Norbert Weiner (1894 - 1964)

Today there are few scholars who can call themselves mathematicians or physicists or biologists without restriction. A man may be a topologist or an acoustician or a coleopterist. He will be filled with the jargon of his field, and will know all its literature and all its ramifications, but, more frequently than not, he will regard the next subject as something belonging to his colleague three doors down the corridor, and will consider any interest in it on his own part as an unwarrantable breach of privacy. -- Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener was a mathematician and innovator in several fields. Fascinated by machines, he linked mathematics to engineering, developing a statistical theory of communication. This theory would impact the design of every kind of communication system, from telephone networks to satellite relays to computers to information networks. Wiener's mathematical theories led to the development of noise filters used in radar observations, radios, telephones, and numerous other devices in common use. In the 1940s, Wiener's recommendations for calculator technologies led directly to the invention of the electronic digital computer. Wiener's genius for linking mathematics and engineering with an understanding of the social and philosophical impact resulted in his seminal book, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, written in 1948. Later, in 1950, Wiener wrote the more accessible and popular The Human Use of Human Beings.

Interdisciplinary approach

Interdisciplinary thinking and practice was key to Wiener's approach to engineering, which led to the development of the electronic digital computer and the field of artificial intelligence. He felt that contemporary science required an interdisciplinary approach due to the convergence of the fields of biology, neurology, and mechanical and electrical engineering.

Wiener's 5 principles of the digital computer.

The principles of the electronic digital computer were laid out by Norbert Wiener in a 1940 memorandum, the technological foundation of computing that is held to this day.

• 1. digital rather than analog
• 2. electronic rather than mechanical
• 3. binary rather than decimal
• 4. automatic rather than manual
• 5. memory storage rather than repatching

Neurological roots

Wiener's theory of computing was based on systems derived from the human neurological system, "as we shall see...they are all ideas which are of interest in connection with the study of the nervous system. To this day, the microprocessor in designed like that of the human brain, with transistors emulating neural synapses, routing messages along complex paths like that of the human nervous system.

Calculating Ballistics

Wiener also emphasized the need to develop digital computers for the purpose of measuring complex trajectory tables for missile ballistics. During World War II, the first electronic digital computer (ENIAC) was developed for this purpose.

Human-Machine Coupling

At the core of Wiener's thinking was his desire to develop new human-machine systems built on the idea of cybernetic feedback, incorporating digital technologies. It is this notion that is key to artists' interest in Wiener, as this thinking is the foundation of interactivity as we know it today in regards to the human-computer interface. Artists studying interactive multimedia forms can benefit from an understanding of Wiener's seminal engineering breakthrough in this field.

The following are the key concepts that make up the theory of cybernetics.

• Feedback

One of Wiener's key contributions to electrical engineering was the notion of feedback and how its function can be described as mechanical systems coupled with human systems. (He later went on to write a book entitled, "The Human Use of Human Beings," in which he goes to great length to describe this concept.). Wiener defines feedback as, "when we desire a motion to follow a given pattern the difference between this pattern and the actually performed motion is used as a new input to cause the part regulated to move in such a way as to bring its motion closer to that given by the pattern." If we are driving an automobile, our movement of the steering wheel is made in direct relation to the motion of the tires and axles and the direction of the road. When the road turns to the left we respond by turning the steering wheel to the left, followed by the changing movement of the car giving us feedback to our initial steering action. The success of this feedback and resulting action is based on the relationship between the car's mechanical system and the human system's ability to respond accordingly.

• Message

Wiener determined that there was a direct correlation between electrical engineering and the human nervous system, in terms of how messages are relayed. He says, "... the problems of control engineering and of communication engineering were inseparable, and that around the much more fundamental notion of the message, whether this should be transmitted by electrical, mechanical, or nervous means. The message is a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time..." The information network functions analogously to the human nervous system, messages sent between the brain and the rest of the nervous system to activate bodily systems.

• Entropy

Entropy refers to the disintegration or disorganization of information. "Just as the amount of information in a system is a measure of its degree of organization, so the entropy of a system is a measure of its degree of disorganization, and the one is simply the negative of the other."

• Cybernetics

Wiener writes, "We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name of Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek steersman. " Wiener determined that the steering of ships was one of the most ancient forms of cybernetics (human systems coupled with mechanical systems) and provided an ideal name for the field.

