HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016368.jpg

Cybernetics / Art
Suzanne Treister is an artist whose work from 2009 to 2011 serves as an example of what is happening at the intersection of our current technologies, the arts, and cybernetics. Treister has been a pioneer in digital art since the 1990s, inventing, for example, imaginary video games and painting screen shots from them. In her project Hexen 2.0 she looked back at the famous Macy conferences on cybernetics that between 1946 and 1953 were organized in New York by engineers and social scientists to unite the sciences and to develop a universal theory of the workings of the mind.

In her project, she created thirty photo-text works about the conference attendees (which included Wiener and von Foerster), she invented tarot cards, and she made a video based on a photomontage of a “cybernetic séance.” In the “séance,” the conference participants are seen sitting at a round table, as in spiritualist séances, while certain of their statements on cybernetics are heard in an audio-collage—rational knowledge and superstition combined. She also noted that some of the participating scientists worked for the military; thus the application of cybernetics could be seen in an ambivalent way, even back then, as a tussle between pure knowledge and its use in state control.

If one looks at Treister’s work about the Macy conference participants, one sees that no visual artist was included. A dialogue between artists and scientists would be fruitful in future discussions, and it is a bit astonishing that this wasn’t realized at the time, given von Foerster’s keen interest in art. He recounted in one of our conversations how his relation to the field dated back to his childhood:

I grew up as a child in an artistic family. We often had visits from poets, philosophers, painters, and sculptors. Art was a part of my life. Later, I got into physics, as I was talented in this subject. But I always remained conscious of the importance of art for science. There wasn’t a great difference for me. For me, both aspects of life have always been very much alike—and accessible, too. We should see them as one. An artist also has to reflect on his work. He has to think about his grammar and his language. A painter must know how to handle his colors. Just think of how intensively oil colors were researched during the Renaissance. They wanted to know how a certain pigment could be mixed with others to get a certain tone of red or blue. Chemists and painters collaborated very closely. I think the artificial division between science and art is wrong.

Though for von Foerster the relation between the art and science was always clear, for our own time this connection remains to be made. There are many reasons to multiply the links. The critical thinking of artists would be beneficial in respect to the dangers of AI, since they draw our attention to questions they consider essential from their perspective. With the advent of machine learning, new tools are available to artists for their work. And as the algorithms of AI are made visible through artificial images in new ways, artists’ critical visual knowledge and expertise will be harnessed. Many of the key questions of AI are philosophical in nature and can be answered only from a holistic point of view. The way they play out among adventurous artists will be worth following.

Simulating Worlds
For the most part, the works of contemporary artists have been embodied ruminations on

148

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016368