication

London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2015.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

239 pages : illustrations; 21 cm

Summary

In the late 1950s, experiments such as the cybernetic sculptures of Nicolas Schöffer or the programmatic music compositions of John Cage and Iannis Xenakis transposed systems theory from the sciences to the arts. By the 1960s, artists as diverse as Roy Ascott, Hans Haacke, Robert Morris, Sonia Sheridan, and Stephen Willats were breaking with accepted aesthetics to embrace open systems that emphasized organism over mechanism, dynamic processes of interaction among elements, and the observer's role as an inextricable part of the system. Jack Burnham's 1968 Artforum essay "Systems Aesthetics" and his 1970 "Software" exhibition marked the high point of systems-based art until its resurgence in the changed conditions of the twenty-first century. Systems traces this radical shift in aesthetics from its roots in mid twentieth-century general systems theory, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence to the cutting-edge science of the present. The collected texts examine the connections between advanced technological systems, our bodies and minds; the relation of musical to spatial and architectural structures; and the ways in which systems-based art projects can create self-generating entities and networks, alter our experience of time, change the configurations of social relations, cross cultural borders, and interact with threatened ecosystems.

Series Statement

Documents of contemporary art

Uniform Title

Documents of contemporary art series.

Subjects

• Arts, Modern > 21st century > Philosophy
• System theory
• Arts, Modern > 20th century > Philosophy
• 1900 - 2099
• Philosophie
• Kunst
• Arts, Modern > Philosophy
• Systemtheorie

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-233) and index.

Contents

• Introduction -- Foundations. Systems theory and new paradigm, 1988 / Fritjof Capra ; To know and to let know : an applied theory of knowledge / Heinz von Foerster ; A mathematical theory of communication, 1948 / Claude E. Shannon ; Recent contributions to the mathematical theory of communication, 1949 / Warren Weaver ; The use of human beings, 1950 / Norbert Wiener ; Contesting for the body of information : The Macy Conference on Cybernetics (1946 and 1953), 1999 / N. Katherine Hayles ; Style, grace and information in primitive art, 1967 / Gregory Bateson ; Our own metaphor, 1972 / Mary Catherine Bateson ; Cybernetics of cybernetics, 1973 / Heinz von Foerster ; The tree of knowledge : biological roots of human understanding, 1984 / Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela ; Dancing with systems, 2001 / Donella H. Meadows -- Cybernetic art, architecture and design. Cybernated art, 1966 / Nam June Paik ; The cybernetic stance : my process and purpose, 1968 / Roy Ascott ; Art society feedback : in conversation with Emily Pethick, 2011 / Stephen Willats ; Woody's famous feedback rap, 1973 / Steina and Woody Vasulka ; Notes for a proposal on conceptual gaming, 1973 / Frank Gillette ; From the gun controller to the mandala : the cybernetic cinema of John and James Whitney, 2009 / Zabet Patterson ; Art and telematics : towards a network consciousness, 1981 / Roy Ascott ; The architectural relevance of cybernetics, 1969 / Gordon Pask ; The fun palace project (1961-64), 2000 / Mary Louise Lobsinger ; The architectural relevance of Gordon Pask, 2007 / Usman Haque ; Intelligent cities, 2007 / William J. Mitchell ; Morphogenesis and the mathematics of emergence, 2004 / Michael Weinstock.
• Systems aesthetics. Systems aesthetics, 1968 / Jack Burnham ; Real time systems, 1969 / Jack Burnham ; In conversation with Jeanne Siegel, 1971 / Hans Haacke ; Reprogramming systems aesthetics, 2009-14 / Edward A. Shanken ; Systems of art, 2008 / Francis Halsall ; Systems symptoms : Jack Burnham's 'Systems aesthetics', 2011 / Caroline A. Jones ; The mimesis of thinking, 2005 / Boris Groys ; A cultural systems approach to collaboration in art and technology, 2005 / Stephen Jones -- Generative systems. Lines of development, 1943-84 / Richard Paul Lohse ; Free stochastic music, 1965 / Iannis Xenakis ; Iannis Xenakis and systems thinking, 2011 / Phivos-Angelos Kollias ; Statement, 1971 / Manfred Mohr ; Mind/senses/hand : the generative systems program at the Art Institute of Chicago 1970-80, 1990 / Sonia Landy Sheridan ; Generating and organizing variety in the arts, 1976 / Brian Eno ; Statement, c. 2004 / Michael Joaquin Grey ; Art as a living system, 1999 / Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau ; Autopoiesis, 2000 / Ken Rinaldo ; Context machines, 2013 / Benjamin Bogart and Philippe Pasquier ; Google will eat itself, 2005 / Ubermorgen.com, with Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico ; Systems stories and model worlds, 2005 / Mitchell Whitelaw ; Generator : the value of software art, 2007 / Geoff Cox -- Environmental and social systems. Operating manual for spaceship earth, 1969 / R. Buckminster Fuller ; Geophysiology : the science of Gaia, 1989 / James Lovelock ; Shifting positions towards the earth : art and environmental awareness, 1993 / Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison ; Entomogenic climate change : insect bio-acoustics and future forest ecology, 2009 / David Dunn and Jim Crutchfield ; The field of cultural production, or the economic world reversed, 1983 / Pierre Bourdieu ; Putting a glitch in the field : Bourdieu, actor network theory and contemporary music, 2008 / Nick Prior ; The function of art and the differentiation of the art system, 1995 / Niklas Luhmann ; Systematically observing surveillance : paradoxes of observation according to Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, 1999 / Christian Katti ; Some experiments in art and politics, 2011 / Bruno Latour.

Call Number

N8601.D1

ISBN

• 9780262527194
• 0262527197
• 9780854882342
• 0854882340

LCCN

2014039754

OCLC

892794694

Title

Systems / edited by Edward A. Shanken.

Publisher

London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2015.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Documents of contemporary art

Documents of contemporary art series.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-233) and index.

Chronological Term

1900 - 2099

Research Call Number

*R-ART N8601.D1 A20