Reading: Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics in History," Human Use of Human Beings : Cybernetics in Society, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1954

"Society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever increasing part." – Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener authored this exposé on the nature of human-machine communication five years after publishing his famous treatise, "Cybernetics" in 1948. Responding to a need to make his revolutionary new theories on information science and machine control accessible to a broader public, the Hungarian-born mathematician and child prodigy (who received his Ph.D. from Harvard at the age of 18), wrote The Human Use of Human Beings to elaborate on the relationship between cybernetics and the greater social ecology. In this book the electronical engineer and communications expert turns to the sociology of human dynamics to formulate a theory for how human beings will come to interact and co-exist with computers.

Wiener describes the often maligned term 'cybernetics' as having its roots in the Greek word for "steersman" or "governor," creating a theory of how humans dynamically operate and interact with machines through a controlling device such as a steering mechanism. Driving an automobile, passing through an automatic door, or clicking on a mouse would all be examples of cybernetic actions. Weiner thus defined cybernetics as the science of how messages are transmitted between man and machine, and between machines, in which the quality of the transmission is determined by such critical factors as 'feedback' and 'noise.' The significance of Wiener's research remains particularly prescient due to the fact that he viewed human communication as a model for the way machine interaction should be designed. For as Wiener stated, "the fact that the signal in its intermediate stages has gone through a machine rather than through a person is irrelevant."

Weiner further describes how engineering problems inherent in cybernetic systems are deeply embedded in the larger culture where interaction with machines is integral to our existence. He claims that the quality of external communication in a technological society is essential to man's inner being and relationship to the outer world. This view coincided in Weiner's mind with the shift in physics in the early part of the 20th Century (particularly through Einstein's Theory of Relativity), in which the physical world was viewed more subjectively – not as it actually exists but rather how it is observed. This epiphany coincides with the post-modern condition in which we have come to observe the artwork, not as a self-contained, closed entity, but as an active collaboration and interaction between the artist and the viewer, in which the latter responds, manipulates and offers feedback as an open and evolving system of messaging and communication.

Douglas Engelbart (1925 - ) Boosting the Collective IQ

"So one Saturday morning in all that stewing around it just dawned on me. Hey, you know, the world is really complex. And a lot of the big problems can only be dealt with collectively. And they're getting more and more urgent and more and more complex. And mankind's ability to cope with complexity and urgency isn't keeping up with the degree of increase in those factors. So here I come. I get on my white horse and I can do that for mankind. See?" -- Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Engelbart, lone scientist working amidst ridicule and ignorance, never once strayed from his vision to help people use computers to augment their thinking in order to become more productive, creative and smarter. When Engelbart first had notions of building interactive computers for knowledge workers, these machines were behemoths in the basements of military research centers being used to calculate missile ballistics. But in 1950, when Engelbart was working at Ames Laboratory in the pre-silicon valley days of Northern California, he realized he had fulfilled his dreams, and lacked the goals he needed to propel him further. A few days later it hit him square in the face, that his knowledge of engineering, radar technologies, and computing could be used to augment the human intellect, to "boost the collective IQ."

Engelbart was one of the early information pioneers to see the connection between the computer and the cathode-ray tube. Twenty-five years before the first personal computer, he envisioned interactive computing patterned after the Memex for the storage, retrieval, processing, and association of information. Despite the skepticism of his colleagues, Engelbart persevered — in 1962 he finally publishing his ideas in the seminal article, "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man's Intellect." This article attracted the attention of J.C.R. Licklider of ARPA, and Engelbart was awarded the funding he so desperately needed to realize his vision.

oNLine System

To build his augmentation system, he founded the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, and for the next four years, together with a young team of progressive engineers, proceeded to build the first prototype of NLS (onLine System). By 1968, Engelbart and his team bravely presented the highly experimental NLS at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. This historical event revealed to the scientific community that a revolution had occurred not only in computing, but in communication. Engelbart's theories on the organization and access to information had opened the door for new possibilities of human thinking, serving as a catalyst for the birth of the personal computer just four years later at Xerox PARC.

