Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
networking, telecommunications, information and abstraction, and
the use of combinatorial and generative techniques. Such work was
of great importance in relation to the post-war art scene and has
crucially determined not only the shape of current artistic practice
in relation to digital technology, but also the more general develop-
ment of digital media. But it is important to emphasize that much of
this work was often not primarily about technology in itself, either
as a means or a subject. To begin with at least, little, if any, of it was
made using computers or other similar technologies. It was not until
the late
s that computers began to be used to make images or
music, and even then this work was mostly undertaken in the spirit
of technical research rather than artistic creation. Only by the mid-
to-late
1950
s did artists start to use technical objects, such as tele-
visions, in their work, and, by the end of the decade, to exploit the
possibilities of technologies such as video cameras and computers.
Perhaps the best way to think about the relationship between
such work and digital technology is that both were part of the
cybernetic culture alluded to above, in which questions of interac-
tivity, feedback, the relationship of organisms with their environ-
ment and the transmission and reception of information were of
paramount concern. The term Cybernetics is used in this instance
to include not just the eponymous theory of Norbert Wiener, but
also related discourses such as Information Theory and General
Systems Theory, all of which combined to present a powerful
paradigm for understanding and operating upon the world. The
development of technologies such as the computer, the spread
and increasing complexification of systems of communication, and
the more general context of a world locked in the potentially fatal
systemic stalemate of the Cold War all contributed to the widespread
interest in, and adoption of cybernetic thinking. The combination
of an increasingly ubiquitous and clamorous electronic mass media
and the threat of nuclear holocaust did much to promote a pressing
sense of the interconnected nature of things, and a concomitant
1960