With Douglas Engelbart's oNLine System, the first prototype of the interactive, networked computer, the dream of Vannevar Bush and his MEMEX had become a reality. Looking like an information astronaut, wearing his headset at a control panel and screen, Engelbart was giving the first demonstration of navigating cyberspace while he communicated via microwave antenna with his team back at control central at the Stanford Research Center in Menlo Park. Beneath his fingertips was a keyboard flanked to the left by a special keypad that allowed character input with one hand, and to the right, the world's first mouse. On the NLS screen was the first glimpse of interactive information space, with its groundbreaking hierarchical menus, windows, and outlines, features that have since evolved into the modern word processor and essential functionality of the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

John Cage: (1912 - 1992)

John Cage: inventor, composer, philosopher, conceptual artist, iconoclast, his work always and eventually led towards theater. His most famous work was 4’ 33”, which dissolved the boundaries between art and life, music and noise, sound and silence. The father of the happening, his collaboration with such artists as Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns set the stage for experimental electronic theater in the 1960s.

Merce Cunningham (student of Martha Graham) worked with John Cage for nearly 50 years, together they forged an integration of music and dance that was founded on the independence of artistic disciplines in space and time. Their collaboration involved an agreement in temporal duration, and then independently they generated both music and dance using chance procedures (Merce had only to avoid dancer collision).

Variations V was first composed and performed in 1965 and subsequently toured through Europe (this performance was in Germany). A classic example of electronic Gesamtkunstwerk, the work was a collaboration between Cage, Cunningham, musicians Gordon Mumma and David Tudor, Bell Labs engineers Billy Klüver and Max Mathews (optical light triggers), visual artists Robert Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik and Jasper Johns (projections) and the filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek. Derived from the happening, in which the line between art and life is dissolved, the work is a surreal juxtaposition of “real-life” movement, objects and images, in non-synchronous combination using chance technique. Source material is taken from home movies and tv sitcoms. Music is generated from taped sounds and live electronic synthesizers. The movement of the dancers triggers sound and projections as a result of the optical light sensors.

Reading: John Cage, "Diary: Audience 1966," A Year From Monday, 1966

"Do you love the audience? Certainly we do. We show it by getting out of their way." – John Cage

Musician, composer, poet, and philosopher, John Cage's work ranged far beyond the arbitrary boundaries of the individual arts. Originally from Los Angeles where he was a student of the inventor of 12-tone music, the Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg, Cage's divergence from his musical teachings eventually brought him to an historic residency at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s. Here his theatrical experiments with Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham inspired the 1960s explosion of performance art, Happenings, and the theater of mixed-means. During this same time, his adoption of Zen Buddhism also led him to explore the use of silence and chance to introduce the indeterminate in musical composition.

Through indeterminacy, Cage influenced the dissolution of the fixed, absolute quality of music (and art), bringing about a more active, participatory role on the part of the listener. Such infamous compositions as 4'33" (1953) – in which a pianist remains silent at his instrument for the pre-determined duration of time – obligates the audience to listen exclusively and attentively to the random sounds of its own self-induced noises. While the work initially instigated frustration and scandal, Cage's intent was to cause one to reflect on the individual freedom gained from the composer's "permission" to listen and react to an environment in which an idea (silence) invented by the artist freely generates new ones in the minds of the listener. In this two-way exchange between artwork and audience, Cage suggests utopian visions of a collective wisdom, an indeterminacy that leads the spectator to realizations not even the artist might have imagined.

Despite Cage's reference to the future of computer art, the composer made little use of information technology in a wide ranging and prolific body of work. Nevertheless, this poetic analysis reveals the philosophical and aesthetic roots of his view of the nature of our changing relationship to the artwork, a stance that has had a profound impact on generations of media artists exploring interactive strategies. Here Cage relishes a Zen-induced spirit of anarchy that dethrones the modernist artist as the heroic, all-powerful arbiter of creative expression, proposing instead a shift towards a post-modern, inclusive art that encourages freedom, responsibility, participation, and interaction on the part of the viewer. He prophetically links this position with the need to rethink the servile, "labor saving" nature of the computer into an agent of participation, an emissary of receptive experience, opening the minds and ears of the listener to the world around them, and closing the gap between art and life.

Roy Ascott

Roy Ascott is an artist and theorist whose work has pioneered the creative use of cybernetics, telecommunications and interactive media . He is a leading figure in the development of telematics in art, using global networks since 1980.Trained as a painter, he studied under Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton, exhibiting "change-paintings and analogue structures" extensively in London and Europe throughout the 1960s. His contribution to art education started with the radical Grundcourse at Ealing School of Art, London. During the 1970s he was President of the Ontario College of Art, Toronto; Professor of Fine Art at Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and Dean of the the San Francisco Art Institute. From 1986-93 he was Professor for Communications Theory at the Hochschule fuer angewandte Kunst in Vienna.After sucessfully developing the first honours degree in Interactive Art at Newport School of Art, he was appointed as the founding director of CAiiA in the University of Wales College, Newport in 1994. As Visiting Professor of Science Technology and Art Research in the School of Computing, University of Plymouth, he established STAR in 1997.

His work is concerned with the development of Technoetics: the practice and theory emerging from the convergence of art, technology and consciousness research. His interest in the relationship between shamanism and cyberspace led him to live with the Kuikuru Indians of the Brazilian Mato Grosso in May 1997.He convenes the annual international conference "Consciousness Reframed: art and consciousness in the post-biological era".

His seminal networking projects include 'Terminal Art', USA/UK, 1980; 'La Plissure du Texte: a planetary fairy tale', Museum of Modern Art, Paris 1984; 'Laboratory Ubiqua', Biennale of Venice, 1986; 'Aspects of Gaia: digital pathways across the whole earth', Ars Electronica, Linz 1989: 'Telenoia', V2 Organisation, Holland, 1994. Video documentation of his work was shown at the Triennale de Milano in 1995. His concept design for an interactive televator resulted in the permanent installation Apollo 13 in the Ars Electronica Centre, Linz.

An influential theorist, he has published more than one hundred texts in books and journals internationally, with translations in French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. A collection of his writings, edited by Edward A Shanken, is to be published by the University of California Press in 1999. He is on the editorial boards of Convergence and Digital Creativity in the UK, Epiphaneia in Italy, and Leonardo Electronic Almanac and Leonardo Journal in the USA (also responsible for the "Art and Consciousness Research" and "Panetary Collegium" sections). He was a concept designer of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, and has advised the CEC Brussels, Copenhagen '96, UNESCO, La Caixa Mediateca, Barcelona, Ministry of Culture, Paris, amongst many international organisations. He has been a Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, jury member of Prix Ars Electronica and the Interactive Media Festival, and is currently on the Board of the NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo. He is a member of the Arts Council of England.He lectures extensively throughout the world.

Reading: Roy Ascott, "Behavioral Art and the Cybernetic Vision," 1967

"If the cybernetic spirit constitutes the predominant attitude of the modern era, the computer is the supreme tool that its technology has produced. Used in conjunction with synthetic materials it can be expected to open up paths of radical change and invention in art… The interaction of man and computer in some creative endeavor, involving the heightening of imaginative thought, is to be expected." – Roy Ascott

Since the 1960s, the British educator, artist and theoretician Roy Ascott has been one of Europe's most active and outspoken practitioners of the emerging medium of interactive computer art. Ten years before the personal computer even came into vogue, Ascott clearly foresaw the imminent approach of interactivity in the arts, thoughtfully building a conceptual framework founded in the relationship between the behavioral and process-oriented characteristics of the avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, Pop Art, etc.) with the developing science of cybernetics championed by Norbert Wiener and other scientists.

During the 1980s, Ascott began to present a significant body of art based in telecommunications technologies, or as he called it, 'telematic art,' at seminal European exhibitions including "Art, Technology and Computer Science," the first major show of information art at the Venice Biennale (1986), and "Aspects of Gaia: Digital Pathways Across the Whole Earth" at Austria's Ars Electronica (1989), in which the latter project brought together artists, musicians, and scientists from around the world producing representations of the earth (Gaia) in dataspace from scientific, artistic, and mythological perspectives. The fact that Roy Ascott established himself at this time as the pioneer of networked art takes on greater significance in light of the explosive interest in Internet art that arose in the following decade.

Ascott begins his thesis on the "Cybernetic Vision" with the need for an interactive art freed from having a fixed, absolute value, as in the modernist ideal of the perfect "object", and thus unable to be responsive to the viewer. While Ascott has pointed out that such artists as John Cage explored indeterminacy as a vehicle for breaking from this tradition in order to find new ways to engage the spectator, Ascott turned to the computer and the "spirit of cybernetics" as the primary means for achieving a two-way exchange of feedback between the viewer and the artwork, not in the doctrinaire sense, but because he felt it was critical that artists acknowledge information technology as the most important tool of their age. While these thoughts echo Name June Paik's musings on the role of the artist in a "cybernated society," Acott's vision is not at all ironic but rather utopian in its scope and embrace of a new medium based on a thriving, living, dynamic exhange between the human, technology and art.